Chronic Pain & Disease

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Your diagnosis doesn’t have to define your life

Cellular Healing is for people living with chronic pain, chronic illness, infertility, or a health condition that affects the way you live in your body and your life.

Autoimmune disease. Rheumatoid arthritis. Lupus. Myasthenia Gravis. Endometriosis. Graves’ disease. Chronic pain. Migraine. Infertility. Long-term health conditions that affect your energy, your choices, and your quality of life.

Your medical care is focused on the condition. Cellular Healing works alongside that care, with YOU—the person who is actually living with it.

LET’S TALK →

When your life starts revolving around your body

Chronic conditions, pain and illness tend to reorganize lives.

You may make choices based upon what your body can and cannot do on any given day. Or what your labs say about you and your capacity.

You think about food, sleep, medication, pain, appointments, hormones, bloodwork, flare-ups, treatment cycles, or whether you’ll have enough energy to get through the day. You learn how much energy you have and how carefully you need to spend it. You know which plans require recovery time. You change your social calendar to adjust for the needs of your body.

If you’re dealing with infertility, your life may be measured in days of a cycle, test results, procedures and waiting. With chronic pain, you may find yourself calculating how long you can sit, stand, drive, work, exercise or sleep before your body has something to say about it. With a chronic condition, you may find yourself fine for a few weeks or months, and then you suddenly feel at the mercy of your condition.

After a while, it can be difficult to remember what it was like not to think about your body all the time.

You may have excellent doctors. You may have treatments that help. You may have learned an enormous amount about your condition.

And still find yourself wondering:

Is this simply how my life is going to be now?

There is still a person inside the diagnosis.

That’s the person I work with.

I know something about having your life interrupted

I was nineteen when I was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis. Lupus and several other autoimmune diseases followed.

By twenty-six, it was 1978 and the life I had expected to be living was happening all around me. My friends were marrying, having babies and forging careers. I had recently had a play off Broadway. And now I was moving between a wheelchair and a bed.

There were good hours when my body cooperated, followed by hours when it didn’t. I had double vision. Sometimes I had to hold my jaw with my hand in order to chew.

I was fortunate to live in New York, where I had access to gifted physicians. There were surgeries and medications. My doctors kept me alive, and I remain profoundly grateful for that.

But the life they saved was very far from the life I had imagined for myself.

Eventually, I began looking beyond the question of how to stay alive and became interested in another one:

How was I going to live?

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Mind Body Medicine made my life livable

Western medicine kept me alive

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I was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis at nineteen, then lupus, then several other autoimmune diseases. My future became a promise unfulfilled.

By twenty-six I was straddling a wheelchair and a bed. Double vision. Twisted facial expressions. Chewing accomplished with a hand positioned under my jaw. My friends were marrying, having babies, forging careers. Me, limbo.

I had my pick of gifted clinicians in New York. They kept me alive, far from the life I had imagined for myself.

So in 1978 I looked elsewhere. Macrobiotics. Orthomolecular medicine. Meditation. And over a period of months I noticed something: I could function longer into the day without needing to go back to bed.

Then psychotherapy, and the work of Carl Simonton, Jerry Jampolsky and Bernie Siegel — three physicians risking their reputations on what we now call mind-body medicine. I came to it as the patient first. Later as the student.

I began to really heal. I was no longer at the mercy of my diagnoses. I had learned to take ownership of my health.

I kept what worked and fine-tuned it as I went, for fifty-five years. That process became Cellular Healing.

I have outlived all of my mentors and all but one of my doctors.

NINA'S FULL STORY →

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What is Cellular Healing?

When something frightening happens to us, the body adapts. It braces. It protects. It learns what to watch for and what to fear. Those patterns can be extraordinarily useful when we're in danger, but the body can continue running them long after they are useful.

I work with those patterns.

During a session, I guide you into a deeply restful state where we can begin to notice what your system has learned and work with it differently. You are awake and aware throughout. This isn't something being done to you, and it doesn't require you to meditate, clear your mind or think positively.

Over time and through repetition, the body can experience other possibilities besides the ones it has practiced most.

This work doesn't treat cancer, autoimmune disease, neurological disease or any other medical diagnosis. It does not replace your physician, your medications or your treatment.

Your medical team treats the disease. I work with you and your body.

Let's Talk →

You don't have to wait until you're “better” to begin

People often assume they should wait until the crisis is over. After chemotherapy. After surgery. After the next scan. When they're less tired, less frightened, more themselves.

You can come as you are. You don’t have to wait until things are better or more certain.

We meet on Zoom, so there is nowhere to travel and no waiting room. If you're exhausted, you can lie down. If your mind is racing, that's fine. If it's been a terrible week, I don't need you to turn it into a good one before we meet.

I would rather know what is actually happening.

Sessions are scheduled around treatment and around your energy. Your body does not need to accommodate the work. The work accommodates your body.

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We begin with a conversation

Before we work together, I want to meet you

We'll talk about what has happened, what your medical treatment involves, how you're doing and what you want for yourself now. You can ask me whatever you need to ask.

I also want to understand whether I believe this work is appropriate for you. If I don't, I'll tell you.

If we decide together to continue, Cellular Healing begins with a series of four private, one-hour sessions on Zoom. The initial series is $1,800.

Four sessions give us enough time to identify the patterns your system has developed, work with them more than once, and begin to see what changes.

But you don't need to decide any of that now.

The first step is simply a conversation.

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LET’S TALK →

A few questions worth asking

No. Cellular Healing is complementary to appropriate medical care, never a substitute for it. I expect you to maintain your relationship with your medical team and continue the treatment and medications prescribed for you.
I won't promise you an outcome, and I won't tell you Cellular Healing cures disease. Anyone making those promises should concern you. My work is with the person living with the diagnosis and with the patterns the body and mind develop in response to what you've been through.
No. I have lived with serious autoimmune disease for fifty-five years and have heard variations of this idea myself. Illness is not a failure of character, attitude or positive thinking. That isn't what this work is about.
Then we work with the body you have that day. Sessions can happen during active medical treatment and can be done lying down from your bed. We schedule around your medical care and your energy.
I won't argue with your doctors or tell you what your outcome will be. I also won't reduce your life to a prognosis. However much time any of us has, the question remains: How do you want to live it?

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There is more to you than what has happened to your body

I cannot tell you where your story goes from here.

Nobody can.

What I can tell you is that I have spent most of my life interested in the distance between a diagnosis and a life.

If something in what you've read here feels familiar, let's talk. Tell me what's happening. I'll listen. We'll ask some questions and see whether Cellular Healing is the right next step for you.

No promises. No pressure. No need to know before we begin.

Curiosity is enough.

LET’S CHAT →

Private conversation with Nina Frankel · Sessions available on Zoom