On August 6-8, Kathy McGregor, a member of HSA, and I attended the second Storytelling and Health Care Forum (the "Forum") at the International Storytelling Center ("ISC") in Jonesborough, TN. The Forum was co-sponsored by the ISC and the Fetzer Institute.

The stated mission of the ISC is to build a better world through the power of storytelling with healthier communities, more effective workplaces, and more enriched human life. To accomplish that mission, the ISC is developing and conducting a series of programs to teach people how to use storytelling to produce positive change. ISC is also currently developing courses in storytelling and leadership and storytelling and teaching.

One of ISC's areas of interest is in health and healing. The Forum laid the foundation for developing a two-day course to help healthcare workers learn how to use storytelling to create a more nurturing environment for health and healing. The health and healing course will be conducted at ISC's new educational complex in Jonesborough.

The majority of Forum attendees were healthcare administrators and policy makers who gathered together to give opinions and input on creating training programs for healthcare professionals that would be based on the use of story to support healthcare goals.

We engaged in many conversations, in large and small groups, to address such concerns as transforming end of life care, improving patient safety, creating a more caring environment for patient care, increasing patient satisfaction, improving training for caregivers, and the potential for the use of storytelling to accomplish these goals.

We also enjoyed an informal evening of dinner and sharing stories with Nancy Kavanaugh, the Executive Director of NSN. The healthcare professionals and storytellers all shared wonderful stories of their own experiences as well as a tried and true tall tale or two.

In attendance at the Storytelling and Healthcare Forum were Ann Connor, Assistant Professor at the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, Covington, GA; Constance J. Cronin, Chief Nursing Officer and Patient Care Administrator at Henry Ford Wyandotte Hospital, Wyandotte, MI; Chick Deegan, Senior Consultant, Organizational Development and Learning at the Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, MI; Susan Edgman-Levitan, President of the Picker Institute, Chestnut Hill, MA; Michael Kaplan, Facilitator, Charlottesville, VA; Kathy McGregor, Parish Nurse, National City Christian Church, Silver Springs, MD; Mickey Olivanti, Program Officer of the Fetzer Institute, Kalamazoo, MI; Dr. Bob Patton, Holston Valley Hospital, Kingsport, TN; J.G. Pinkerton, Storyteller, Board Member ISC, Stamford, CT; David Reynolds, Director of the American Health Initiative, Halesite, NY; Becky Rice, American Association of Colleges of Nursing, Washington DC; Judith F. Rich, Vice President, Clinical Services and Operations, Wellmont Holston Valley Medical Center, Kingsport, TN; Suzanne N. Rollins, Vice President, Clinical Services and Operations for Wellmont Bristol Regional Medical Center, Bristol, TN; Gail Rosen, Founder and Chair of the Healing Story Alliance, a Special Interest Group of the National Storytelling Network, Pikesville, MD; Jimmy Neil Smith, President, International Storytelling Center, Jonesborough, TN; Richard Stone, Board Member ISC and CEO, The Cerus Company, Winter Park, FL; and Donna Strugar-Fritsch, Center for Advancing Community Health, Lansing, MI.

Kathy and I were glad to be a part of the Forum. HSA looks forward to sharing and working with ISC to further our mutual visions and to explore and promote storytelling promote storytelling in storytelling in healing. We will keep you posted on further developments.

HSA invites its members to write and tell us how you are using storytelling in the field of healing. Following are contributions from HSA members Bobby Avstreih and Dvora Shurman.

The Alternatives to Violence Project (USA and International) works in prison settings. We conduct intensive trainings of 18 -22 hours over several days. Much of the training incorporates storytelling content and techniques, from developing eye-contact (dangerous in prisons) and a quality of "holding another" in your attention to them, to taking adjective names, developing an emotional vocabulary and empathy exercises, to very brief (1-2 minute) "on-the-spot" storytelling on such themes as "A time someone helped me." or "Something I am proud of".

A significant part of the training revolves around small groups sharing and selecting a story of "A time I solved a problem nonviolently" and presenting it to the group to illuminate the basic theme which AVP calls "Transforming Power". This foundation theme of AVP exists in all our folk tales, especially regarding "Tricksters" and "Justice," and it is fascinating and inspiring to illuminate this theme in relation to real-life violent settings.

We also present seemingly insolvable story scenarios to be developed. Often, no satisfactory nonviolent intervention can be IMAGINED. This "keeps it real," and lends greater power to the stories that do transform. And sometimes, like Zen koans, these insolvable confrontations linger to provide questing energy for years to come. To paraphrase the mystic poet Kabir, it is the intensity of the unsolvable question ("longing") which does the searching. I wish more stories left us without answers.

Feel welcome to contact me with any questions, comments or suggestions you might have. Bobby Avstreih storyflute@hotmail.com

1. Leah and I.
This is what I did three years ago but worth telling. Someone called to ask me to visit a woman in a nursing home for serious cases once a week. The patient, Leah, was in her 40s, severely brain damaged because she attempted suicide in postpartum depression but they revived her after her brain had pretty much died. She was barely responsive, bed ridden, speech was a mumble, and many functions not working.

I used a combination of singing religious songs since she was very religious and gentle Chinese massage which is a soft stroke that causes the nerves to respond. I began to tell her short funny stories, really short, about Jukha, who is something like Nasreddin. She really responded, laughed and was aware of me. Through a year and a half we progressed to her favorite story, the romantic Blue Rose, which was an element that never existed in her life as an ultra-orthodox Jew. The big breakthrough was the day I sang a child's song. She awoke and said: "I used to teach songs in kindergartens with my accordion," and began to join in. So we sang the children's songs and moved with them.

She became ill with a virus, was hospitalized, and my greatest work was to get them to let her go. Oh the power of story and song!

2. Transpersonal Journaling.
I am an accredited instructor in Ira Progoff's "Intensive Journal Method," in which participants write in a structured notebook, according to the instructions and "process meditation" I lead for each special section. This process helps to access the stories which were our life, recreate our own autobiographies, and take them "where they want to go." I teach with stories based on my life and those of others. The atmosphere here in Israel is so terrible we need to find our inner resources. And the dialogue element is often missing from our lives.

I do not do a lot because of my age. I'm 76 and there's a lot of age discrimination out there. But every little bit helps. Dvora Shurman dvora-s@barak-online.net

And so we continue telling in the four directions.

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