FROM HERE TO THERE – Preparing for Change [1]
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A Guided Imagery Exercise
Set aside at least 20-30 minutes of quiet time for this exercise. Then, when you’re done, you might also find it helpful to sit quietly for a few moments to absorb your experience. You might find it helpful to journal, draw or create a collage–any kind of expressive art–to help you more fully integrate the exercise.
Sit or lie comfortably, breathing deeply and naturally. Allow your belly to be soft, and your body to relax, feeling yourself supported by the chair or the floor. Allow yourself to feel connected to the breath and to your body. Continue to breathe deeply, relaxing a little more with each exhalation.
Imagine yourself walking down a country road. What do you see? Hear? Smell? Feel? What time of day is it? What is the light like? How does the air feel on your skin? Is it warm or cool?
After a while, you will see a path turning off the road. Follow this path, and let it take you across a field. What does the path feel like under your feet? What do you see, smell, hear and feel around you?
Soon, you notice a beautiful gate that seems to draw you toward it. As you approach the gate, you can see a beautiful garden that lies ahead. As you draw closer, the gate slowly opens, as if to welcome you into the garden. Continue on the path into the garden. Enjoy the space. What do you see, smell, hear and feel now?
As the path opens into a clearing, you will notice that you are now in the middle of a convergence of paths (like the center of a wheel with several spokes leading out from the center).
Take a moment to decide which of the paths you feel drawn toward to further explore. What does this path look like? What do you see, smell, hear and feel now? Is there a change in the light and temperature?
You notice a sculpture up ahead-that captures your attention with a sense of familiarity and attracts you to come closer, as if to become one with it. What does this sculpture look like? What material or materials is it made out of? Is it heavy or is it light? Is it dark or is it bright? What does it feel like? Is it warm or cold to the touch? Is its texture rough or smooth? How does this sculpture make you feel? Does it disturb you or bring you peace?
In your mind’s eye, take a moment to picture yourself as becoming one with the sculpture-as if experiencing life from “inside” the sculpture. How does it feel? What do you smell? What sounds do you hear? How does the outside appear to you? What do you see?
Check inside yourself to make sure that your identification and description is correct. There should be a feeling of fit: perhaps “Yes! That’s it” or a sense of correctness, or perhaps just a little shift or lifting of the energy because you’ve correctly named it.
Allow yourself to be in all the thoughts, emotions and sensations of this sculpture – but with a little distance as if you are sitting next to it, you are not enveloped in the story of it. You are not it, you are sitting WITH it.
Now, shift your body physically a bit so that you have a distinct sense of the shift.
Out of the corner of your mind’s eye, you now notice another sculpture further down the path that seems vaguely familiar-and seems to beckon you forward. As you move towards it, you begin to realize that the sculpture is really a depiction of you-as you currently are.
Repeat the process of getting a correct identification and sitting with it, until you are fully there. What does this sculpture look like? What material or materials is it made out of? Is it heavy or is it light? Is it dark or is it bright? What does it feel like? Is it warm or cold to the touch? Is its texture rough or smooth? How does this sculpture make you feel? Does it disturb you or bring you peace?
In your mind’s eye, take a moment to picture yourself as becoming one with this sculpture-as if experiencing life from “inside” the sculpture. How does it feel? What do you smell? What sounds do you hear? How does the outside appear to you? What do you see?
[1] Copyright 2008 Mary Elaine Kiener, RN, PhD. All rights reserved.
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