Guided imagery can be very effective to improve our health and happiness. However, each person's experience is unique and gives them the opportunity to make changes via neuroplasticity during their experience of guided imagery.
Each of us has various levels of ability to visualize, from seeing full multicolour as if watching a movie. Whereas some of us have levels of vague outlines in black and white. A few people have aphantasia,which is the technical name for those who close their eyes, it's just blackness.
Planning my Guided Imagery Creative Stories
When I started to plan my meditation audios, I was aware of these visualization differences. For me, it's important for all of us to be creative within our minds and therefore have the ability to alter our brain neural connections. Effectively rewiring our brains.
There are a range of illnesses and syndromes, some include chronic pain, that are either caused by past experience and emotional memories or neural networks that develop throughout their lives can influence our daily well-being.
Understanding the Impact of Past Experience on Health
I'd like to start by telling you a story of how I came to produce and sell the guided imagery audios that are on my Natural Pain Solutions website.
Throughout my consultations over the past 20 years, at times I have needed to help clients understand that we all collect “baggage” in our lives. We continually have experiences, good and bad, traumatic, or rewarding.
o We have promotions or redundancies.
o We have children or we lose family members and friends.
o We have illnesses or operations, sometimes a challenging diagnosis.
o We have hopes and dreams.
o We have failures or things go wrong in life.
o We have experiences and may live with situations out of our control.
None of these can be totally forgotten or undone. Therefore, our subconscious files away our journeys together with the accompanying emotions.
I have used many different techniques to effectively allow clients to unload their accumulated baggage, hence freeing their bodies to repair and restore.
Clients Private Internal Imagery Journeys
I am amazed at the imagery journeys clients may take with their eyes closed. Rarely do they share them with me, as I believe it is better to release or let go of emotions around an event than to relive it by talking about it.
There are some opinions that perhaps it’s not beneficial to talk about our negative experiences as can happen in psychology or counselling. By talking about an event, the same areas of the brain are used. This may cause some people to relive the trauma as opposed to just releasing and letting go of the emotions that arose without sharing what happened.
In consultations we may revisit an event but by guided imagery we can change or reframe the experience. Without talking about the issue or event.
o We can change the lighting.
o We can change the background.
o We could bring out the sunshine or we can make it rain.
o We can change the clothes that people wore.
o We can change the sound, the size, and more.
Benefits of Guided Imagery to Let go of Anger
I personally had the opportunity to use imagery to reframe one of my own experiences in a training course I presented. In this particular class there were an odd number of people therefore I had to partner one of the students.
My issue that I chose to work on was about one of my Brain Gym training workshops I'd presented earlier in the year. It took place in Perth. Teachers came from all areas of Western Australia for a full day’s training. All expenses were being paid by their respective school.
On this Brain Gym workshop of 20 people, one person in the group asked a lot of questions, constantly interrupting my presentation. That's fine, I'm happy to alter an explanation to help understanding.
Therefore, I was somewhat surprised at lunchtime when he came and told me the workshop wasn't his thing and he was leaving. I was shocked. I was more used to receiving good feedback or even very good feedback about my workshops. To add to my discomfort was the fact his school had flown him across the state and paid for his accommodation in Perth. After he left, I was consoled by the other participants who said he probably just wanted to go into the city, the reason why he signed up for the course as the school was in a very remote area of the state.
Returning to my imagery - remember I was working with one of the trainees.
Therefore, when my turn came, I closed my eyes and started my imagery.
o Him asking questions.
o My patient replies.
o All sitting having lunch.
o He said, “I'm leaving”.
Now here's the change…………
As he walked to the top of the stairs, in my imagination, he got smaller and smaller. By the time he was at the top of the stairs he was too small and tumbled top over tail down the stairs.
I ended up in giggles and told my partner that I was sorry for the school and hoped they'd discover his true character.
My anger and guilt [for the school) were gone, as was the feeling of being insulted.
Here’s another imagery story another course participant shared with the group. It created such a positive example to all of us.
Her situation (she didn’t share details) involved a lot of difficulties with a group of people.
In her imagery about the situation the change she made was memorable.
In her visualization she turned all the people involved into beautiful butterflies and they fluttered away!
That even makes me feel positive and puts a smile on my face, just remembering this training course.
Conclusion – Why I Use Guided and Creative Imagery
Over my years in practice and running training courses I have introduced many people to both guided imagery where I lead you through a process, and to creative imagery where I provide an outline or scaffolding of a story.
The power of our imagination should not be diminished as with every thought we change our brain structure in the same way that every experience changes our brain. In this manner neuroplasticity can begin to alter the structure of the neural networks (or pathways) that we can easily re-enforce daily when living with chronic pain.
Jean Jordan – Pain Coach
Want to find simple effective ways to reduce your chronic pain without increasing your stress and overwhelm? As a chronic pain coach this is where I can help!
Heaps of ideas can be found in the articles on my website.
You can sign-up to regular updates or spend time using some of the collection of self-help techniques. Or sign to my coaching up for 6 months support.
After over 20 years of owning pain clinics, I started Natural Pain Solutions to reach more people, rather than one person at a time.
After studying Postgraduate Pain Management & Freedom from Chronic Pain with Howard Schubiner, I want to spread the word about holistic self-help techniques people can use at home.
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