Guided imagery

When was the last time you produced your own mental movie? I'm talking about daydreaming. Sometimes your dreams are about your ideal life. Other times your daydreams are the stuff of Stephen King novels. How about those scenes you rehearse in which you say the perfect words at the perfect moment, those words that eluded you that very afternoon?

With your daydreams you form images in your mind. You have your cast of characters in which you are the star, usually the hero. At times you're the hero in a Robin Hood sort of way knowing the perfect way to exact revenge. Guided imagery is like daydreaming. You have scenery, characters, dialogue and a plot. The difference is that you are not making it up on the spot. Someone is guiding you through the movie.

Guided imagery by-passes your conscious mind and moves you into the depths of yourself, where the purposes of healing, you release wounds of the past. You can even "re-write" your history with a structured guided imagery particularly developed for that purpose.

I once worked with a man I'll call Vince, who painfully told me of when he discovered his father was not trust worthy. Vince was about 6 years old. His father had taken him to the beach for a long promised adventure in the ocean. His father had Vince climb onto the float. They went into water well over the child's head.

Vince, now in his 30s, remembered his father calming his fears by promising that if anything happened, Dad would be there to take care of him. The trusting child was having a wonderful time floating on the water. Suddenly his father upended the float. The 6 year old, who could barely swim, flailed about in the water while his father laughed. Just when Vince was most terrified that he would drown, his father, still laughing, reached out and "saved" him.