If you've ever meditated and felt refreshed afterward, you've experienced what practitioners of guided imagery believe you can also achieve in a physical sense. The power of the brain, they claim, can unlock the healing power of the body to defeat conditions ranging from back pain to ulcers to cancer.
Identification
Guided imagery is a form of holistic healing that uses sensory meditation to stimulate the body's healing processes. According to Dr. Martin L. Rossman in "Guided Imagery for Self-Healing," imagery is a series of thoughts that represent your sensory experiences, including sight, smell and taste. The idea is that picturing your source of pain can help you interpret your body's signals. Rossman cites clients who used guided imagery to realize that conditions such as noncancerous breast lumps and stomach ulcers are the body's way of telling them to take better care of themselves, whether through eating right or taking steps to manage stress.
Guided Imagery and Back Pain
Rossman writes that back pain is one of the most responsive conditions to guided imagery because it's often aggravated by stress. He believes that helping the emotional causes of an illness, including stress, can clear the way for the body to heal physically. He also notes that imagery can affect physical functions not normally considered under conscious control, including heart rate, blood flow, your immune system and certain hormones and neurotransmitters.
The Stress Response
Perhaps the most difficult part of guided imagery is letting go of your pain and stress for long enough to achieve a restful, contemplative state. According to Leslie Davenport in "Healing and Transformation Through Self-Guided Imagery," you should start with a basic relaxation technique called "traveling inward." It involves picturing parts of your day, past and future, and freezing them as snapshots of time, then mentally clearing them away. As you breathe in and out, repeat words such as "peace" and "clarity" and let your muscles relax. Davenport suggests a series of deep breaths as you picture your body becoming calm and relaxed from head to toe.
Strategies
You can practice guided imagery with a holistic practitioner or on your own. According to the Academy for Guided Imagery, once you're in a peaceful state of mind, the goal is to focus on images associated with your back pain. You can visualize the pain vanishing, visualize body parts healing, or have an imaginary conversation with the items in your image and ask your body what it needs from you in order to heal. Often, they note, patients can come up with treatment suggestions that their doctors can help put in place.
Warning
Never use any holistic or alternative healing source as an exclusive alternative to traditional medicine. If your back pain disrupts your life to the point of being unable to fulfill your job or family duties, seek medical attention. Rossman suggests seeking a doctor with training in alternative health techniques so you get the best of both worlds in terms of treatment options.
