The Magic of Guided Imagery and Mind-body Healing

There are five important things to know in order to understand the amazing power of mind-body healing. When you understand these, you will see how to use the power of your mind-body connection to augment your regular therapy and enhance your body’s healing ability.

First, it is important to understand that your subconscious mind has control over your physical body.  It keeps your heart beating and keeps you breathing without any conscious effort on your part, blinks your eyes, controls your bodily functions, signals hormones to release, it knows how to find balance and heal. The conscious mind couldn’t possible take care of all these things at once the way the subconscious does.

Second, think of a fresh lemon. Imagine it with its yellow skin and imagine holding it in your hand. Feel it. Make it real. Now, in your imagination, put the lemon down and cut it open. As you do you get a whiff of that tangy lemon scent as a little lemon oil sprays upwards. Take half the lemon and bring it up to your mouth, squeezing the juice into your mouth tasting the sourness… imagine that completely. Chances are you are salivating right now. It was only an imaginary lemon, but your body is reacting as if it were real! Your subconscious doesn’t know the difference between what’s real ‘out there’ and what’s real ‘in your inner world’.

Third, the subconscious mind communicates in images and metaphors. Although we can speak affirmations and they work, the real power in communicating with the subconscious is in visualizing. The subconscious sends us metaphors and symbols in our dreams and intuition and that’s what it understands best.

Fourth, communicating effectively with the subconscious is the key to successful mind-body work and this always takes place in a relaxed state. You don’t get good results if you are stressed out and tense. Everything flows when you are in a relaxed state, your subconscious mind will let you know what’s physically wrong and what you can do to help the healing process. So, before doing any mind-body work, you need to get into a very relaxed state.

The last thing to understand is that the subconscious likes repetition. The more you repeat something, the more powerful it becomes. That’s how we teach anything to our subconscious. You learn languages by repetition, riding a bike, knitting, whatever.  You can’t do a process just one time and expect excellent results, although there are cases, but energy follows thought, so it’s important to repeat the process to really let your subconscious know that you are serious and not day dreaming.

So you begin by deep breathing. This will not only start to relax you, but as you know, the subconscious usually takes care of breathing for you. When you start controlling the breath consciously, it gets its attention. Spend a good amount of time relaxing so you will get good results. When you are very relaxed you can just start talking with your subconscious. Ask it for an image or symbol of your physical problem. Whatever image you get is right. Then heal the image. Maybe you have AIDS and you got an image of a few little T-cells scared and hiding. Start to send them reinforcements in your mind and make them stronger. Maybe you have arthritis so you get an image of a sharp icicles. Start to bathe them in warm sunlight until they melt. You may also get an intuitive ‘knowing’ about what the image means. Pay attention to them.  When you’re done, thank your subconscious mind and the next time you communicate it will be easier.