Twenty plus years ago, my mother, who has a PhD in adult education, was diagnosed with breast cancer. While going through chemotherapy treatment, she learned a mind body technique, called visualization. She believes that her visualizations helped her tolerate chemotherapy better and may have increased the effectiveness of her treatments. After her treatments were over, she went on to run cancer support groups and teach visualization techniques. At the time of her diagnosis, breast cancer survival had a much lower success rate than it does today. She credits much of her success in beating cancer so successfully to her mind body work.
Years later, my son Jarrod was diagnosed with cancer at the age of ten. I tried working with him on visualization at the suggestion of my mother, using the same techniques she taught to other adults battling cancer. Jarrod tried it but it just did not work.
Instead of abandoning the idea, he took the concept of visualizing and created his own method. It turns out that the problem was that I was approaching visualization like an adult, but he was only a child. He took the adult concept and created his own children's version. His way of doing it was much more creative,
