Guided Imagery
Your key to
good health
6-Oct-1998
(Revised: 22-Nov-1999)
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Click here to see some real life
cases of healings using Guided imagery
Introduction
Mark Twain said, “God cures and the doctor sends the bill”. Call it what you will. If you are a staunch Physicist you could call it ‘The Field’ or some such thing. If you are a psychiatrist you may call it ‘the subjective instantiation of sub-conscious intelligence’ or some such high sounding phrase. But the simple fact is that medical science is realizing that your body has self-repair capabilities beyond what common sense leads us to believe.
If you break a bone in your leg (God forbid), all the doctor does is to put a plaster around the leg. Your own body does the actual re-joining of the bones. The doctor only provides assistance if you could call it anything. When you get a bruise, the body heals it to the extent that no sign of the wound remains. Does this not speak of an inner intelligence?
Martin L. Rossman M.D, the author of the pioneering book “Healing Yourself: A step-by-step Program for Better Health Through Imagery” says ‘Is it so strange, after all, to think that the intelligence that created your body in the first place would be able to let you know what it needed in order to be healthy? Whatever created your body — whether you call it God, nature, life, genes or DNA — was smart enough to make your head. If it can make your head, why not a headache? And if it can make a headache, why not a thought that can tell you what that headache means?’. Rossman is referring here to the inherent ability of your body to inform you of problems within your body by generating symptoms.
He goes on to say ‘Unfortunately, we are not usually taught that our bodies are intelligent and can communicate with us. We are disconnected from our body language, as we are from our emotions. We have somehow given away our birthright in the area of health and healing. We have come to assume that, yes, a symptom is a message – but all it says is ‘Go see your doctor’.
My own experience
During my days in college in the late 70’s I started having recurrent stomach upsets. Nothing seemed to work. I tried everything : antacids, acid suppressers and stomach ‘liners’. These only gave temporary relief. In 1998 I decided that I have had enough, because I had become a chronic sufferer and it was affecting my normal functioning in my day-to-day activities. I therefore went to a gastro-enterologist to get a full examination. The gastro-enterologist put me through a gamut of tests that included checking for gallstones, an upper gastro-intestinal series and finally an endoscopy. The doctor said that I had gastritis and esophagitis, which is basically corrosion of the stomach and esophagus linings due to too much acid being generated. The doctor told me that I have two options, either live with the problem or take Prevacid for the rest of my life. Prevacid is the most powerful acid suppresser available in the market. He also told me that once I start on Prevacid, I cannot ever stop taking it because the rebound effects can be quite severe. ‘Frankly’, he told me, ‘I would advice you to live with the problem if you can’. Under the circumstances I had no choice except to choose the first option.
Luckily for me, I had just started to read Martin Rossman’s book on Guided Imagery and was quite amazed by the real life cases that he described therein. I decided to try it out. I got hold of a guided imagery script for gastritis from Gerald Epstein’s book “Healing Visualizations : Creating Health Through Imagery”. And guess what happened? Within one week of practicing the script, the problem reduced to such a low level that it was no longer affecting my daily life. Yes, I would not say that my stomach is perfect now, but the fact that I got rid of the chronic nature of the problem was in itself a remarkable thing. I am sure that if I am more regular in practicing the script the problem will disappear. Never has my stomach felt better in the last 20 years !!! Many others also got cured through imagery. Click here if you want to read about them now.
So, my friends, put your rational thinking, your ‘how is it possible?’ and your ‘why isn’t this popular?’ questions aside and go ahead and practice Guided Imagery. Believe me, it will cure your chronic problem. Your poor body is struggling to cure your ailment and all it needs is your co-operation. Don’t betray it, go and help it do what it knows best, better than any doctor on earth does.
What is
guided imagery
Guided imagery is just one of the many mind-body healing techniques known to man. Guided imagery has a close relationship to hypnosis. In Guided imagery, the subject is ‘guided’ into a relaxed state using suggestions. When in the relaxed state, the subject is guided through a specially written script that addresses his or her problem. Usually the imagery script allows the patient to visualize the healing process using well known images from real life.
