Waking Dreams Through Guided Visualization
I first met her in a dream in 1992. I was brought to a picnic bench and seated across from an old woman. She had gray hair pulled back in a bun, a beaked nose and lots of wrinkles. She was the ugliest woman I’d ever seen yet also the most beautiful. I woke up with an aching hunger to climb back into the darkness to find her.
Two years later, the day after I quit law school, I opened The Medicine Woman Inner Guidebook and read instructions on how to meet a spiritual teacher through visualization. I had practiced traditional meditation many times before–eyes closed sitting while focusing on my breath and emptying my thoughts–only to feel more stuck than soothed. I needed another way in.
I memorized the instructions and closed my eyes, imagining myself crossing a bridge, taking a shower under a waterfall and walking up a path. Suddenly, the visualization came alive and I found myself entering a cobblestone cottage and sitting down on a picnic bench. I looked up and noticed a woman sitting across from me. She faded in and out like a picture on a television screen covered in a blanket of static.
After refocusing a few times, I noticed wrinkles, a beaked nose and gray hair in a bun. Something about her felt so familiar, like I had met…the dream. She was the woman from the dream. The fuzzy image smiled and said, “Congratulations, you’re here. You made the right decision to leave law school. Now it’s time to get to work.”
So began my relationship with an invisible wise woman who became a trusted teacher. It took more practice for her to become clear and to decipher how we might connect. Her instructions were not linear, often confusing me into tantrums. But through her, I found my way to Oneisha Healing Tools in Half Moon Bay.
The first time I met Maggi, one of the Oneisha’s owners, The Medicine Woman Inner Guidebook lay open on the desk beside her. With auburn wavy hair and blue eyes that focused into steel, Maggi questioned me about my interest in working at Oneisha. After telling her about leaving law school, my difficulty with meditation and experience with the visualization, Maggi leaned forward and said, “That’s okay. That kind of meditation doesn’t always work for women because they need to be in connection. Visualization might be easier because women are drawn to being in their bodies.” This offering, the first of many from Maggi, helped me identify a way of learning my soul recognized as home.
Over the past fifteen years, I’ve developed a relationship with visualization first as a student, then as an apprentice to guided visualization circles and now as a practitioner with individuals and groups. My favorite benefit of guided visualization is that it invites us to enter the unknown yet it doesn’t leave us stranded. Instead, we discover imagery that comes from within and thus provides individualized clues for how to improve our lives. For me, guided visualization is a trusted healing tool.
Tags: dreams, Everyday moments, gratitude, guided visualization, healing tools, life, oneisha healing tools, spirit guides, spirits, Synchronicity, visualization
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