Imagery For Mind-Body-Spirit Health
Guided Meditation is a resource for relaxation and a type of focused meditation to help create calm and ease in the mind and body. With this technique for relaxation, you concentrate on an image, place, object, sound, or experience that feels soothing or grounding, offering refuge from your daily stressors, settling your nervous system. The goal is to promote a calm state in the mind and body through relaxation and mindfulness. Your nervous system should begin to follow your thoughts and reset. You may have noticed that if you think about stressful events, you experience tension in your body, your mind may race and heart rate and blood pressure follow. If you train yourself to take moments in your day to focus your awareness on something pleasant, your mind and body will relax. You may notice less tension in your body and a sense of ease. Having a practice such as guided imagery can help you better handle your daily stressors and develop a sense of vitality and resilience.
The Body Scan
Body scans offer help for bringing deep awareness to the many processes of the mind and body. While in a state of relaxation, allow the mind to focus awareness on, and just notice parts of the body. Many people like to begin with the feet and work their way up the body, noticing any sensations such as: holding, tightness, agitation, softness, relaxation, pain, lack of pain, etc. Either before or after a body scan, practitioners often do a breath awareness exercise where the focus of attention is simply noticing breathing and any sensations or thoughts as you do this gentle exercise. Body scans can be helpful for individuals with chronic pain by focusing on parts of the body that are pain-free.
Guided Imagery
Guided Imagery is a therapeutic technique that is used by some clinicians during psychotherapy sessions to promote relaxation and healing. Imagery (thoughts or mental representations with sensory qualities) can help people achieve a variety of health goals, such as alleviating anxiety or depression, overcoming phobias, trauma recovery, reducing habits (overeating, smoking), healing from physical illness, and physical symptom reduction (i.e., high blood pressure, headaches, insomnia, G.I. problems, chronic pain). Guided imagery is a two-part process. The first component involves reaching a state of deep relaxation through breathing and muscle relaxation techniques. During the relaxation phase, the person closes their eyes and focuses on the quiet, relaxed, "in and out" nature of breathing. Or, they might focus on releasing the feelings of tension from their muscles, beginning with the toes and working up to the top of the head, as one might do in progressive relaxation or body scans. Once relaxation is achieved, the second component of the exercise is the imagery, or visualization. Guided imagery is perfect for patients or clients who feel uncomfortable receiving help in a traditional therapist/patient session where "talk therapy" is the focus, or in addition to other therapeutic techniques.
Clinicians and therapists integrate guided imagery into a variety of other modalities such as EMDR. When woven into an integrative psychotherapy approach, guided imagery helps clients connect with their internal cognitive, affective, and somatic resources.
Guided Imagery for the following:
To relax and calm the nervous system
Learn and rehearse new skills
Learn to effectively problem solve through visualizing possible outcomes of different alternatives
Increase creativity and imagination
Enhanced performance and sports training
Healthcare and rehabilitative medicine
Medical practitioners such as nurses often use guided imagery with their patients to support patient healing and increase patient comfort. This is particularly true with Cancer patients, but also with patients who have other medical concerns such as anxiety before surgery. Studies have shown that individuals who participate in guided imagery experience an increase in activated T-cells which leads to improved immune responses. Guided Imagery is one of many tools that an individual may use as part of a regular self-care practice.
The usefulness of Guided Imagery techniques has been shown to be effective in helping people learn or modify behaviors…
Learning to relax
Changing or controlling negative emotions in response to a particular situation
Preparation for future changes (divorce, moving, job changes)
Habit control and eliminating or reducing undesirable behaviors (smoking, obesity)
Increased pain management
Coping with difficult situations (relatives, family events, a difficult boss)
Learning new and desirable behaviors (assertiveness training)
Increasing motivation (work, homework)
Learning to manage stressful or anxiety-producing situations (public speaking/presentations) by mentally rehearsing the needed behavior(s)
Guided Imagery can effectively treat a variety of concerns, including:
Phobias (including agoraphobia, panic disorders, social phobia, and specific phobias)
Depression
Generalized anxiety disorders (GAD)
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
Sexual concerns
Habit disorders
Chronic fatigue syndrome
Behavior disorders in children and adolescents
Medical conditions
Acute and chronic pain (and other physical disorders)
About Holistic Psychotherapy & Wellness Manhattan
Kimberly Seelbrede, LCSW is a New York State licensed Psychotherapist, EMDR Practitioner and Couple Therapist with a private practice in New York City, Montana and virtually. As a wellness psychotherapist and holistic consultant, she has receive advanced, extensive training in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Somatic Experiencing (SE), and Nutrition & Integrative Medicine For Mental Health. She is passionate about honoring the exquisite interplay of the mind-body connection. Kimberly Seelbrede specializes in anxiety & mood disorders, trauma and women’s mental health.
In addition to online therapy for anxiety, depression, trauma and relationship struggles, Holistic Psychotherapy & Wellness offers a wide variety of online services to fit the needs of busy professionals. New Yorkers often lead fast-paced and complex lives, which makes work-life balance and managing career, family and social obligations a challenge. Psychotherapy and wellness practices provides the support to help clients cultivate resources, resilience and enhanced emotional health, as well as uncover conflicts and obstacles that may interfere with having the life they desire.