by Deidre Madsen, OM
TGI (TRANSFORMATIONAL GUIDED IMAGERY) = QUANTUM ENERGETICS - TODAY'S HEALING TOOL OF CHOICE!
Are you ready to become pain-free? Do you suffer from any of the following?
Body Aches and Pains
Deep-Set Fears
Withdrawing from the World
Emotional Unbalance
Dis-ease
Menopause and Peri-Menopause
Emotional Scarring
Childhood Traumas
Confused or Overwhelmed in Life
Addictions
Lost and Abandoned
Out of Balance or Out of Sync with Life
Phobias
Unchecked or Out-of-Control Anger
Traumatic Loss and Grief
Depression
Disconnected from Self/Spirit/Soul
Other? Fill in the blank _________
It is our human condition to quest for the perfect spiritual "high" that perfect earthly nirvana ... bringing us closer to freedom from all that surrounds us, threatens to encroach upon our very existence. As you read this you will discover hope and a step-by-step guide to healthy success.
This information is intended for you as another processing healing tool and will help you in myriad ways; it will guide you toward re-membering (re-integrating or gathering the members of yourSelf) your own perfection and assist you in finding yourself, loving yourself and incorporating the best of you into one magnificent being.
What to do with all the rest? ... the parts of you you're not happy with, feel are imperfect or incomplete? Transformational Guided Imagery (TGI) will literally help reconstruct you inside and out. This is your opportunity to self heal, self direct, self honor, and self love.
TAKE BACK YOUR POWER TODAY!
Your mind's physicality/function may greatly improve; abating and forgiving old patterns and belief systems through love and honoring releasing. You may feel fresh, anew, enlivened. You may have healed your own body without the aid of any western medicine or even the assistance of an alternative medical therapist. Moreover, you can do this work in the privacy of your own home, with the help of a close friend or relative if you choose, and progress at your own speed.
What we desire more than anything, what our happiness depends upon ... is to be free and loved.
Transformational Guided Imagery (TGI) takes us to that place of freedom, empowers, enlivens, and enriches us ... very simply.
"Look be'tween what is real ... and what is not; and there you will find truth."
This quote reminds me to mention one other important point: Trust yourself. As you embark upon the path of allowing TGI to assist your life, as you begin the exercises listed below ... trust yourself. Trust all that you see, all that you feel, hear, sense, smell, taste, and intuit. Trust everything and realize it is all there for a divine purpose, to assist you in healing and loving yourself more fully. Remember ... trust yourself.
"I've got to get my head together..."
This simple phrase is a metaphor; it reflects a consciousness of what brain researchers have known for more than 100 years: both left and right hemispheres take on different and complementary functions. TGI is a remarkable process that is not only a viable and effective tool for healing therapy but also reflects how the left and right hemispheres function as a team. TGI awakens your Third Eye to its greatest potential which gives YOU the power to heal. Thoughts create. Thoughts heal. Even the incredulous soon come to hold that their experiences reflect directly physiological and psychological functioning.1
There are two vastly different styles of imagery exercises. The ideal form is the completely unguided, free-flowing, self-directed continuing fantasy. Here are wonderful starting images:
HEART CENTER
Visit your Heart Center and plant a garden, meet with beLoved family and friends to heal and grow, and travel to your High Heart Center and experience incredible Divine Love. In your Heart you may find a doorway or gateway that leads inside. Have you ever said the words, "I love you from the bottom of my heart?" Perhaps it is time to travel to the bottom of your heart and discover what is actually in the bottom of your heart. Do you think of yourself as kind hearted, open-hearted, big-hearted, heart of gold, cold hearted, cold as stone, heartless, having a big heart, Scrooge, and more? These labels will reflect directly in the aforementioned area. (This also applies to every body part and organ.) What about the division of the quadrants in the heart? Some people find they are more filled up or have a tighter squeezed space in one quadrant or the other. Explore all of your heart for its joys and sadness, giving gifts of love and nurturing along the way.
BODY
Visit any and all of your body's organs, discuss, talk with them, and ask them questions. What do they want? Are they happy? What can you do to make them happier, freer, more alive, and healthier? Get interactive with your body. Everything, positively everything is alive and WANTS to communicate with you.
