Imagine You Sponsored by Kaiser Permanente Marin-Sonoma

Kaiser Permanente Marin-Sonoma Area Community Benefit just announced they will be providing sponsorship program support for the upcoming Imagine YOU® Leader Certificate Training, a program of the Integrative Medical Clinic Foundation, a local Santa Rosa nonprofit organization. The training will take place on June 21 and 23, 2016.

The Imagine YOU® Project, created and developed by Ellen Barnett, MD, PhD turns the idea of motivation and willpower upside down. Dr. Barnett, a family physician for the past 25 years, developed the project after realizing most people feel weighed down by their “should list” of health goals, and uplifted when they focus on what is matters most to them. She encourages people to view their health and life through the lens of what is deeply important to them, using that vision to guide their daily choices.

The Imagine YOU Project trains community leaders, health, and human resource professionals in the Imagine YOU method so that everyone in our community can move toward their best health and life. For more about the Imagine YOU Leader Certificate Program visit Imagine YOU.

“Assisting the youth we serve to form and create their personal vision of health allows them to form a direct and personal connection to their bodies and their own health. This direct connection allows youth to feel in control of their health and thus empowers them to value their health and make it a priority. The youth we work with have been “directed” their whole life; Imagine YOU doesn’t direct them, instead it stimulates conversation, leadership and engagement that insures their participation in the process. If every youth could feel connected to their health and realize the importance of maintaining their health, our community would feel the direct impact.”

-Amber Twitchell, Program Director, VOICES/On the Move

What an Amazing Year!

What an amazing year it’s been! Here are some highlights:

• We launched our first two Imagine YOU® Leader Certificate trainings in Santa Rosa, California.

• We created, developed, and published the Imagine YOU Leader Toolkit for certified Imagine YOU Leaders.

• We trained 14 Imagine YOU Leaders who have gone into their communities across Sonoma County to lead Imagine YOU workshops.

• We led an Imagine YOU workshop for 7 Santa Rosa Junior College students.

• We led an Imagine YOU workshop for breast cancer survivors, and one of them went on to become a certified Imagine YOU Leader.

• We led an Imagine YOU workshop for SonomaWORKS hosted by Goodwill Redwood Empire.

• With the help of our sponsors we participated in the county-wide Human Race.

  
  Thank you everyone for a great year and with your support we can make next year even bigger and better!

Imagine You and Cancer Journey Empowerment

Imagine YOU® is pleased to announce the receipt of a grant from the Community Foundation of Sonoma County.

The grant provides support to host the first Imagine YOU for Breast Cancer Patients workshop on March 28, 2015 in Santa Rosa, California.

In this two hour free workshop participants (women who have recently been diagnosed with breast cancer) will experience the Imagine YOU process and leave with skills they can use to get and stay empowered on their cancer journey.For more information please contact Cynthia Calmenson, Executive Director at 707-284-9225 or cynthiac@imcfound.org.

Imagine You Workshop for Foster Parents and Kinship Guardians

This year Imagine YOU® was invited to present a workshop to 22 parents and kinship guardians of foster children at Sunny Hills Services in Santa Rosa. The participants created a personalized Image of Health for themselves. Many of the images reflected their hopes and desires for the children they care for and for the family unit they are creating. They spoke passionately about how moved they were by the workshop process. For more information about Sunny Hills click here.

Here are some of the participants sharing their Images of Health:

Windsor High School Teens

This year 175 Windsor High School students developed their own, personalized Image of Health in our Imagine YOU® workshops. They each created an Image that represents why they they want to be healthy. These Junior and Senior students are exploring health careers. They learned first-hand about the connection between health goals and their own motivation and healthy habit formation.

Surveying the teens after three months, here is what some of them had to say:

“I put it in my binder as an image to help remind me why I need to keep pushing through school…I want to get to the place I drew.”

— Anonymous Student

“I think it helps really imagine and realize that your life could ultimately be up to you and your actions that you decide to make.”

— Anonymous Student

“I think other high school and possibly middle school students would like to do the Imagine You activity.”

— Anonymous Student

Santa Rosa Junior College Kinship and Foster Care Conference

This year the Imagine YOU staff led by Dr. Ellen Barnett, presented Imagine YOU® Workshops to attendees at the SRJC’s annual Kinship and Foster Care Conference.

Among the participants foster parents, educators, and area agency professionals. The Imagine YOU workshops were presented all day long and 120 participants created a personalized Image of Health to take with them. Many of the participants were very positive about the workshop content and felt it would benefit them as well as their clients.

Imagine You Leaders in Training

We welcome our first cohort of Imagine YOU® Leaders-in-Training. Coming from local businesses, medical clinics, community agencies and organizations, these Leaders will help take Imagine YOU Workshops to a broader segment of Sonoma county. Stay tuned for more about them!

Imagine You Receives Pilot Funding

We are pleased to announce the award of a grant from the Community Foundation of Sonoma County .

Voices Sonoma and The Imagine You Project

Imagine YOU®… a new project of IMCF is proud to announce a collaboration with VOICES Sonoma. The result of this collaboration is the launch of a pilot Imagine YOU… Peer Co-Leader Training in Santa Rosa. Looking for ways to interest teens and young adults in healthy lifestyle choices? Contact us for more information!