Note: This post provides a brief introduction to Guided Imagery by Ken Hamilton. More posts on this topic will be created.
Titling on guided imagery
What is guided imagery
Guided imagery is a healing practice wherein the
practitioner sets up an altered state of consciousness that involves both the
practitioner and the individual for whom a "guided imagery" is
created. The alteration of state of consciousness can, and does, very widely
from a very light state in which the participant actively participates to a
deep state in which the participant may have no memory of the process. Because
it is about "imagery" it is about images and imagination.
Why is guided imagery
That it is guided implies that the practitioner somehow
serves as a guide to an imaginary process of imagination directed towards an
outcome that is beneficial for the participant.
Imagery and the mind
It is the author's experience that the brain is an organ
that the mind finds useful and it is not the source of the mind. The mind is a
field of consciousness that involves the entire body. The brain is an organ of
memory reason and communication. It also includes specialized clusters of cells
that set up an attitudinal tone in the entire body through either direct connection
with the central nervous system or indirectly through the bloodstream. The mind
can tap into much broader -- virtually infinite -- patterns of thought that
comprise a virtual Library of patterns of thought that we can well call images
-- pictures, sounds, movement and position sensations, smells, emotions. The
ability of the mind to combine these makes the range from the simple to the complex.
In every case, one a participant can call up an image and associate a feeling
with it. This can bear on memories of experience and feeling that are stored in
specific areas of the brain almost from childbirth on. These remembered events
and the associated feelings can be damaging. Indeed, they can occur in patterns
that can easily be identified with a certain disease state. Using guided
imagery new experiences and their feelings can be integrated in the same
regions of the brain where they can displace the old ones.
Accessing memories
Guided imagery can help in accessing old memories, both
pleasant and ugly. Here, it is vitally important that the practitioner be fully
aware of the possibility of implanting a memory that has no basis in past
history. And there was a period of time towards the end of the last century
where it had become popular to blame all dysfunctional behaviors on repressed
memories, believing that the recovery of the memory would heal the dysfunction.
The ability of the mind to create images is so powerful that a false image of
trauma could create a real physical response!
Intro
What is Guided Imagery
Accessing the power of imagination
Healing is not necessarily curing
Images
Create an imagery with a HOPE stone as an anchor
Create Life stages imagery
to get a future orientation that
makes sense to the person.
Create a safe place in which to meet a guiding
person
A bench by a lake with an old
friend advisor
Imagery and Healing
Healing imagery
for the author, healing is becoming whole... the restoration
of integrity. Helping the participant to recognize the wound as an effect
without identifying the cause creates the possibility of opportunity to
interactively take the participant through the participant's images that would
restore integrity where it had been lost. With that focus, the participant may
well identify a detail of the clothes that had been previously repressed.
Without focusing much mental energy on the personalities in the cause, offering
a suggestion of compassion to be the will means for looking at the situation in
such a way that it is possible to cut one's attachments to the elements of the
clones, which is true forgiveness the author experienced a trawler and early
childhood in which he tried to dig clams from a rocky bottom at high tide with
a garden he fully 100 yards from the clam flat where he is to go and talk with
the clamors. His hand, who was supposed to look out for him, missed him when he
first started off on his childish pursuit of the bivalves come but, realizing
that he had disappeared, conducted a frantic search and saw them disappear
under the water where he was perfectly safe in his mind but not in hers. Her
rescue was quite violent and terrifying. However, the recovery of the memory
some 50 years after the incident was blessed by an immediate presence of
compassion for both himself and his terrified aunt which effected an
instantaneous release of the bond that had held them together all those years
-- a release called forgiveness. The effect of this release and recovery of
memory was freedom from a repetitive stupid behavior that was related to her
shout, "You stupid little boy!" Because of his experience, the author
feels strongly that the recovery of any true repressed memory results in compassion
and forgiveness towards the perpetrator and an elimination of the dysfunctional
behavior. If that does not happen, then the memory is invalid.
Healing words and phrases
The most important concept here is that of using subjunctive
words and phrases. The subjunctive is a tense of word usage that is not direct,
implying instructive or corrective, but indirect, implying suggestion. It is a
tense that we use all too little in our present way of living, but is very well
exemplified by the following: "If I were to...," "Should you
happen to...," "Could you
possibly develop an image of...," or "What do you think it might feel
like to...." all of this as a matter of offering, which makes it possible
for the participant's subconscious to make the ultimate decision. A simple word
that is kind and gentle is "consider". It is gently instructive, but
it's not attached to any particular outcome. The encouragement here is to be
comfortable in your own skin and at the same time be humble. After all, you,
don't have the answers; the answers lie within the participant with whom you
are working.
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