AIMI Oregon/AIMI West

AIMI Oregon is a post graduate training center offering classes for the general public and health professionals.

For the original AIMI go to http://www.drjerryepstein.org/ for San Diego branch follow the link http://www.aimiwest.net/index.php 

The Institute offers classes in phenomenological medicine of the West, the healing practice rooted in the spiritual traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Ancient Egypt and Hermetic tradition.



It is a branch of AIMI, the post graduate training center in New York City, offering certification in Imagination, Mental Imagery and Phenomenology, for health professionals licensed or certified in their own health fields (i.e. MD, DO, DC, NP, PA, LAc, PsyD, MSW, CSW, DMD, DDS, RN, Art Therapist, Pastoral Counselors, or students in these fields).

For the general public, the school offers classes on therapeutic uses of

  1. dream work
  2. mental imagery
  3. facial and body morphology
  4. therapeutic uses of will
  5. spiritual exploration

Detailed class description and schedule will become available shortly.

If you are interested to be notified by email, regular mail or telephone, about the upcoming classes please leave your contact information here

For health professionals and those seeking certification in Imagination, Mental Imagery and Phenomenology, the institute offers more advanced classes as those mentioned above, with a focus on clinical therapeutic process and application of phenomenological approach to healing is any health practice. In depth study of applying phenomenology (philosophical foundation of this work) and clinical examples are discussed.

Most of the work is experiential, not didactic. In a small group setting and under the guidance, the participants will be doing their own dream work and experimenting with mental imagery exercises.

Below are some of the fasts and information from the founder of AIMI, Gerald N. Epstein, M.D.

 

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE AND AIMS

Who we are

The American Institute for Mental Imagery is provisionally chartered by the New York State Board of Regents to offer post-graduate certification programs for all health care practitioners. Premised on the intrinsic connection between mind and body, these programs teach a new perspective on the roots of health and illness. Students learn techniques such as mental imagery, voluntary will, dream reading, and morphology which restore the Self to wholeness and health.

The Founder and Director of AIMI
Gerald N. Epstein, MD, the Founder and Director of the Institute, is a mindbody physician, author and educator. He holds the positions of Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical Center and Lecturer at Columbia University's School of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. Dr. Epstein has attained national recognition as the leading expert in the use of the mind to heal emotional and physical illness. The author of five books, including Healing Visualizations, Healing Into Immortality, and Climbing Jacob's Ladder, he contributes articles to numerous alternative health publications and has recorded The Natural Laws of Self-Healing. He also conducts research into the physical effects of mental imagery, most recently in an asthma research project funded by National Institutes of Health, Office of Alternative Medicine. As an educator, he holds a wide variety of classes for the public. Dr. Epstein lives in New York City where he maintains a private practice.

Historical Background
This tradition of imagery and integrative education taught at AIMI originated with Colette Aboulker-Muscat, a renowned teacher and mystic recognized for her clarity of mind and great wisdom. Dr. Epstein met Mme. Muscat in 1974 in Jerusalem and apprenticed with her for over nine years, to master her unique therapeutic method based on the image.
Mme. Muscat was born in Algeria in1909, the daughter of Professor Henri Aboulker, the most celebrated neurosurgeon of his time. She spent a large part of her early life as an assistant to her father and mastered many aspects of neurology and medicine. Even as a young girl of seven, people came to her for help with their emotional and physical difficulties. Drawing on her North African and Sephardic heritage, she originated and evolved a unique method of therapeutic treatment called Waking Dream.
After attaining degrees in psychology, sociology, philosophy and completing four years of training in physiology, she left Algeria for Paris. There she studied and obtained her Master’s degree in psychology. During World War II, she worked at hospitals in Algeria and France where she used her Waking Dream method to treat soldiers and fighter pilots given up as hopeless by physicians. Her work enabled many patients to heal, and others to die peacefully. Beginning in 1954, after she moved to Jerusalem, she taught people who came to her from all over the world. Mme. Muscat died in 2003.

What is Integrative Health Care?
Integrative Health Care views physical illness as a reflection of a person's life story: It unites all the dimensions that can be involved in illness: the physical, emotional, mental, social, moral and environmental. For example, a heart attack concurrently reflects problems in the physical condition of that organ and in the emotional sphere of love. Similarly, emotional depression emerges in the physical body through posture, facial expression, and metabolic changes. Regardless of the complaint, every illness represents a fragmentation of our Self, which manifests simultaneously in all spheres of our existence.

What is Mental Imagery?
Therapeutic mental imagery is the mind thinking in pictures. These images form the natural language of inner life that transcends the constraints of logical and lexical thinking. The process of mental imagery allows a return to wholeness.
Mental imagery offers a method for change that can occur in an instant. The image jolts the person’s system, explodes the ingrained patterns, and permits new directions to emerge unimpeded. It alters physiology, perceptions, and philosophy. To practice imagery, one must experience it. For this reason, AIMI’s programs require that the students learn through participation as well as through didactic study.
Through the practices of imagination, the students begin to turn to themselves for answers about life and to meet personal challenges with creative solutions. Students no longer compare themselves to external standards. They become their own authorities and impart this essential principle to their clients. Thus, health care providers become guides to their independent clients, and the therapeutic process becomes a self-directed movement of growth.

AIMI’s programs teach students to understand the image as it appears in human experience in the phenomenology of the moment: In the external image of our face and body form, where it is called the science of morphology; in the internal image of our night dreams, called intuitive dream reading; in the exploratory dream image, called Waking Dream; and in the formless image, called the voluntary Will.

What are the basic premises of the AIMI model?
AIMI teaches from a phenomenological and holographic model. Phenomenology describes the study of the moment without subjective interpretation -- as occurs in psychology -- or objective experimentation -- as in science. In the experience of the present moment, the phenomenon reveals true information and contains answers without having a need to investigate the past or foretell the future.
The holographic model teaches that the part contains the whole just as a seed contains the information and potential realization of a tree. In healing, a holographic framework permits a single image, dream, or facial feature to encapsulate the whole life experience of the person. This principle aligns with phenomenology to expedite healing without extensive discussion or analysis.

Benefits of an AIMI Education

  1. Incorporates cost effective treatments into your practice
  2. Reduces office visits as it increases clinical effectiveness
  3. Brings immediate response and quick progress
  4. Applicable to situational, physical, and emotional disorders
  5. Uses non-invasive therapy
  6. Facilitates and complements other modalities
  7. Re-educates clients as active participants in healing
  8. Insures that client interactions are never repetitious

Please leave your contact information, if you wish to be notified when the class syllabus and schedule becomes available

A complete class schedule will be available shortly, tentatively, classes will be offered Wednesday evenings 6PM to 7:30PM with a short break in the middle.