Guided Imagery Overview

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From the course by University of Florida

Healing with the Arts

117 ratings

University of Florida

Healing with the Arts

117 ratings

Through art projects—including visual arts, dance, writing, and music—along with spiritual practices and guided imagery, Healing With the Arts gives you the tools to heal what you need to heal in your life: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

From the lesson

Course Introduction

This week will give you an overview of the course, an introduction to your guides, a get-started kit, and space to do art.

Guided Imagery Overview5:03

Reclaim Your Inner Artist8:16

Reclaim Your Inner Healer3:27

Artist and Healer as One3:16

Pain and Darkness6:31

Meet the Instructors

Mary Rockwood Lane, PhD, RN, FAAN
Associate Professor
College of Nursing
Michael Samuels, MD

Okay, welcome to this video.

It's on guided imagery.

What is guided imagery, you may ask?

Some of you may already know.

Another word for it is picturing in your mind's eye.

Seeing with The Mind's Eye which is the book I wrote in 1975, or imagination.

And guided imagery is when you close your eyes,

and picture a scene., and you picture it.

Really, it's not like a film for most people.

And it's all your senses.

It's smell, taste, visual, hearing.

And everyone does guided imagery all the time.

If you picture, right now you can do it by picturing your bedroom at home.

And even with your eyes open you can see the bed.

You don't see it like a bed in real life.

But something in your mind like a creative idea or a thought.

And you actually can see it.

And then look at the window, and you see the window.

And then take your hand now, and put it on the bed and feel the bedspread.

And you can feel it, and maybe even, and that's guided imagery.

When I wrote my book on guided imagery in 1975,

the scientists studying imagery divided into several categories.

Memory imagery, which is your room imagination imagery

which is changing and then dreams, visions, hallucinations.

So, imagery has been studied extensively.

Now the thing about imagery, which I talked about in my physiology video,

is that when your mind has the image, when you picture the bed and

touching it, your body doesn't know it's not real and goes there.

All of you know this too, because if you picture a sexual image in your mind,

an image of your girlfriend or making love, you can feel the blood flow to your

organs changing and this is something in your mind actually affecting

one group of blood vessels and one area of your body will change blood flow.

So that's how powerful guided imagery, is to change your reality.

So right now,

we'll do a very simple guided imagery, just to let you feel what it feels.

Now one thing I have to tell you, I want to tell you, [COUGH] is that right now,

guided imagery is used in almost every cancer center in America.

It's also used to lower blood pressure, it's a major tool in mainstream hospitals.

Cancer centers use it to improve immune function, to relax.

It lowers chemotherapy side effects, it lowers nausea,

it lowers all of these things, and it's used everyone.

And you can go online to Diane Tuzak or

many of the people who have the tapes used at Cleveland Clinic, and

guided imagery for almost all the things in hospital centers right now.

Okay, but for

you to try it, we'll do a very easy one you can even do it with your eyes open.

Just picture your bedroom at home.

See where the bed is in the room.

Now see where the window is.

Does it have curtains?

Now with your imaginary hands, open the curtains and look out.

Can you see what's outside?

Now look around the rest of the room, is there a chair?

Is there an altar?

Is there a painting?

Now we'll do a subtle switch to imagination imagery.

Now let's paint the walls of your room another color.

So, look at the walls and see them change, and

interestingly enough, in the modern world of apps and computers, there's now an app

where you can take your room and change the colors of the walls in the picture.

Now let's take your room and make it even more interesting and exciting.

Let it get bigger.

Now take the ceiling off.

And now see the sky.

And now let's make it even more interesting.

Let's invite, to come into your room, people that love you.

And let's invite your Grandmother to come into your room,

or your girlfriend or boyfriend to come into your room.

And maybe a spirit animal to come into your room.

And that's how we use guided imagery in art and healing.

And what we do in our class,

every single week of this course, you'll do a guided imagery.

And then you'll make art of some kind from the imagery.

For example, after the very brief one I just did with you.

You could paint your room, do a sketch of your room, or

you could do a sketch of your grandmother coming to you like I just said,

So that's the way we view, for me it's extremely powerful because it actually is

like painting in your mind's eye.

And many artists see their, Alex Grey,

sees the entire painting he's painting and a guided imagery before he paints it and

coming out is just a physical representation of what he saw.

James man I talked about in my piece, saw this sculpture completely, he's relax,

picture in his mind's eye the church or the spirits, and then he'd sculpt it.

So it's a tool for making art as well.

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