Guided Imagery Meditation – What Exactly Is It?

Guided imagery meditation (also called guided imagery, or guided meditation) is a terrific way to practice meditation! It seems to be a combination of lots of different kinds of relaxation techniques and meditation styles, mainly combining normal meditation practice, with visualization and imagery. It’s almost like hypnosis – and describes a level of consciousness that resides somewhere in between the state we’re in when we sleep, and the state we’re in when we’re awake.

Guided imagery meditation is a process whereby a meditation practitioner uses a mantra (a meaningful word or sentence repeated over and over), or a particular song or piece of music, to take them on an inner, spiritual journey. This helps the body become its most receptive to healing and repairing itself, mentally and physically.

This kind of meditation can help you: feel protected and secure, a sense of wholeness, feel free of chronic pain or mental anguish, understand yourself, know your real motives and desires, resolve relationship problems, be more creative, have a greater awareness of what other people are thinking and how they’re feeling, connect with your alter ego and inner child.

People use guided imagery meditation for many different, rather personal reasons. But basically, all of them have one thing in common – they’re trying to achieve an ultimate state of relaxation, or bliss. Some do this by using spirit guides, or ancestral communication. Others simply use the more usual tools of meditative practice to induce a deep-seated sense of contentment.

Guided imagery meditation is a particularly powerful way to help us find our inner selves – our answers to the big questions in life. Getting to an answer by ourselves is usually a more useful way of self-healing, than if a therapist or someone else gives us an answer, or a piece of advice. When we discover things for ourselves, we tend to remember them more clearly. We also then have the tools for repeating the exercise and answering future questions.

A word of warning: people with fairly severe mental health conditions shouldn’t practice guided imagery meditation, unless they’re with an experienced, qualified therapist.

Here’s how a practice of guided imagery meditation looks:

Firstly, sit comfortably, as per normal meditation practice. Perform some deep breathing exercises, or focus on the breath, to begin the process of calming the mind. Once you feel slightly more relaxed, begin your visualization. In a guided session, you’d have a teacher helping you by prompting certain thoughts at certain times. In a non-guided session, you’d do this all by yourself.

This visualization should take you on a pleasant journey somewhere far removed from your normal daily life. For example, you might like to visit a rainforest and explore a lost city. You might want to float around a deserted beach, or fly across a desert. Free your imagination! You can do anything in your own mind. You’d be amazed how liberating guided imagery meditation can be, and how it can really affect the way you see your limitations in real life. You may find that gradually, you become more courageous, and more willing try new activities, or more challenging tasks. That’s because through the guided imagery meditation, your brain is being encouraged to ‘push the envelope’ and explore what might happen if anything was possible. Have fun!