Become aware of your body, taking deep breaths, long and slow, breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth, or any way that feels relaxing and soothing to you. When you are relaxed and quiet inside, begin to imagine. . .
Begin to form a vision of yourself with healing, with your sweetest fruit, the thing for which you most yearn. Perhaps it is an absence of pain, perhaps it is a sense of vitality despite ongoing pain, perhaps it is the peace of acceptance of your current health and limitations. Having this sweetest fruit, the piece at the top of the tree, holds special meaning to you because it is the one thing that has seemed to elude you. Other things have come to you, but not this. So as you imagine this, you may feel strong feelings. These may be positive feelings - happiness, pride, gratitude, security - or difficult feelings, like anger, sadness, fear or guilt.
Please begin to form a vision of yourself - not the person next to you or your best friend - with no further suffering from pain, or isolation, or hopelessness. There may be waves of that particular discomfort, but those waves come infrequently, and for the most part they have little power. See yourself as having that aspect of healing for which you most yearn, and having an abundance of it, not smatterings, not just now and then, but most of the time.
See yourself moving through your day, deeply connected to yourself, plugged into your inherent strength, goodness, and wisdom, bringing up a nurturing inner voice that uses the tone and the words that you most need to hear, moment to moment throughout the day.
Form a vision of yourself keeping your fingers on the pulse of your inner life, feeling your feelings, letting them fade, and identifying your true needs. You fill yourself with positive, powerful thoughts and sidestep the thoughts that are powerless or negative. You step up to the plate and face life’s essential pain, the unavoidable realities of the human condition. You move through life’s unavoidable pain and you open your hands to receiving life’s earned rewards. Life is difficult. But it is also wonderful. Some people will reject me, but I won’t reject myself. I can’t change the past, but I can change the future. I am alone, but I have myself, and if it is my belief, I have the spiritual.
See yourself fully committed to personal balance, to spending more moments of the day relaxed and in touch with your feelings, to doing the lifestyle surgery needed to keep your pain under control, to creating a manageable life for yourself. You have body pride, a sense of honoring your body and yourself, and an aversion to harming your body and yourself in serious ways. You take care of your body, being sensitive to your body’s signals and giving yourself the health care and the self-care that you need. Your eating is reasonably balanced - you eat regularly and only when you are hungry, and you eat mostly healthy foods that support emotional balance and vibrancy. You have a life in which moving your body and enjoying your body, enhancing your endurance, strength, and flexibility is part of your day. You engage in meaningful pursuits, doing things in the world that matter. You take time to restore yourself physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Notice such a balance within you that you know you don’t have to be perfect to be wonderful, that even when you cannot do the things you used to do you do not judge yourself. See yourself moving through your day with more happiness, more health, knowing that you have mastered these skills, that these are a part of your bones, and no one can take them away from you.
When you are ready, take a few deep breaths, reflect on what you just imagined, and take those images deeper into your inner life, and let them grow in your subconscious mind over the coming weeks..