MEET YOUR INNER PHYSICIAN
We, each of us, have an Inner Physician which is an aspect of ourselves that knows exactly what we need for all our body, mind, and spirit health. The Inner Physician may be called upon during sessions where you feel you do not have answers to what lays before you. To meet your Inner Physician, go into your Head Center and when you are ready and comfortable, call him/her forth. Get acquainted and ask as many questions as you desire of your Inner Physician. In a way, the Inner Physician is an internal dowsing tool but it is also much more for within each of us lie all the answers to our dis-ease. Most if not all of our dis-ease stems from our emotions. (If you have not read Louise L. Hay's book, "You Can Heal Your Life" please get the book and read it cover-to-cover.) Therefore, when working with your Inner Physician on a physical ailment or dis-ease, be aware the problem or source stems from your emotional nature, the more emotion the more chance of it manifesting into your physical body. Have fun with this exercise. Walk through your entire body with your Inner Physician, ask advice and counsel while speaking with each of your organs or systems such as the circulatory system. Of course with this and every exercise, log and date the experience as much as possible. Realize the Inner Physician is You, speaking to yourself. By now and through these exercises you have begun to realize a glimmer of truth ... yes, you can trust yourself! Isn't that wonderful?
MAINTENANCE ROOM
As we each have an Inner Physician, we also have a Maintenance Room filled with whatever and whoever resides there, maintaining our physical, mental, and emotional bodies. This exercise is one of the most fantastic experiences because many people have experienced such a vast variety in their Maintenance Room and it is much like the Head Center in a way. In the Maintenance Room exercise, begin in your Head Center look around for an entrance or pathway to your Maintenance Room. It can be located directly from your Head Center, inside your Head Center, down through your body, etc. Once located enter and have a look around. Do you like what you see? How do you feel in here? Is there anyone or anything here? If so, communicate with them. Do you have a Maintenance Man or Woman in your Maintenance Room? What does he/she look like? Are you satisfied with their maintenance performance on your behalf? If so, thank them for their help and ask them if they would like something, a resource from one of the hemispheres perhaps, to help them further with their work. If not, talk with them and find out why things aren't up to par, up to your standards, or expectations. Communicate your displeasure and your desires. Ask them for help and tell them you will assist them. Most important, do show them your support and love no matter their condition or the condition of your maintenance room.
When you have finished to your satisfaction, return to your Head Center and note any new changes in the Head Center (i.e., color, time of day, anything or anyone new, change in temperature, lighting, sounds). Give thanks for the opportunity to heal and love yourself more. Repeat as often as you like.
THE BOTANY GARDENS OR SQUAW MOUNTAIN JOURNEYING TECHNIQUES2
From your Head Center go to one of these two locals: (1) Stroll through the Botany Gardens
(2) Climb Squaw Mountain
How to get to them? Just command or be in them. Use this exercise to answer or find direct answers to specific questions or problems you are experiencing. On this journey you will discover the solution to your problem / opportunity. Additionally, upon entering your Head Center you may find that your right brain (creative consciousness) desires to journey elsewhere ... a place of its own choosing. Perhaps this place represents a favorite destination of yours. Wherever you go, after you come back from your journey you will have had an exciting personal discovery.
When you have finished this exercise to your satisfaction, return to your Head Center and note any new changes in the Head Center (i.e., color, time of day, anything or anyone new, change in temperature, lighting, sounds). Give thanks for the opportunity to heal and love yourself more. Repeat as often as you like.3
Walk Down Memory Lane Guided Meditation for the "Third (3rd) Eye Blind" This meditation is added due to client requests for additional support. If you yourself run into a situation where you cannot see anything beyond the blackness of your closed eyelids, then this is the meditation for you. Occasionally, facilitating this work, I have come across someone who cannot seem to "get it", as if they have a mental block that states "TGI is fantasy and I cannot see my fantasies. I cannot put things in my mind, make something suddenly appear, I can't believe it is real because I think I am making it up, I can't figure a way through a situation in my head visually."
FIRST, ANSWERS TO A FEW QUESTIONS:
Q. How do I as a facilitator respond to this type of reality? Mechanically, what is happening inside this person is they differentiate or separate fantasy or daytime dreaming from memories. For example, let us take a very familiar memory; as we all have, of scent ... we remember smells, aromas of freshly baked bread, we remember the delicate smell of a rose. Let's take it a step further. Now picture the rose in your mind's eye. You see, there are some who simply cannot do this. To these, I say, there is yet hope. Fear not! Yes, even you will "see". So, when this type of individual comes across my couch I offer up the following simple-to-do meditation/exercise to break through the barrier of non-belief and help reconstruct their belief system to include other possibilities into their reality.
Q. Why is this meditation different from any other? It blends or merges an individual's daytime or fantasy world with their "real" world. You will see the obvious "trigger" later on in the meditation.
Q. What is a trigger and why is it necessary? The trigger is the key to this meditation. We have the basic components of:
Familiarization and comfort (relaxing the client into a gentle state of self hypnosis - this is similar to the effects of humor and laughter) through the use of the familiar memory environment ... safety.
Pretending. Pretending brings the client face-to-face with the opportunity to allow the inner creative part of them to flow.
Creative Imagination also sparks the will to create something wonderful giving the client hope; where they begin to experience their own potential.
