The Therapy Center of Grand Rapids

Hypnosis – Guided Imagery and Positive Visualization

Would you like to try an experiment with yourself? Close your eyes. Now, without looking, what is the total number of windows in your home or apartment?

The important question is not how many windows, but how you arrived at the number. A natural way to do it is through imagery. To accurately count the windows, if that number was not easily known to you, you had to remember and imagine each of them.

Almost all of us use some form of imagery. We use it to solve a variety of our daily problems – it is said "The soul never thinks without a picture" (Aristotle).

So, is imagery only visual? There is more to imagery than just visualization. We can use imagery to create or recreate emotions. We can also use imagery with our senses of smell, touch, hearing, and even taste.

Have you ever been hungry and remembered a special meal you once had? Perhaps you can close your eyes for a moment and remember a favorite dish. Your memory may be so vivid you can nearly taste it.

In fact, your mouth may water in anticipation from the thought and mental picture of the meal. If your mouth waters from the thought or mental picture, that is a physical response to a creation in the mind. That sort of response is one of the powers of imagery.

Eyes, ears, tongue – what is your specialty? Each of us is inclined to take in information and perceptions of the world differently. Though we use our five senses, we give each of those senses different values and importance. This is usually not a conscious process – it has evolved in our unconscious mind from early childhood.

Some people may be more aware of and sensitive to visual stimuli and only partially attentive to auditory (hearing) input. These people may be even less mindful of kinesthetic (touching, feeling) perceptions.

Of course, no one operates in just one of these sensory modes. We overlap input from our senses and we use all of them at various times. But most of us are more sensitive to one sensory input than to another.

Behavioral scientists find that most people are visual in their perception mode. You may believe you are equal in your sensitivities. That would be somewhat unusual, though the differences in your preferences may be too slim to detect.

Your imagery may be subject to these same tendencies. Visually oriented people will tend to be most concerned with what their imagery "looks like". Auditory people will be "tuned in" and most sensitive to the sounds and voices of their images. Kinesthetic people will be most affected by the physical sensations and the ability to "sense or feel" the images.

Nevertheless, we all accept and process information and stimuli from all our senses, and our images may contain all sensory perceptions, even tastes and smells. Therefore, the mot effective imagery you can create incorporates elements that arouse all your senses.

There has been much written about and studies done about this phenomenon under the name of NLP. Richard Bandler and John Grinder have taken some of the work of Milton Erickson and fashioned it into a model of understanding communications and mental processing they call neuro-linguistic programming or NLP. These processes have been found to have value in understanding self and interpersonal communication patterns. I will talk about that in a future article.

How do you improve your ability to use imagery? Each of us possess the ability to use some sort of imagery, but we have varying degrees of skill. Depending on our life experiences and environment, we may have used imagery a lot or a little. Here is an exercise that can help you develop your imagery skills:

1. Gaze at a geometrical drawing - a square, circle, triangle or some such figure - then shut your eyes and try to visualize it.
2. Examine for a few moments a three-dimensional object such as an orange, a glass of water or a lamp. Again, close your eyes and imagine the object.
3. Visualize a schoolroom from your childhood.
4. Visualize your home or apartment. Move around in it, go from room to room.
5. Visualize a person you know.
6. Visualize your reflection in a mirror.

Practice these exercises every day for one month. It will take just a little more time to do the practice than it takes to read these directions. You may be surprised when you realize how vivid and creative your imagery can become.

Add to and expand these exercises with different places and objects as you gain in your imaging talents. Feel free to experiment with your favorite images, colors, smells and sensations of touch, heat, and cold.

How important is imagery in Hypnosis? The images and visualizations you develop along with the suggestions are powerful tools. In hypnosis, a mental picture is worth pages of verbal suggestions.

What makes imagery so powerful is that it comes from within you. You have created it. You have assembled the images from all your memories, experiences and thoughts. You are using the language of your unconscious mind to place requests for change.

Personalize your imagery – imagery of a suggestion can take an infinite variety of forms. If a hundred people were asked to imagine a walk in a forest and then to describe their images in detail no two would be the same. Their images of the scene would be a composite of recollections from their individual previous experiences involving forests and walks.

In hypnosis you use material from your own experiences and memories to form your visualizations and imagery. It is important to use your own words and mental pictures from your life experiences.

For example, if you are suggesting to yourself that your arm is feeling cold and numb, picture a time you really did feel cold and numb. Perhaps you will remember a time you were without gloves in the winter cold. Or you may remember a time wen you dipped your hand into a cold mountain stream.

If you are suggesting a floating feeling in your arms or legs, find an image that represents to you a floating experience. Perhaps you will recall a bubble of air floating up from the bottom of a pool of water you were once in, puffy dandelion seeds you have seen floating on the wind or perhaps the sensations you had floating in an inner tube or a boat.

The important thing is to create images from your own experiences. Use the suggestions that I have given you to start to stir your memories for images that are yours.

I will continue with this subject in next month's article - in closing, I would like to again invite you to tune into An Hour at The Therapy Center live stream radio show the first Monday of each month at 8 PM EST only on Star Nations Radio Network. Each month I will talk about a typical issue that my clients have presented with and then we will do an actual hypnotherapy session … so please join me, get comfortable and take a few deep breaths.

Until next time, love and light

Patti