The Art of Wellness: Caring for Cancer – A Wholistic Approach

Now if you’ve been keeping up with Portland Pedal Power blog a lot, you know we love to have a ton of fun with our topics and writing style.  We also love to inform you of great vendors, restaurants, and rad bike stuff around Portland.  Today we’re going to tackle something on the more serious side though.  We’re here to inform you about wholistic healthcare and how it can ease the recovery process for cancer patience going through treatment.

For our more regular followers, you may remember a couple months ago, we wrote about The Wellspring School in Portland and their classes for all.  For a short recap, The Wellspring School is a school for wholistic natural healing arts.  Their practice ranges from Amma Therapy to Meditation to Wholistic Nutrition with a goal to bring better, NATURAL, health to Portland.

Well they’re back, this time with a very important class that could be relevant to any one of us.  Do you, or someone you know, have somebody that you care about, are close to, even love that are going through treatment for cancer?  One of the worst feelings is that of feeling helpless as you watch someone in discomfort or pain.  The idea that you can’t do anything to help them other than hold their hand and be there for their comfort.  Well now you have an option to get more involved.  You can finally do more to ease the pain of recovery.  The Wellspring School is hosting  a workshop called “Caring for Cancer –  A Wholistic Approach” in June to try and inform people of how Eastern style medicinal approaches to illness and recovery can help relieve the side effects and pain that Western style medicine can bring on in the process of curing disease.

We highly encourage you to check out the workshop if you want to become more involved in caring for cancer patience, whether they are those who are close to you, or even not so close.  This workshop has our PPP stamp of approval.  For more information, see below.

Saturday, June 23rd & Sunday, June 24th, 2012
9:00- 5:30 both days
Instructors: Michael P. Guida BPS, LMT, CAT & Rylen Feeney, B.A., LMT (14733), Dipl. of Asian Bodywork Therapy and Chinese Herbs (NCCAOM) & Whole Food Nutritionist

Join us for a weekend covering the important supportive role wholistic healthcare can play in the recovery of cancer. A wholistic approach can help people with cancer preserve greater quality of life, lessen side-effects from Western treatments, increase patient’s ability to sustain a stronger immune system during chemotherapy and radiation treatments and help rebuild and recover greater health post Western cancer treatments. The latter may be the most important role and may lead to longer cancer-free recovery.

Cancer is often a “scary” life changing condition that benefits from a fully wholistic approach that includes meditation, exercise, diet, and attitude and lifestyle changes. Unlike other serious health conditions, Cancer survivors often remark that cancer became the opportunity for them to redefine themselves and their life in a positive way.

Over the course of the weekend we will cover:

• Possible causes of cancer from both a western and eastern (Chinese) perspective and the benefits of adding a complementary holistic approach to the team.

• Various factors to consider, typical cancer treatment protocols, and their side effects and how to minimize them.

• The importance of strong patient advocacy.

• The importance of Nutrition and offer reasonable suggestions to common obstacles.

• Current supplements and herbs that may be considered to enhance western treatment, mitigate side-effects of treatment and offer protection to the immune system and prevention of reoccurrence.

• How to offer emotional support.

• The value of touch, with specific touch protocols including the application of acupressure points to manage side-effects, strengthen immunity and help create a sense of well being and wholeness.

This class is open to all CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) practitioners including, but not limited to, Acupuncturists, Asian Bodywork Therapists, Holistic Health Practitioners, Massage Therapists and Nutritionists. The workshop is for anyone serving as either practitioner or caregiver to those living with cancer.
Eligible for CEU/PDA’s: 16 hours for entire weekend.
Workshop Cost: $350.00
Early Bird Discount: Sign up for the workshop by May 30th and receive $50 off the cost of the workshop.
WSHA Students & Alumni, NCCAOM and AOBTA members receive an additional 10% off!