Oleg I. Reznik, M.D.   Board Certified Family Physician

Assistant Professor at OHSU  Department of Family Medicine

Mind-Body Medicine Clinic

 

Individual Mind-Body Intervention for Adults and Children

 

What is Mind-Body Medicine

A variety of mental techniques including biofeedback, stress reduction, guided visualization, and mental imagery, all fall under the umbrella of mind-body medicine. All of these treatments have two things in common:

· They use the mind as a healing tool;

· To varying degrees, they view mind and body as an inseparable wholeness. 

During a one on one session, the nature of your distressing symptom will be explored from phenomenological perspective. You will be offered one or several mental exercises for your particular condition. Phenomenology is an approach to health and illness that regards all bodily and mental phenomena as meaningful expressions of the individual’s state of existence.

What is Mental Imagery

Mental Imagery is an approach that is based on the millennia old healing traditions of the Mediterranean region.

It is a simple technique involving a certain pattern of breathing and the use of carefully selected imaginal experiences, which are specific to the person. Well selected mental images address the wholeness of a human being, the physical and the non-physical, as it is, always inseparable. Most mental imagery exercises last about two minutes and do not require a particular talent or skill. For those who have difficulties with imagining, there are exercises that will help develop this capacity.

Problems That Can Be Treated

Mental imagery, dream work, and directed will are some of the tools that can be used for exploration, diagnosis, and treatment of most illnesses, for people of all ages. It is used for both physical and mental problems. As an example, the spectrum of physical problems can include conditions as diverse as Irritable Bowel, Crohn’s disease, colitis, peptic ulcer, GERD, headaches, chronic pain, weight management, hypertension, asthma, arthritis, cancer. Mental imagery can also be successfully applied for a variety of mental disorders including anxiety, depression, PTSD, nightmares, addictions, ADD, chronic forms of psychosis. Conditions that cannot be comfortably fitted into either category such as bed wetting, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, also yield themselves to mind-body medicine. For children, bed-wetting and night terrors are among the most common successfully treated problems.

The Basis

At the basis of Mental Imagery work is an understanding that physical and non-physical aspects of a human being are the modes of existing of an  indivisible being.  A human being is always expressing in the body, mind, and on other levels its particular state of self-fulfillment.

A human being is not only a whole being individually, but also lives inseparably in a shared world with other beings. Thus health and illness are  always affected by our relationships with other people. This view, for example, permits the parents to do the work for an afflicted infant.

Exceptions to the use of mental imagery involve severely altered states of consciousness (i.e., drugs or acute psychosis). These need to be dealt with by other means, before mental work could be done.

Mental Imagery work is based on the principle that is similar to homeopathy, giving a micro stimulus to achieve a macro response.   

What It Isn’t

This work is different from psychotherapy. The doctor does not need to know the history of your problem, except when you feel you need to tell him about it. The work is always focused on the present state of being, which is seen as a hologram of the person’s life. There is very little or no talk therapy.

NO MEDICATIONS will be prescribed, but you may be occasionally advised to take certain vitamins and herbs.

Dreams

Dream work can lead to understanding of the person’s current problem, and can also result in useful changes. Finding a relationship between the dream and waking life is the key to understanding and using the dream for healing.

Will

Voluntary will is most often used in three ways. A type of effort of will called concentration without effort, exercises of will called stopping exercises, and a technique for using will to stop the false experience of an emergency by awareness. These exercises can be used to redirect destructive or wasteful impulses toward constructive purposes, and to find peace in the midst of stress.        

Special Aspects

The Mind-Body Medicine Clinic continues my studies into the effectiveness of Mind-Body techniques.

Issues that come up during the therapeutic session WILL NOT be used as a means of determining disability. NO RECOMMENDATIONS will be made to your regular care provider regarding your medications.

Treating doctor

Dr. Reznik is a board certified family physician whose interest in the use of mental techniques for healing has led him to a nine year apprenticeship with a teacher of mental imagery. Dr. Reznik is certified by The American Institute for Mental Imagery (a post-graduate training center in the New York City, which teaches this method). The Mind-Body Medicine Clinic is not a substitute for a regular medical examination.

Cost

The Mind-Body Medicine Clinic is part of our community practice, which helps us offer this intervention at a low cost. It is covered by most health insurances.

The uninsured will be charged the usual clinic fee, based on a sliding scale, with a minimal charge of $25.

Current clinic patients are welcome to self-refer. No special referral required.

Taking responsibility for your health and learning how to become your own authority is an essential step on the way to healing and fulfillment. Mental Imagery work teaches you how to become your own healer.

 

 

From time to time, Richmond clinic closes to new patients. If you are told that new patients are not accepted, but interested in Mind-Body Medicine clinic ONLY (not in having all of your care here), call me at 503-507-1143 and I will authorize your admittance to the clinic.

The clinic will usually reopen to all patients within several months. Periodic closing of the clinic to new patients is necessary for maintaining adequate number of openings for the current patients.

Certified by The American Institute for Mental Imagery