The Healing Art of Storytelling
Using Narrative within Health Care and Social Services

This training will benefit health care, human service, mental health and pastoral professionals, and volunteers who serve clients and patients who are experiencing:

• The effects of catastrophic injuries and/or chronic diseases
• Life threatening illness
• Death
• Psychological trauma or illness
• Mental illness

We will explore ways to use narrative and storytelling with clients and patients to:

• Deal with their loss and grief
• Enhance cognitive, verbal, perceptional, and interpretative and psychological skills
• Develop inter-personal and intra-personal skills
• Provide support

Together we will:

• Discover ways to integrate and adapt narrative and story into your professional work and discipline
• Learn to use storytelling in conjunction with other therapies such as art, reminiscence, physical and psychotherapy

Reflections on Andre Heuer's Work

When we were planning our summer workshop series we were a little nervous about using a storyteller. We needn't have worried! Andre was well prepared, had an engaging style, and was really very well received by our audience. Through his personal stories and interactive exercises, participants were able to see how storytelling can help us and our clients.

His approach was especially helpful in dealing with trauma, which is present in the histories of so many of our clients and see how much their current thinking and behavior has been influenced by the history of their family milieu.

Alan Ingram, JD, MSW, LISW,
Executive Director
National Association of Social Workers -Minnesota Chapter

Walking into death with Hospice patients and their families puts one in position to die in many ways. Andre's approach helped me understand the need for balance and deliberately choosing life again and again.

His gift of storytelling, creative use of ritual, and incorporation of all the senses was refreshing, challenging, and affirming.

Franchon Pirkl, OSF, Hospice Chaplain,
Owatonna Area Hospice
Owatonna, Minnesota

I met Andre Heuer during the American Imagery Institute conference in Minneapolis. I was the Chairperson for his workshop entitled Imagery from the Perspective of the Theories of Multi-Intelligence. I am impressed with what he has to offer in the area of using mental imagery in psychotherapy and healing, so impressed that I did not miss his second workshop on Saturday entitled Healing Through the Evoking, Structuring and Telling of Stories. Andre, as a psychotherapist and a storyteller, has taken the tool of storytelling to perfection. Through his storytelling Andre is effective in exciting in others their ability to heal and grow. Andre made me eager to learn more to perfect my own ability to tell healing stories whether they are cultural, family or personal stories.

Nicholas E. Brink, Ph.D.
Clinical Diplomate, ABPP
Past President, American Association for the Study of Mental Imagery
Author, Grendel and His Mother: Healing the Traumas of Childhood Through Dreams, Imagery and Hypnosis.
Book Review Editor, Imagination, Cognition and Personality

Andre led me on a very personal journey, where I further explored my own relationship to death. In my hospice work this is an essential path to walk if I am to keep my own experiences sorted out from those of my clients.
Nancy B. Nelson, B.S.N., C.M.T., Hospice Massage Therapist
Veteran's Inpatient Hospice Unit
Menlo Park, California

Presentations

He has presented workshops on various subjects for:

• Family Therapy Network
• St. John's Stroke Center
• International Correction Education Association
• Coalition for Arthritis & Rheumatic Disease Education Association
• Multiple Sclerosis Society
• Northlands Storytelling Network
• Pathway's Life, Death, and After Life Conference
• Minnesota Hospice Organization
• Center for Victims of Torture

Andre works closely with you to design programs to meet your clients, staff, and organizational needs.