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March 23, 2001/Adar 28, 5761, Vol. 53, No.25
Physicians provide workshops to teach behavior skills
BETH OLSON
Editorial Assistant
Do you want to reduce stress in your life? Lose weight? Quit smoking? Manage your anger? Communicate more effectively with your family?
Doctors Lewis Heller and George Goldberg say they can help.
Heller, a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist, and Goldberg, a board-certified psychiatrist and neurologist, formed Strategic Transformation Associates (STA) one year ago to provide workshops in stress and anger management, leadership training, communication skills and weight management throughout the Valley.
STA workshops use a combination of hypnosis and conversation to help people look at their lives in a new way, says Goldberg. In addition to weekly seminar programs on weight reduction, Heller and Goldberg have provided workshops to hospitals, physicians, accountants and lawyers.
Both are certified hypnotherapists who say that through their more than 40 years of combined clinical medical experience they recognized a relationship between people's thoughts and physical health.
Heller says they use hypnosis as a tool for working with their clients. He defines hypnosis as communication with the subconscious mind. In order to communicate, he says, one must be relaxed.
"If somebody is stressed, there is no communication. They're not even able to listen. To get them to listen, they have to relax. If a person isn't relaxed, it is very hard to communicate either with the conscious or subconscious mind."
Hypnosis is commonly misunderstood, Heller says. "Hypnosis isn't a sleepy state, it's a hyper-alert state. The subconscious mind is always aware of what is going on."
He also explains that hypnosis is something nearly everyone experiences at some time.
"Have you ever gone to a movie, and you start to cry because something sad happens? (Even though) you know it's all fake, it's all make believe? That's a form of hypnosis," Heller explains. Another common example, he says, is when you drive from one point to another and then can't recall how you got from here to there.
Heller emphasizes that he cannot make people under hypnosis do things they don't want to do. On the same note, he says, if people believe they can't be hypnotized, they won't be. Further, hypnosis will be an effective tool only when the subject believes it will work.
"If people are open to the idea and willing to use it, it's very effective. ... First you have to have a desire, then you have to believe it will occur, and then you have to expect it will happen. Hypnosis is reinforcing everything the person wants in (his or her) life."
Besides hypnosis, Heller and Goldberg use conversation to work with clients regarding issues in their lives - particularly anger. Goldberg says that although people have different personalities, all may become angry. He explains that anger is an automatic response, but people get angry because they get something out of that response, such as being right, getting sympathy, avoiding responsibility and avoiding domination.
"If you look at the scale, on one side you have, 'I'm right, you're wrong.' On the other side of the scale is love, relationships, health, vitality, time, money, everything else you want out of life. As the scale goes, you can't have both. The (anger) doesn't allow you to get everything else in life. The secret to getting everything else in life is to give up your immediate goals - give up being right," Goldberg explains.
In addition to seminars and workshops, Heller and Goldberg provide personal coaching.
Both Heller and Goldberg are active in the local community. Heller lives in Paradise Valley with his wife, Donna, and their children, Briena, 8, and Oren 5. They are members of Temple Beth Israel.
Goldberg, former chief of staff at John C. Lincoln Hospital, lives in Phoenix and attends daily services at Congregation Bais-Menachem.
For more information or to register for a seminar, call Strategic Transformation Associates at 602-502-4000, or e-mail strategictransformation@hotmail.com.
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