What would you do if you discovered a simple approach that guided you in identifying thoughts, feelings, and emotions that arise from loss or disappointment and then reframing them to create inspiring goals and effective strategies that promote resilience? Would you share it? This is what was asked of speech language pathologist Dorothy Bohntinsky. Transformational Healing through the Integration of Self (THIS) is her reply. Using the style of personal story, she shares her inspiration, creation, refinement, and validation of this approach as well as additional strategies and tools. The first four parts of THIS lay the foundation for the workbook by interweaving Bohntinsky's personal and professional stories, wisdom teachings (from the world's great religions to business), and speech language pathology theories and practices. The fifth part covers the research design, justifications, and results. It includes the rationale for 12-year-olds assessing the workbook and the results from teaching it to staff at a homeless shelter. The inspiration for THIS arose from The Healing Room: Discovering Joy through the Journal (2002. Bohntinsky published her poignant, heart-felt, and self-disclosing writings that significantly helped her family and friends cope during her 14-year-old daughter's illness and subsequent death. Her journal demonstrated a process for internal communication that generates optimum solutions when astute observation of events, feelings, and emotions are integrated with critical thinking. People coming to The Healing Room book signings at Borders Bookstores in 2003 began asking her to write a workbook to help them manage emotions arising from loss. However, this was not within the scope of practice of an SLP. Bohntinsky pursued a Doctorate of Ministry (D.Min.) in wisdom spirituality from Wisdom University in San Francisco and interfaith ordination through The Chaplaincy Institute in Berkeley, CA in order to create and validate such a workbook. Appendix One is the guidebook, Night Gliding to Inland Harbors. It teaches THIS through the metaphor of a pilot learning to fly a glider during times of turbulence in order to simplify and explain key concepts as using the breath to launch a glider, "walking" a finger labyrinth as a simulator for reflection, and filling out a Captain's Log afterwards. Feelings are measured according to a Turbulence Assessment Scale. While the dissertation ends before she received her D.Min. and was ordained as an interfaith minister in 2006, Bohntinsky continued validating THIS in a variety of clinical settings for a decade after its approval. She also taught the approach to other SLPs in workshops, including the California State and American Speech Language and Hearing Association conventions. Now, she is confident that the time is ripe to make THIS more widely available. The year 2016 marks her fortieth year as an SLP and forty-five years of a healthy marriage. Yet, the motivation to publish THIS came from the 2016 book by Andrew Newberg, M.D. and Mark Robert Waldman: How Enlightenment Changes the Brain. It explains current scientific data that shows how the brain's neural connections physically evolve when one is engaged in positive self-reflection. THIS offers a how for using emotions to engage in self-reflection. It prepares children and adults to use loss or disappointment as an opportunity to evaluate beliefs about an event (including the ability to make changes), how to identify and reframe perceptions about feelings and emotions, and how to create and activate a plan for when a similar situation reoccurs. Bohntinsky continues to use THIS to help others gain insight into feelings, emotions, and engage in critical thinking in a way that enhances problem solving and promotes a sense of well-being by improving self-confidence. THIS is aligned with the exciting new evidence regarding how such thinking restructures the brain and its capacity for creative problem solving.
About the Author: Dorothy Bohntinsky (Dori) resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. Married since 1971, Dori and her husband, Chuck, have one daughter, a son-in-law, and three young grandchildren. She has had a dynamic career as a medical speech language pathologist (SLP) since 1976, including two decades as Director of Speech Pathology and Audiology at Alameda County Medical Center. She presently works as the per diem SLP at a hospital that specializes in treating respiratory failure. Life changed for them during the four-month illness (myelodysplastic syndrome) and subsequent death of their young teenage daughter, Cj, in 2000, which was closely followed by the deaths of Dori's parents and father-in-law. Dori wrote many journal entries that helped her family and friends cope. She published these in The Healing Room: Discovering Joy through the Journal in 2002. After Cj's death, Dori and Chuck created the CJ Foundation in order to help families with children experiencing life-threatening illness. Its mission was to provide a resource for information on a wide range of complementary holistic therapies and to assist with access to services. Developing the CJ Foundation led her to creating an 85-foot wide Chartres-style garden labyrinth on their property and opening it to the public. She became a certified labyrinth facilitator through Veriditas in San Francisco in 2005. Dori began doing book signings and talking about The Healing Room at Borders Bookstores in 2003. People's request for her to create a workbook to help them manage emotions around loss was outside the scope of practice as an SLP, so she pursued a Doctorate of Ministry (D.Min.) in wisdom spirituality from Wisdom University in San Francisco and ordination through The Chaplaincy Institute in Berkeley, CA. Her dissertation, Transformational Healing through the Integration of Self, explains the creation and validation of the workbook, as well as including the workbook. Her D.Min. and ordination happened in 2006, and Dori has taught the approach to individuals and groups for a decade. She published her dissertation in 2016 in celebration of her fortieth year as an SLP. Dori enjoys writing poetic prose to Native American rock art. She co-authored the book Engaged: Reflections on Rock Art through Photography and Poetry (2015) with archaeologist William D. Hyder. They wrote a research article on rock art and ritual and presented their findings at the 2016 Utah Rock Art Research Association conference.