How does guided imagery work
Have you ever played the game ‘Pictionary’? It is a game in which a player tries to describe an object to his team partners by drawing free-hand pictures on a piece of paper. For example, he may pick up a Pictionary clue card that says ‘Engine driver’ and he has to draw pictures and make his partners to say ‘Engine driver’ within a specified time. The game of Pictionary exemplifies the inherent ability of our conscious brain to analyze crude pictures and actually achieve the difficult job of connecting the images to actual objects in real life. When you play Pictionary with your sub-conscious it is called Guided Imagery. Just remember that just as your conscious brain is intelligent enough to decipher the crudely drawn images, your sub-conscious can also decipher your even more crude images of good health with its much more superior intelligence. For example, even imagining your pain spot to be a small fire ember and you extinguishing it with a glass of cold water is enough to tell the very intelligent sub-conscious that you want the pain to subside somehow. Although there is no actual fire, the sub-conscious figures out what you are getting at.
Why the conscious itself cannot do the healing? The answer is in the way our brain works. Our bodies consist of two nervous systems, the central and autonomic. The conscious brain controls the central nervous system. When you say ‘I am going to touch my fore-head’ and do it, you are using the central nervous system through your conscious brain. But if you say ‘I have high blood pressure. Make it normal’ it doesn’t happen. Why? Because this aspect of your body is controlled by your autonomic nervous system and your conscious brain doesn’t have a clue how to talk to the former. However, if you tell your sub-conscious the same thing it knows how to make your autonomic nervous system to do it. Guided Imagery is the process of telling the sub-conscious what you want.
How often have you heard of a child having high blood pressure or diabetes? In most cases the inner intelligence of the body knows at what levels to maintain the blood pressure and blood sugar levels. Do you know that a high blood sugar level even for a few hours can result in death? Just imagine the criticality of the control mechanisms that your inner intelligence manages. Somehow external influences like stress, unhealthy diet and many other factors affect the logical loop of this inner intelligence due to which it is unable to do its work properly resulting in chronic disease. Innumerable studies have shown that this process can be set right by just spending some time, on a regular basis, communicating with the inner intelligence. Guided imagery is one such process. The table below summarizes some of the common questions of Guided imagery process
|
Question |
Answer |
|
What posture should I adopt? |
Sit in any comfortable posture, which you can hold without much movement for 10-15 minutes. You could also lie down if you want. If you want to adopt the lying down posture, do not practice imagery at bedtime; otherwise you would tend to fall asleep. I often practice imagery in a bus and find it quite an effective environment |
|
At what time of day? |
Early morning, before anyone else in the house is up, is best. If you want to do it any other time just ensure that you are not disturbed by noises or phone calls etc. |
|
For how long per day? |
Start with just 15 minutes a day, everyday |
|
When will I see results? |
Results can be noticed within five to ten days. Remember that since imagery results in a repair process you could see an increase in the severity of your symptoms. This is similar to the fact that surgery done to repair tissues always results in post-surgical pain. If you notice an increase in your pain, it is a good sign as long it subsides within a week. If it does not subside within a week, there is something wrong with the application of the script. Please stop practicing the script and inform your imagery teacher. |
|
Should I continue the imagery once my problem disappears? |
Healing is a dynamic process that competes with the destructive forces in your body like unhygienic food, lack of sleep, stress and the like. If you see good results, you can reduce the frequency of your practice to maybe two or three days a week. If the symptoms return then increase the frequency till the equilibrium is maintained and you have no pain. |
|
Is the relaxation phase important? |
Yes. Very important! The relaxation phase is important since the subconscious responds well to imagery only when the body muscles are in a relaxed state. In Yoga, it is believed that every involuntary process occurring in the body (like breathing, muscle repair, digestion) uses up Prana (life force). In the state of relaxation, since the muscles do not expend any Prana, all of it is available for the sub-conscious mind to initiate the healing process. Also relaxation induces what is known as the alert-relaxation state, which is recognized by biofeedback specialists, psychoanalysts and hypnotists as the state when the sub-conscious is not distracted by noise due to feedback from various parts of the body and hence becomes extremely responsive to imagery and suggestions. It is not necessary to go into a super -relaxed state like in the yogic posture of Shavasana. The relaxation should be to an extent when you feel a certain lightness in the body and an absence of feeling in the hands and legs. If you are unable to relax completely do not worry. Just relax as much as you can and then practice your imagery script |
|
How to breathe? |
In the relaxation
phase you are asked to take two or three deep breaths. When you take a
breath, do it through your stomach. Keep your hand on your stomach and you
should feel the stomach expanding out when you inhale and go in as far as
possible when you exhale. This is the deep relaxation breath of yoga. |
Frequently asked
questions
1.