Re-programming Trigger. Whether it is a clown, bear or another non-threatening image, it serves to ground the fantasy into memory reality. It also serves to prove to the client they too can see and imagine and are fully capable of utilizing these dormant muscles.
What the trigger does is startle them into realizing that there is no difference between a memory and a fantasy other than a bit more strong emotion is tied to the memory. When they realize this truth suddenly you yourself feel the breakthrough, the great "ahA!", trust response or truth statement from the client.
To date, this technique has a 100% success rate. If you are the one facilitating another in the TGI process, please read through and familiarize yourself with this meditation then utilize your own intuition to choose a specific type of trigger for each client.
Why? The trigger is the subject of fantasy or daytime dreaming. I tend to use the same triggers (a clown or teddy bear) with my clients. Once while working with someone who had been deeply programmed and emotionally scarred as a young girl, the moment came in this meditation for the trigger. I intuited she would be frightened of the clown. Heeding this message, I quickly changed the trigger to what I sensed she would "see" in her memory as something non-invasive, non-threatening ... a Teddy Bear. When the Teddy Bear trigger was introduced in the meditation, she openly accepted it without hesitation and felt entirely comfortable.
Use your own inner guidance system and remember to pay close attention to the feelings you have at every moment. It is easy to do when you trust, when you allow and stay centered within; then you can be the most effective for your clients or yourself. The meditation (below) is "A Walk Down Memory Lane" with a twist - the first part draws you into your memories and the second introduces the trigger or bridge subject into your memories.
Walk Down Memory Lane Meditation (for the 3rd Eye Blind)
Sit or lay in a comfortable, resting position. Close your eyes. Breath deeply and gently. Allow your body to relax. Focus on your body's weight as you relax, feeling its heaviness as it settles into a restful state. You are awake and alert, yet very calm and peaceful.
Go to a memory of familiar territory. Your favorite room in your house. For this meditation, we will use your own home; a place where you spend plenty of time. Imagine or remember your most familiar room in your home. If you are a teenager it may be your bedroom in your parent's home. Otherwise it may be your kitchen or family room. For the sake of this meditation, we will concentrate on your bedroom. Keep your eyes closed and see your bedroom before you. Remember what it looked like when you left it today? What does it look like? Remember all the things about your bedroom, the look of the bedspread, the curtains, your pictures or posters. See the furniture placement, pillows, clothes, etc. Stand in the middle of your bedroom. Can you do that? Yes, of course you can. This is very familiar to you.
Look around now at your room. Can you see the door leading from your bedroom to the rest of the house? Good. Note that the door to your bedroom is closed in this meditation. You are enclosed and safe in your bedroom. How do you feel in this place? Do you feel good in your bedroom? Does it give you good feelings, happy feelings? Sad feelings? Feel this room and realize this is representative of who you are.
Now that you are here in your bedroom, comfortable and standing in the middle of the room, imagine that someone is entering your home. You cannot see them yet for they are outside the house but you hear the sounds of the door's handle jiggling open. You hear the door swing open yet you cannot see who is entering yet for you are still in your bedroom.
You hear footfalls coming through the house yet you cannot see who is coming. You stand perfectly still in your room and remain calm and safe. You stand with your eyes fixed on the door to your bedroom. You now notice the handle to your door begin to turn.
The door swings open and a Teddy Bear enters your bedroom. Do you see the bear? Can you describe what the bear looks like? Is it wearing anything? Describe it now. How do you feel about this bear? Does the bear have anything to say to you?
Look down now into the hand of the Teddy Bear. The bear has something in its hand. A gift for you. Look and see what is in the bear's hand. Can you see it? Can you describe it? If it needs further opening go ahead and open the remainder of the gift. Can you describe what you see now? If you wish to speak to the bear, do so now. If you have a gift for the bear, give it to the bear now. Thank the Teddy Bear for helping you and coming to visit you. See the bear leave your bedroom, leave the house, closing the door behind him or her. How do you feel? How does your bedroom look now? Is it the same or different? If so, describe. How do you feel now?
You are finished and are ready to come out into the here and now. Remember to JOURNAL your experiences.
Feel free to further explore, learn, experiment and enjoy with these and any other exercises you intuit along your sacred journey. Your inner trusting nature will assist you to be able to use Transformational Guided Imagery in any number of successful applications.
NOTES:
1) John Thomas Adams Shaffer, Transformational Fantasy/Guided Imagery
2) Dr. George Fraser's Dissociative Table Technique or Dissociative Work Room" and "Affect or Somatic Bridge"
3) Dr. Milton Erickson's "Journey Technique"
Copyright © 2009 Deidre Madsen. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
For more information visit www.tween.org.
Posted: 06/27/2009
