Health Journeys: A Guided Meditation for Healing Trauma ... (ISBN 1881405230)

The best $18 I ever spent!!!!:
This CD is amazing. I am familiar with Belleruth's work and have read her book "Invisible Heroes." I found this was excellent and became interested in her CD's. I was interested in them for both personal use and use in helping clients (I am a therapist and work with clients who have PTSD). I found her voice to be very soothing and engaging. I did not find myself drifting or focusing on the language too much. What great descriptors and imagery she uses! I would recommend this CD to anyone who suffers from trauma of any sort - abuse, dysfunctional home life, war experience, death of a loved one, sexual assault, etc. It will definitely improve your mood and your sense that you can control your condition.

Good tool for Trauma but assumes too much on listeners part:
This is a good resource to use, but what do you do if you have a hard time "visualizing," let alone understanding the significance of, the concepts she speaks of (safe place, healing waves, etc)? I was trying everything to shake my history of child abuse by building up my self-esteem, exercising, etc but there would always be a "thin-skin" or a "hot button" that I couldn't fix, and I was still "traumatized" by certain triggers. When I first got this tape, it helped somewhat but in my mind, I thought it was a little ridiculous to "pretend" a safe place, "pretend" the healing sparkles in my body, "pretend" there was a companion following me, and pretend the "animal helpers." I don't live in a Lord of the Rings world! The mind cannot be tricked so easily. Also, my mind was so distracted and noisy from the trauma (the destructive auto-pilot patterns of thought) that sometimes i would zone out from the messages. How can you pay attention to something for so long if you are suffering from trauma? I would strongly suggest you couple this with "mindfulness" (a part of meditation) as it really increases your focus and emotionally stability. Also, if you are a somewhat realistic person like me who doesn't like the fairy dust visualizing you can actually do this opening your eyes and finding a real life "safe place" (I suggest a garden or something quiet, nice, and peaceful.) Oh and the "healing energy," if you are practicing mindfulness while doing this cd, you will feel actual tingling and "popping" sensations all over your body. Just be aware of that and don't stop the process (mindfulness helps stop the stopping process hehe). At least thats what I did. Again, if this doesn't apply to you just ignore my advice as different things work for everyone. Oh and something that also helped, which I would give credit for if I knew where it came from: "humans have the innate ability to recover from trauma and emotional stress, but we also have the innate egotisicalness to stop the process." So true. Thats where mindfulness comes in "nonjudgemental attitude towards feelings, thoughts, body sensations." So here was what I did: 1)Listened to this for two weeks 2)Practiced mindfulness and listened to another resource at night (the secret universal mind meditation 2) 3) practiced mindfulness while in a safe place like Beth talks about and being aware of the "healing." SO IMPORTANT to be aware of the POSITIVE HEALING too, not just the negatives (if you are feeling angry and scared, but also confident, happy, glad, and calm, those negatives seem smaller huh? EMOTIONAL DEPTH). Hope that helps and if that doesnt work for you then disregard this. But give a 100% effort

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!:
Thank you Bellaruth and Co. for your amazing talent. This CD is an amazing and healing gift. It has to be the most deceptively simple piece of recorded meditation I've ever heard, yet it is densely planted with so many great seeds that has an immediate and positive effect. It's not always a pleasant activity to listen to this and deal with PTSD, but it's a sure sign it's working.

Exceptional Visualization:
I own several of Belleruth Naparstek's meditative CD's, and this one is my favorite...the one I return to again and again. Naparstek constructs stunning metaphors and images that take you on a journey through your heart. Even though I have used this recording hundreds of times, different phrases and visualizations jump out at me and present themselves in repeated listenings. The accompanying music --at times reflective and occasionally soaring -- is carefully choreographed to maximize the experience. The final segment, a set of affirmations to be repeated silently or aloud, similarly encourages the development of one's self-agency and personal power. I have found this disc to be an invaluable resource for facilitating my personal growth and healing.

Very powerful healing:
As someone with PTSD, I bought the "Healing Trauma" CD to see if it helped ease my silent suffering. It did. I am less and less seeing myself as a victim. I have experienced a lessening of the power-punch of associated emotions (rage, grief, fear) and I see the trauma more as a narrative of something that just happened to me - a sure sign of healing. I no longer want to cry when I experience intrusive images of the trauma happening. "Healing Trauma" helped me experience my grief fully (tears rolled down my face the first few times I listened to it). The heart imagery hits it spot-on, and the landscape of my heart came alive through Belleruth's narrative. I still have some symptoms, (grief, occasional frozen fear wherein I am unable to physically move, and intrusive images), but this CD helps to decrease the intensity and frequency. Not only can it help decrease the severity and frequency of symptoms, it can help you move from "victim" to "survivor," whose own trauma no longer grasps a vise-like hold over every aspect of your life. There is hope and healing available to you through this CD.