Growing Trust Through Guided Visualization
After sharing my personal experience, I’ve been thinking more about the benefits of guided visualization. There are plenty of holistic websites that describe how guided imagery helps people manage stress, heal ailments and enhance job performance. Other sites explore how we can use imagery to create a desired outcome.
The kind of guided visualization I’m interested in involves engaging the imagination to explore potential and develop awareness. While I encourage clients to be active participants (“as your feet touch the ocean, imagine the temperature is just what you need in this moment”), I also believe that each visualization is a journey into the unknown mystery. The emphasis isn’t on achieving a desired outcome but to grow a relationship with the mystery–of oneself, the collective, the spirit world, the physical body, dreams, intentions or whatever the mystery encompasses.
Just as in life we learn through relationships with partners, friends, parents, children, engaging with an inner world that comes alive (and it does!) offers valuable insight. I’ve witnessed people develop intuition, clarify inner truths, connect with body wisdom, meet helping spirits, learn how to work with their own energy, and most of all, grow trust in themselves. In fact, learning to navigate inner terrain isn’t so different from negotiating daily life. The tools and inspirations we discover inside ourselves have direct and practical applications to help us with everyday life.
If you take a moment, close your eyes and breathe into your heart, what image do you see?
Tags: guided imagery, Insight, journey, learning, life, meaning, meditation, practical spirituality, shamanism, spirits, spirituality, visualization
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November 5, 2009 at 8:46 am
Thanks so much for this reminder. I wrote my graduate thesis on the creative power of guided visualization as a tool for people in career transition. In the past I used guided visualization to help me move through times in my life when I was unclear what the future held. More recently, I have been doing what I internally call visioning. Reading your post makes me wonder what the difference is. Hmmmm. Guided Visualization feels different from visioning. Hmmmm. Of course the images and insights comes from th e same source but the practice feels different. I willhave to give this some thought. Thank you fro sparking this for me.
November 5, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Thanks for stopping by Cathy. I would consider guided visualization and visioning to be different places on a continuum. For me, the intention of guided visualization with individuals and groups is to help people begin forming a relationship with their own vision as an expression of intuition. Sometimes people don’t know how to begin to connect with the unknown inside themselves and guided visualization can be a gentle bridge offering people specific clues through the images that appear.
As opposed to more directive guided visualization, I focus on following the energy I’m perceiving with open ended words that hopefully invites people’s own imagery to surface. After many years, so far so good!!! Have a great day!