Awakening to Your Inner Wisdom
with EFT and Imagery

In this newsletter we move on temporarily from EFT to imagery work. In future issues we will focus on how the two can be combined for even more effective access to your inner wisdom

Everyone can image. Imagery is not some strange exotic New Age technique. It’s part of how we think. Before we ever learned words, we thought in pictures. Now, as adults, when we read a novel we usually form mental images of the characters and the locations in the book. When we daydream as we stand on line at the bank, we are imaging. When we dream at night our minds are creating powerful images that can speak to deep unconscious thoughts and longings. Often those dream images can evoke strong emotional responses that our word-based ego mind cannot fathom. I remember a friend once saying she’d had a nightmare about the number five. In the dream she was terrified at the sight of the number, though upon awakening she could not understand what had frightened her so. Imagery is both powerful and ordinary. It gives expression to our
deepest secrets; yet forms the basis of our most mundane everyday thoughts.

What is imagery?
The words “imagery” and “visualization” can be misleading, since they really involve more than “seeing” with the eyes. Some people have vivid images, while others don’t see pictures at all. The most vivid images are those that involve all the senses. When you can not only “see” a lemon in your mind’s eye, but can hear the sound of the knife cutting it open, smell and taste its tartness, you have created so vivid and rich an image that your body will respond as though the lemon were actually there. You might even salivate as though you had really eaten one.

Imagery work can be categorized into three general types:
• Guided imagery or guided visualizations – In this type, a therapist/guide typically takes you through a scripted experience in which you image specific situations. For instance you might be guided to a beautiful peaceful place where you can create a safe haven from stress. The script suggests outlines for what will happen during the experience, but is open-ended enough to allow for your own wisdom’s messages.
• Spontaneous or self-directed imagery- This refers to images which arise spontaneously as you think about or talk about a topic. For instance you may be talking about a problem you are having and you say something about wanting to get rid of “this monkey on my back.” A self-directed imagery might consist of “talking” to this monkey on your back, asking it what it is doing there, what it wants from you, etc.
• Combined Imagery – Somewhere in the middle rests this third type. One might start out with an image that arose during a guided visualization and work with that image. For instance, let’s say during a scripted guided imagery aimed at uncovering the meaning of a person’s back pain, the image of a “monkey on the back” arose. In the fantasy, or even afterwards, that person might have a conversation with the monkey similar to the one described above in the section on spontaneous imagery. Martin Rossman and David Bressler’s Interactive Guided Imagery combines elements of both scripted and spontaneous imagery. (A link to their website “The Academy for Guided Imagery” can be found in my Resource section.)

How Imagery Helps Access Our Inner Wisdom
There are several ways imagery can help us gain access to our deepest wisdom
• Physician Martin Rossman has said that “imagery is the natural language of the unconscious.” Imagery taps a deeper level of our minds and helps uncover unconscious thoughts and feelings that influence our behavior and emotional states. The dreamlike images that arise when people do imagery work come from deep within the unconscious, and while those images do not always appear to make immediate sense, they are always meaningful. For example, I was working once with a woman who could not lose weight even though her very life was endangered by her obesity. While doing the “Inner Guide” fantasy (featured in the next issue of this newsletter) she was given a glass snow globe which contained a pretty little white house surrounded by a picket fence. She had no idea what that image meant, especially with respect to why she was unable to lose weight. She worked on the image for weeks, trying to tease out its meaning. Then, one day while she was thinking about the snow globe, she suddenly “saw” it drop to the ground and break open, all the contents running out on the floor. It was at that moment that she realized that she had a storybook concept of what life was going to be like when she lost weight (hence the little white house with the picket fence), and she would be unable to lose the weight until she gave up her fantasy (represented by the breaking of the snow globe). A rich and meaningful image, that snow globe—an image that reflected unconscious beliefs that stood in the way of accomplishing her goals. The image was her inner wisdom speaking to her in a way words had not conveyed.
• Since imagery taps a deeper level of consciousness, it helps us gain access to inner knowledge, even if we have no conscious awareness of that knowledge. Once, when I was sick in the hospital, I kept getting images of glasses of water. Pretty straight forward--my inner wisdom’s way of telling me to drink more water. So I did drink more. In fact, I began drinking a glass of water each hour I was awake—even awakening at night to drink another glass. My doctor, aware of my fluid intake, told me that while the water would not hurt me, it wasn’t necessary to drink so much. But my inner wisdom knew better, and images of water prompted me to continue drinking water throughout the day. A few days later, antibiotic resistant bacteria were discovered in my bladder. My doctor said “It was lucky you were drinking so much water. You’ve been flushing the bacteria out of your body. Had that bacteria gotten into your bloodstream it could have killed you.”
• Imagery helps us access inner resources that can facilitate or even accelerate healing. Imagery has been shown to cause many types of change in the body. For instance the vivid image of a lemon evoked at the beginning of this newsletter may have made you begin to salivate. A scary image has the power to raise your blood pressure; a tranquil one can lower blood pressure and slow down the heart rate. We can learn to use imagery to affect the body in positive ways, thus activating its healing wisdom. Utilizing the power of imagery, we can create relaxed meditative states conducive to healing. Some hospitals now give patients imagery tapes upon admission to help with anxiety and to foster healing from illness and surgery.

Learning about Imagery
The resource section of my website (www.marionbilich.com) has links to various healing imagery websites and provides a list of books and tapes focused on guided visualizations aimed at healing and inner growth.
Some tips in doing imagery:
• The more relaxed you are when doing imagery work, the deeper into the mind you can delve. Relaxation quiets not only the body, but the judgmental, critical ego mind that tends to interfere with the more creative, intuitive parts of us. The state we experience just as we are drifting into sleep is optimum for the emergence of powerful imagery. In fact, the mind spontaneously produces vivid imagers at this stage, a phenomenon known as “hypnagogic imagery.”
• Music can aid in relaxation and facilitate deeper imagery work. Classical music, especially baroque has a relaxing effect on the body, but any musical piece you find soothing will work.
• Don’t try to force relaxation. You cannot make yourself relax. The harder you try to relax, the more tense you will become. Fortunately, your unconscious mind knows how to relax. Just let it do its thing. One thing that may help your unconscious do its thing is to remember a time when you felt totally at peace and relaxed. Feel that memory with all your senses—the body sensations, the sounds, the smells, the surroundings. Once your unconscious gets the message it will re-create this deep state of relaxation effortlessly.
• Beware of cookbook interpretations of images. Images tend to be personal. An image may have one meaning to you and another to me. And while there are some universal images the exact meaning of those images depends on the context and personal experiences.
• Have patience with yourself. When working with imagery that arises deep within the unconscious, the meaning of an image may not be immediately clear, but rest assured it does have a meaning. It does contain a message for you. Take your time to think about the image and what it is trying to tell you. I find that sometimes the very work I have to do to understand the meaning of a particular image is preparing me to deal with the message that image is trying to bring me. Once, for example, I asked my inner guide what I needed to be working on. She showed me pictures of myself at three different ages. I had no idea what that meant, so I kept working on the images—thinking about what was happening to me at those ages, what those three “me’s” had in common. After a few weeks I realized that all three ages represented significant steps in the evolution of my self-image and my ability to nurture (or not nurture) myself. When I first had spoken to my guide, I was not really ready to hear her message. In fact, I really didn’t want to hear it. It’s not pleasant learning how unsupportive I had been to myself. The work I did in trying to understand the meaning of the images was actually preparing me to hear the message. Finally I was ready. In your own imagery work, you too may have to do some work before you are ready to hear what your inner wisdom has to say. Be patient. It will come.