Does this mean that
doctors are no good and you don’t need them anymore?
No. Conventional medicine and mind-body medicine are complementary to each other. If you break a bone, or if you get a bacterial infection you definitely need a doctor. In such cases the doctor is actually treating the ailment rather than the symptoms. Guided imagery is useful when your problem becomes chronic and the doctor resorts to treating only the symptom and not the disease itself. Examples of this are when hyperacidity is treated with antacids or back pain with painkillers. Doctors, nowadays, are increasingly recommending their patients to avoid medication.
2.
Can Guided imagery
cure deadly diseases like leukemia or cancer?
There are many documented cases of such cures. Please read Martin Rossman’s and Simonton’s books for some real life cases (see Reference section)
3.
Well if Guided
imagery is so good why isn’t it popular yet?
For the same reason that Viagra became popular within a week but it took Yoga 5000 years before it became popular in the West. And for the same reason that it took Pepsi 35 years to catch up with Coke. The people in every land live in their mindsets, which their society molded into them by way of advertisements, hype and I-don’t-want-to-try-anything-else attitudes. As William James said ‘The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude’. If each of us discards our attitudes and explores the unknown we could discover some precious jewels. Guided imagery is one of them.
4.
Can Guided imagery
actually cause major physiological changes in the body?
Martin Rossman, in his above-mentioned book, tells the story of an orthopedic surgeon friend of his who was inflicted with chronic spondylosis. Spondylosis is the weakening or rupture of the cushion like sac, called spinal disc, between two segments of the vertebral column, which causes intense back pain. The orthopedic surgeon, being who he was, knew that there was no surgical cure for his ailment. Out of curiosity he tried Guided imagery. In his script he imagined that the spinal disc was expanding like a balloon to its normal shape. Within three weeks, Rossman reports, the surgeon was cured.
The bottom line is, if your doctor says that there is no cure for your problem, try imagery. Maybe it will cure it.
5.
What if I am unable
to create the image I want?
Some people find it difficult to imagine certain images that are described in an imagery script. For example, some may find it difficult to imagine a ‘green tree blowing gently in the breeze’. The easiest way, I have found, is to look at a book or magazine that has a similar scene and try to memorize it. An even better way is to watch a similar scene on TV and try to remember it. Try to look for natural scenes with beautiful mountains, streams, forests, trails etc. because such scenes often appear in imagery scripts.
6.
What if I have
symptoms but the cause is not known
It is true that is easier to convey an image of good health to the sub-conscious if the exact cause is known. Fortunately, it is not necessary. If you have certain symptoms but the doctor tells you ‘Nothing is wrong with you’ just create an image of the symptom disappearing. For example, you may have recurrent headaches that may be indirectly caused by an enlarged liver. Just convey an image of the headache to the sub-conscious and it will do the rest. For example, you may imagine the headache to be a hard stone in your head which you crush into a powder and throw it out.
7.
What is the
difference between Guided Imagery and Yoga
Yoga is the superset of all. As it is said ‘Above all there is Yoga’. Yoga is not just a way to keep good health; it is a way of life which ensures happiness. In the West most people think that Yoga is a technique of body stretching but Yoga is a way of realizing the true nature of oneself. A person who practices even a fraction of what Yoga teaches would never need Guided Imagery. A combination of Pranayama (Yogic breathing) and Dharana-Dhyana (yogic meditation) can cure all ills and prevent new ones from appearing. The practice of Pranayama increases the storage of Prana in the seven chakra centres of the body. An ample supply of Prana automatically speeds up all healing processes in the body.
References
1. Healing Yourself: A step-by-step Program for Better Health Through Imagery by Martin L. Rossman M.D
2. Healing
Visualizations : Creating Health Through Imagery by Gerald Epstein
3. Getting
Well Again by O.Carl Simonton, M.D,
Stephanie Matthews-Simonton, James L.Creighton
4. Light
on Yoga : B.K.S.Iyengar