Mind-Body Services

At Duke Integrative Medicine, we recognize the vital role that the mind-body connection plays in our physical and mental health. Often the information most helpful for our healing and continued well being is outside of our immediate awareness. Our mind-body services are designed to teach you how to access the innate wisdom within you to improve physical and mental health. We offer a wide variety of services so that you can choose which approach will most likely address your physical and mental health and help you lower stress, increase daily relaxation, and make healthy changes in important lifestyle behaviors like eating, exercising or smoking.

Our experienced health psychology therapists partner with you during appointments and help to guide you through experiences directly designed to explore the wealth of information outside of our current awareness. In addition to talking, an individual might choose expressive therapy work: art therapy, movement therapy, sand tray exploration, or an experience using meditation, guided imagery, hypnosis, or other services listed below as mind-body services.

Hypnosis:

Hypnosis uses a deeply relaxed state of highly focused attention and concentration to partner with you to generate creative and practical suggestions for how you can change behaviors and improve health. Hypnosis can help to modify automatic behavioral patterns such as habits that have become “stuck”, and ingrained physical responses to stress, fear, anger or other emotions. Numerous studies have shown that hypnosis can enable a person to block or lessen the experience of pain, to reduce stress reactivity in the body, improve immune functioning, eliminate skin conditions, treat psychological disorders, and help to overcome addictions.

Guided Imagery:

Mind-Body Services Guided imagery is a guided visualization technique that helps you explore your life in new ways, and to create and focus on positive images to heal your body and mind. It is based on the principle that the mind can affect the functions of the body. Research has shown that imagery can affect many physiological systems, including immune function, hormone levels, cell metabolism, breathing rate, cardiovascular function and sexual function.

Relaxation Training:

Stress has become an ordinary part of daily life, and the prolonged and repeated activation of our stress response has become recognized as a major contributor to health problems, disease and psychological distress. Relaxation training includes a number of skills to help you become more aware of how and when you are experiencing stress and to help you notice the harmful ways in which you respond to stressors. You will also learn better responses to stress.

Smoking Cessation:

Duke Integrative Medicine offers two smoking cessation (quit smoking) services.

QuitSmart: If you are looking for a multi-step comprehensive approach to quitting smoking, the QuitSmart approach is a likely an ideal fit. This program combines multiple and evidenced-based smoking strategies, including hypnosis , brand-switching, and support. Together, with the therapist, you create an individualized stop smoking plan that will work with your lifestyle. As part of the program, you receive the QuitSmart Stop Smoking Kit and have 3 face-to-face meetings with a health psychology professional. During these meetings you set a quit date, create and begin a treatment plan, learn ways to manage withdraw symptoms, and learn how to remain smoke free.

Smoking Cessation Consult: This service can be used to assess your readiness to quit smoking and to help you create a plan for moving forward towards quitting and remaining a quitter. This is ideal for someone who is only in town for a few days or for someone who is already very knowledgeable about and trained in evidence-based strategies for quitting smoking and who only wants to focus on a particular aspect of a smoking cessation plan (and may not be interested in the comprehensive QuitSmart Program). If you would like to maintain on-going support throughout your quitting process, this consultation may be beneficial as well.

Psychotherapy:

Our team of licensed psychotherapists can help you develop and utilize skills and resources to optimize well-being and work through difficulties. Please refer to our staff bios to learn more about specific areas of training in order to find a therapist who specializes in the areas you would like to focus.

Behavioral Sleep Therapy:

Insomnia is a widespread condition that's characterized by difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep or getting restful sleep. Our attitudes about sleep and certain daytime and evening behaviors are often the root cause of insomnia. Behavioral sleep therapy can help you change the thoughts and actions that interfere with your ability to get restful sleep.

Expressive Arts Therapy:

Expressive art therapy is a form of psychotherapy that uses the content of artistic creations to enhance awareness of your inner self, cope with symptoms, stress, and traumatic experiences, increase cognitive abilities, and explore solutions to difficult situations and circumstances. Art therapists help you find the often hidden meanings incorporated in your art work in order to bring it into consciousness where these deep understandings can then inform daily thoughts, feelings and behaviors. By finding what is communicated in art and why you have chosen to incorporate it, you can understand yourself more fully, emotionally and mentally.

Meditation Training:

Mindfulness is a method of mind-body training that enhances mental and physical health. At Duke Integrative Medicine, mindfulness has been applied in the areas of stress, chronic illness, obesity, and anxiety. Research has shown that those who learn and practice mindfulness skills have reduced illness symptoms and acquire an improved sense of wellbeing. Mindfulness can be learned through individual sessions, by taking the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Course, and in workshops.]

Learn more about Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction