Healing Yourself Through Imagery

Whenever an acquaintance of mine discovers that I have a chronic illness, they always react with shock,

“You’re always in pain? You don’t act like it!”

Maybe I was born with a positive attitude. Maybe you were, or you weren’t. Either way, I believe it is possible to train your mind to react positively to negative situations.

Chronic pain does not have to lead to a limiting lifestyle of depression, a daily handful of pills and a gloomy outlook; one can find transcendence, especially in the darkest of times.

So how can one start to build a more positive life filled with light and acceptance?

One must believe that what one imagines, eventually manifests.

The best way to begin to experience this magic is with a still mind. How do I get one of those? With lots of practice.

Through meditation and yoga, we are able to still our minds, listen to our internal guidance, and discover new ways to relax and heal ourselves. Notice I said “relax” and heal ourselves. Relaxing is key to healing.

If I’m reacting to a situation in a state of panic, I’m activating my sympathetic nervous system, the “flight or fight” response. My heart rate increases, my muscles tense, my veins constrict, my immune system shuts down, cortisol levels rise and the list goes on. For many people in chronic pain, that list right there may seem like a list of symptoms we experience on a daily basis. How can we ever heal in a state like that?

We’re in luck. We can counteract the sympathetic nervous system with our parasympathetic nervous system, the “rest and digest” response. Through relaxation, breathe work, and visualization we can activate this healing system of ours to replenish and repair our very complex system.

“Relaxation, breathe work, and visualization”:

Visualization is often an underused, underestimated branch of healing. Let’s recognize that the greatest of minds have been using visualization for thousands of years. This dimension of healing is so effective that even hospitals are now using these techniques to guide ailing patients to recovery.

From experience, I have found that using visualization, overtime, has worked best. This style of healing is not an overnight miracle cure. Like I said earlier, you are training your mind to exist in this positive mindset.

Try the following visualization:

Lie back and imagine yourself floating in a warm pool of water within a white room. Have a felt sense that the ground beneath you is thick water allowing your buoyancy. The air all around you is warm. On the ground, a few feet above your head is a plasmic, cosmic box; gleaming with white opal, shining out a bright white healing light. There is a healing warmth coming from this box.

Notice that there is a hole at your crown chakra, the top of your head, just like a dolphin’s blowhole. As you slowly breathe in air through your blowhole, imagine a spark of the white healing light stream from the cosmic box towards your crown, and enter your blowhole. Allow the white healing light to fill up your body, from head to toe, and then just simply exhale and relax.

Again, breathe in the white healing light, imagine your whole body as this white healing light, but this time, as you exhale and relax, notice the points of tension throughout your body. These points could be in your joints, your neck or back, even your head. As you take a breath in, imagine these points of tension glowing the color red. For a few slow breaths, imagine these points no longer of the physical nature, but as a glow of red.

Allow the white healing light that’s within you to soothe over these glowing spaces of red.

With your attention on your breath, slowly watch the shade of red slowly become orange.

Keep breathing. Orange will then slowly become yellow.

Still breathing. Yellow will slowly become white.

Take a deep, slow breath and realize you are now a body full of the white healing light. If you need to extract more white healing light from the cosmic box, feel free to do so. The white healing light is so pure, so intense, that it dissolves the boundary of your body-shell.

Your white healing light is released through all tension and quickly fills up the room. Your breath now fills up the room. Even the water beneath you becomes charged with the white healing light. Every cell becomes charged from the water beneath you. Each breath you take charges your cells further. You breathe in Pranic Light. You are Pranic Light. Float as long as you’d like.