Everyone has images; they are basic to the human mind and human nature. . .Images are thoughts that draw on the senses; they may involve one, several, or all of the following senses: sound, taste, movement (kinesthesia), vision, touch, and inner sensation, or “felt sense.” Imagery is not just visualization. ¼ of all people rarely or never “see” things in their mind, but they may use other senses in imagery quite effectively.
The body understands and responds to images more directly than it does to words. To demonstrate this to yourself, try talking yourself into going to sleep some night when you are restless. “Body, go to sleep” or some such phrase is not likely to be a very effective sleeping potion. Instead, imagine a pleasant or repetitive scene – or better yet, let your bodymind drift into the memory of what it feels like to go to sleep, remembering your usual position, allowing a felt sense of floating or moving downward into a deep and comfortable position.
- from Jeanne Achterberg, Rituals of Healing
Martin Rossberg points out that we all use one form of imagery regularly, which is called worry. Unfortunately, this tends to encourage the development of just the problems we are trying to avoid. It is possible to direct our minds to use images more constructively, and it has been found that in addition to inducing relaxation, people can also increase bloodflow to areas that need it, increase white blood cell function, and in other ways actually induce healing through the proper use of imagery. Rachel Naomi Remen also writes meaningfully of the use of imagery to discover the deeper meaning of an illness or to accomplish healing on a more profound level than just the physical. Even athletes use this sort of imagery to improve performance in athletic events.
For most people, symbolic imagery works more effectively than concrete (biologically correct) imagery. For instance, pain imagery might include pitchforks, knives, knots of rope, and so on, and healing images might involve the removal or release, untying, melting, or whatever seems to work. This will generally work better than imagining muscles relaxing. Images which involve more than one sense also tend to be more powerful – build a scene and imagine the smells that are there, the sounds, the tactile feelings as well as the visual aspects.
With tape recordings of guided imagery, the person’s own voice is often more effective than a stranger’s voice. For this reason, we have provided patients the scripts for several imagery exercises.
For more reading on imagery, see:
Rituals of Healing by Jeanne Achterberg
Kitchen Table Wisdom by Rachel Naomi Remen
Deep Healing by Emmett Miller
Fighting Cancer from Within by Martin Rossman
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