Make Health Happen: Training Yourself to Ceate Wellness

Erik Peper, Professor and Director of the Institute for Holistic Studies at San Francisco State University is an international authority on biofeedback and self regulation. He recently co-authored with Katherine Gibney and Catherine Holt, "Make Health Happen, a book essential for health care professionals and their clients in learning how to optimize self healing and wellness.
"Make Health Happen" provides necessary, theoretically grounded information for developing a holistic program. Chapters in each of the 4 sections progress logically and sequentially towards the learning of essential foundational theory and relaxation, imagery, and cognitive skills. Each chapter introduces and builds upon holistic concepts and strategies that are then reinforced with practice exercise sessions. Daily log keeping and group discussion formats are provided to further facilitate self awareness and experiential mastery of content. The ultimate goal is to develop ones own unique, meaningful, healing program towards wholeness. Nursing students have used this book's first edition (Creating Wholeness) as a main textbook for a university holistic nursing course; several students reported: "I now have a variety of ways to relieve stress." "This awareness has allowed me to intervene earlier and to stop some of the general overload." (Stetson, 1998)
Nursing students (in one holistic nursing course) quickly and successfully learned and applied the holistic, healing principles and methods into their own lives as well as with clients in various health care settings. For example, students helped reduce clients' pain, stress, and anxiety by remaining calm, creating relaxing atmospheres, and teaching stress reduction techniques from the textbook's relaxation scripts and/or use of relaxation audio tapes. Stress reduction techniques were especially helpful in reducing anxiety for clients on ventilators (Stetson, 1998).
Learning self awareness and inner skills were reported by students as rewarding and fun to do, particularly when learning more advanced self regulation skills such as hand warming. On the average, students learned to warm their hands 5.70 degrees Fahrenheit in about 5 minutes.
Nursing students rated the Creating Wholeness book highly. Students reported being able to reduce their self reported stress with these techniques, from an average of 4.29 to 1.95 rating, on a scale of 1 (no discomfort) to 5 (maximum discomfort).
"Make Health Happen" can be used by health care professionals in many ways. The book chapters can be assigned selectively according to what the professional deems important to learn, and can be taught on an individual or group basis. This book is definitely a "how to" manual and easy for professional use.
The first half of the book teaches fundamental relaxation skills that incorporate relaxation theory and principles. The reader is introduced to relatively easy relaxation exercises which progress to more advanced skills. Practice sessions include relaxation scripts and exercises; also, audio tapes (duplicating the text's relaxation scripts) can be purchased for additional learning. The last chapter of the relaxation section requires the reader to write a personal relaxation script. Nursing students reported particular enjoyment using this exercise since it individualized their relaxation and stimulated them to creatively recall and write beautiful, healing images of special places promoting their own inner peace and relaxation. Personalizing relaxation also helped to integrate and master previously learned inner skills. For example, student comments in their summative papers half way through the course were: "I have become more focused and aware of myself and the environment." "I've channeled my worries from frustration into relaxation." (Stetson, 1998)
The second half of the book focuses on the development of cognitive balance and use of imagery. Many students reported the cognitive exercises to be useful in helping them recognize and change their own negative thought patterns and less assertive ways. Learning of imagery continued to deepen the journey of self enlightenment. Positive changes in these areas reportedly helped increase student self esteem and confidence.
"Make Health Happen" is an essential, consciousness raising book for all health care professionals, students, and clients, particularly relevant in caring for self and clients in our rapidly changing health care system today.

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