| VISUALIZATION
Illness, especially when it is a long term, chronic situation, can have a damaging impact on your self-image and self-esteem. Your entire thought process can become more negative and the illness can begin to define you. Thinking of yourself as “sick” negatively impacts your thoughts, as well as your physical body, and can feed what easily can become a downward spiral.
Visualization can be a useful tool in creating awareness and connecting to your true emotions and feelings, helping you to release the thoughts that are holding you back, and replace them with what you do want to think, feel and be.
It takes practice, and is much like doing exercises to improve your physical body – it takes time and repetition, but the results make the effort very worthwhile.
I know that some of this is going to sound and even feel a bit strange at first…it did to me, but it has been an amazing tool to help me refocus my mental and physical energies and has been instrumental in helping me to move forward on my journey to wellness.
| Exercise # 1: Grounding Cord/Sunshine |
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Sit or stand in a quiet place and imagine there is a cord that extends from your lower spine that connects deep to the center of the earth. |
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Focus on whatever negative emotion or thought you want to eliminate. |
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Visualize the feeling, emotion, etc. gathering in your body and imagine it is being released through the cord – leaving your body and being released deep into the center of the earth. (When visualizing what you are trying to release it can be helpful to take in a deep breath, and when you are releasing it through the cord, exhale with mild force through your mouth.) |
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Now envision a huge sun – a bright, warm, beautiful sun – that is sitting just above your head. This magnificent sun is full of all of the wonderful things you want to think and feel. |
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Now imagine that this sun, so full of all of these wonderful thoughts and feelings, bursts and all of its goodness enters your body through the top of your head and is flowing throughout your body…from your head to your toes you are filled with all good and wonderful thoughts and feelings! |
| Exercise # 2: Self-Talk/Thought Replacement |
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This is not really an exercise, but rather a method of refocusing your thoughts, which in time, I believe, can help to reprogram the brain. Let me try to explain by using a personal example. I have had very serious issues with vertigo which can be triggered from a variety of things from food to the position of my head. The moment I would feel the slightest shift in my balance or steadiness it was like my brain went into panic mode and would draw up every other time I was in a similar circumstance and had a negative experience. It was so easy to fall back into that bad place, and I believe by drawing up all that negativity, I was attracting more and more of it to me. Now when I become aware that something is changing in my body that could be perceived as leading me to a bad place, I tell myself that “no negative thoughts or feelings are welcome in my body and mind…only good thoughts and good feelings are welcome here.” I then refocus my attention on how it is I want to feel, and pull up a memory of how it feels to be balanced, peaceful and in harmony. In the beginning I think I had to do this hundreds of times a day, or at least it felt that way. Now there are days when I am not even conscious of doing it – as soon as an uncomfortable physical feeling develops oftentimes I automatically and subconsciously begin releasing and refocusing…confident with the knowing that all is well. |
| Exercise # 3: Breath Release |
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Sometimes you are not dealing with a specific thought or feeling, just a general sense of malaise, perhaps pain, fatigue, or sadness. If you don’t have success with the Grounding Cord exercise (#1) or Thought Replacement (#2) perhaps just a simple breathing exercise will do the trick for you. This is really quite simple – as you draw in a very deep breath, through your nose and deeply enough so that you stomach expands – imagine whatever it is you wish to rid yourself of is gathering into your upper body, by the very power of the breath you are taking in. As you release the breath through your mouth, visualize the pain, fatigue, sadness, etc exiting your body. Repeat until you feel that whatever you needed to release is gone. Then you can refocus your thoughts on the way it is you want to feel. |
| Exercise # 4: For Sensitive People/”Be Defined” |
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Are a very sensitive person, and by this I mean that you really feel and/or take on other people’s pain and suffering, and seem to attract other’s negative energy? A trick I was taught by a wonderful cranio-sacral therapist is to imagine the edge of your entire body as having a very thin invisible shield…and when in a potential situation where you might be attracting a weakening energy, say to yourself, “Be defined” and visualize the protective coating at the edge of your body that is shielding anyone else’s negative stuff from penetrating your space. I know it sounds kooky – but it helps soft-hearted people from taking on things you don’t need or want!! |
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