Cornucopia house has paired up with one of our local acupuncture clinics, making available free acupuncture treatments to the cancer patients, cancer survivors and their family, friends, and caregivers who use the Cornucopia House Cancer Support Center. The National Institute of Health has found acupuncture successfully treats many common side-effects of conventional treatment, such as post-surgical pain, chemotherapy-associated symptoms, insomnia, poor digestion, and emotional stress. Widely used to increase overall health and stimulate the immune system , acupuncture benefits the emotions, reduces stress and naturally strengthens the body. It is being offered as part of the Cornucopia House tools for living, to help people with cancer, and their loved ones, feel healthy and well, even with cancer.Call 933-4480 for an appt.
Certified massage therapist and bodyworkers offering individual sessions and hands-on instruction for participants to aid in relieving both pain and stress.
Whatever your prognosis, it’s wise to have plans in place to assure that your wishes will be carried out. Not only will this protect your loved ones against having outsiders (hospitals, courts, government agencies) dictate what must happen to you and to them, it will provide you with peace of mind – a valuable asset in coping with any major disease. This process is estate planning, and it is by no means limited to the wealthy. Each of us has the right and the responsibility—to ourselves and our families—to set certain decisions down on paper.Come have your questions answered by a local estate planning attorney ,Lisa Vira. Ms. Vira is President of the Orange County Bar Association and a member of the North Carolina Bar Association and North Carolina Association of Women’s Attorney’s.
***Things to bring Will, Trust, Health Care Power of Attorney, General Power of Attorney, Living Will, Insurance Contracts and Retirement Plans with Beneficiary Designations.
We are delighted to announce that Karen Dold, a Guild-Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner and co-founder of Move With Elan in Chapel Hill, has begun offering Feldenkrais sessions free of charge to Cornucopia House participants.A former oncology research biologist and martial artist, Karen now dedicates herself to teaching people to move through life with power, vitality, and grace. In periods of illness and transition, we often become disconnected from ourselves as a way to avoid feeling physical and emotional pain. How can we reconnect with our innate physical and neurological intelligence, while dealing with cancer and fear?The Feldenkrais Method® is a learning process that combines movement and guided attention, with profound implications for quality of life and healing. Using our innate intelligence and sense of internal support and vitality, we can experience benefits like deep relaxation and fuller breathing, recovery of movements lost due to reconstructive surgeries, enhanced vitality, emotional well-being, greater flexibility and ease of motion and comfort.The Feldenkrais Method® is taught in two different formats. In Awareness Through Movement® group classes, students explore gentle movement sequences guided by verbal instructions from the teacher. Students learn to coordinate their thinking, feeling, sensing, imagination, and perception with their movement, thus strengthening their ability to help themselves. In private Functional Integration® sessions, information is communicated to the student through the gentle touch of the practitioner. Both approaches guide students to discern their habitual patterns of movement and discover alternatives to these, guided by their own experience of ease and pleasure.
The idea behind Polarity Therapy is that energy within one’s body can become blocked or out of balance, resulting in pain and/or disease. Through the guidance of a Polarity Therapist, the body can regain its healthy natural state of balance and inner flow of energy. Polarity is a restorative type of healing, similar to the healing that occurs during sleep. Phyllis Swank, a Registered Polarity Practitioner, volunteers at Cornucopia House by donating two sessions each month. The 90-minute sessions typically take place the first Wednesday of each month. The sessions consist of hands-on energy work in which the therapist quietly holds various parts of the client’s body. This hands-on contact is provided while the client is fully clothed on a massage table. Commenting on how relaxed and calm clients are at the conclusion of a session, Swank notes that the “calming” of one’s body allows renewal and replenishing to occur.
Reiki (ray-key) is a Japanese word meaning “universal life energy”, the energy found in all things. The Reiki practitioner channels this energy to the recipient via light touch on, or just above, various areas of the body. The recipient lies fully clothed on a treatment table for the approximately 1 hour session. A Reiki treatment has the potential to still the mind, ease pain and induce feelings of relaxation and wellbeing. At this degree of deep relaxation, a rebalancing of energies can occur and the natural healing ability of the body is enhanced. Reiki is increasingly being used in hospitals and clinics around the world. The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center offers Reiki to inpatients and outpatients through their Integrative Medicine Center.
Western researchers have discovered ways of working with the acupuncture system without needles. Touch for Health, Therapeutic Touch, and Kinesiology are some of the techniques currently being studied at hospitals around the world. Early study results verify the anecdotal evidence that kinesiology can help reduce anxiety, pain, and stress. The receiver is fully clothed and can be either lying down or sitting. Sessions begin with a “balance,” a term that means using touch and energy reflexes while working with the acupuncture meridians. The goal is to restore the flow of energy between meridians. Areas of imbalance are identified through specific muscle testing and corrected by simple reflex techniques such as light touch, gentle massage, tracing a meridian, specific movement, breathing techniques, the use of color, sound or an affirmation. Once energy imbalances and reactive responses have been relieved, he person can function more fully on the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual levels. For more information: www.uskinesiologyinstitute.com.
Ongoing classes by qualified instructors for participants to experience gentle and relaxing exercise to maintain and/or regain strength during and after chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Also helps in relaxation and stress reduction.
