Belleruth Naparstek

Psychotherapist, author and guided imagery innovator Belleruth Naparstek is the creator of the popular, Time Warner Health Journeys guided imagery audio series. Her first book, Staying Well with Guided Imagery, is a widely used wellness primer. Her second, Your Sixth Sense, has been translated into 9 languages and called one of the most thoughtful and sophisticated books on intuition in print. Her new book on imagery and posttraumatic stress, Invisible Heroes: Trauma Survivors and How They Heal (Bantam Dell), won the Spirituality & Health Top 50 Books Award and came out in paperback January of 2006.

As Prevention Magazine recently noted, she has been quietly creating an underground revolution among mainstream health and mental health bureaucracies, by persuading institutions like Aetna U.S. Healthcare, the U.S. Veteran’s Administration, The American Red Cross, Kaiser Permanente, GlaxoSmithKline, Ortho Biotech, Blue Shield of California, Roche, Abbott, Amgen, Medical Mutual of Ohio, and nearly 2000 hospitals, mental health centers, social service agencies, health spas and recovery centers to distribute her guided imagery recordings, in several instances free of charge to clients.

In addition, her audio programs have been involved in over two dozen clinical trials, with nearly a dozen studies completed to date. Efficacy has been established for several psychological and medical challenges.

Her website, www.healthjourneys.com, is a heavily trafficked mind-body-spirit resource and information center, providing searchable data bases of cutting edge CAM research, programs, practitioners and training, while distributing experiential tapes, CDs, videos, streamed segments and software programs around the U.S. and the English-speaking world (800-800-8661).

Naparstek received both undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Chicago, obtaining her master’s degree in clinical social work in 1967. She maintained her psychotherapy practice for over 30 years and for several years taught graduate students at The Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University. Earlier in her career, she supervised psychiatry residents at Cambridge Hospital/Harvard Medical School and was Chief of Consultation & Education at the Woodburn Center for Community Mental Health in Fairfax County, VA. She also did a brief stint as a musical comedy actress at Second City and The Tip Top Tap of the Allerton Hotel, and, if pressed, could still locate her Actors Equity card.