"Guided imagery is a very powerful psychological tool which can be used to achieve a wide variety of educational objectives: enhance self-esteem, expanded awareness, facilitate psychological growth and integration, evoke inner wisdom, increase empathy, expand creativity, increase memory, facilitate optimal performance, evoke a more positive attitude, and accelerate the learning of subject matter.
" -Jack Canfield, co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul Increase your health and wellness using your imagination.
Think about this scene! It's a bright and warm Friday afternoon.
You left your office a little early this day to go to your ATM machine to get some cash for the weekend activities.
You check your bank balance to find the astounding sum of one million dollars.
All those zeroes flash on the screen.
Surprise lights up your eyes.
Awestruck, you stare at the screen one more time to make sure its true.
Passion wells up and laughter rolls through your body! Now, hold that feeling.
Breathe several deep, full connected-breaths and switch to another image.
Breathe in the passion.
See the success.
Live the emotion.
Continue to breathe the passion in more deeply and fully.
This exercise is an example of mental imagery-evoking a scene and a feeling that are a dynamic combination.
When you merge images and feelings that work for you, you can direct your energy and empower your results.
Mental imagery makes you aware of your energy.
You then can choose how to direct it towards what intention.
You know that the thoughts you use to view the world are not just housed in your brain.
Your thoughts resonate in the magnetic field of your nervous system and throughout your whole body.
Like a tuning fork, you resonate energy because your body is a dynamic processor of energy.
Think of an image as a powerful emitter of your message to your environment.
For example, you focus on an image that supports your intention of joy-you smiling, children laughing, ocean waves caressing the shore.
You broadcast this image out into the world.
Like any emission of energy, it will spread itself around, and your magnetic field will attract it back to you.
So the question to ponder as you read this chapter is: What do you want to send out through your energy field and manifest in return? What dynamic do you want to empower? WHAT IS IMAGERY? Imagery is the ability to visualize or mentally create pictures and feelings.
You can use this technique to empower success, joy and balance the same way an athlete envisions winning.
Earlier chapters showed you that thoughts and feelings are not separate from each other.
A thought triggers a biochemical response in your body.
A feeling or sensation triggers a corresponding chemical response in the brain.
Imagery lets you empower your awareness and direct your body into skill development and positive emotional states.
Mind body science has shown us that thinking about running a race can trigger the same physical feelings as the physical act of running.
Obviously running the race gives you the elation, physical exercise and tension release.
What imaging the race before hand can do for you is set the stage by focusing your goal and preparing the physical body.
In the same way, imaging success can empower your intention of joy and anchor triumph in your body.
Lynn Joseph, Ph.
D.
, a professional speaker and founder of Discovery Dynamics, calls "guided imagery a thought process that directs and focuses the imagination and involves the body, the emotions and all the senses: vision, audition, smell, taste and touch.
Even if your predominant sense is not visual, you can still use guided imagery effectively by feeling deeply and sensing acutely.
Imagery is the powerful language of the subconscious.
By choosing your images, you can program your subconscious mind for health and wellness.
In fact, the subconscious mind does not know the difference between an image you 'see' in imagination and an image you see in the physical world.
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