Healing Visualization Meditation

If there’s any part of my body in need of healing, whether from a fall or other injury, from being ill, or tension caused by stress, sadness or resentment -- there’s a simple healing visualization meditation using the breath that I’ve found always helps me feel better.

·         In a quiet, private place, sit in a comfortable seated posture that you can hold for a long period with your core supporting you (not against a backrest), or, if you'll be more comfortable, lie down in savasana. Close your eyes throughout the meditation, and bring the focus of your mind's eye to your body.

·         Breathe deeply and steadily in through your nostrils into your tummy, then into your chest and heart space then up to your shoulders and neck -- and slowly and intentionally release down in reverse order from the neck through the bottom of the tummy.  Inhale only through the nose, but you can exhale through both the nose and mouth, allowing whatever is most easeful for each breath.

·         Make the length of your breath on a 1 to 2 ratio.  So if you do a 4-count inhale, do an 8-count exhale.  Find a comfortable, sustainable pace, and don’t focus too much on the exact timing – it’s just a rough guide – but don’t forget to remind yourself either when needed.  Your body will inform you with each breath what it most needs. 

·         Once you've found a steady pace at about this 1:2 ratio, continue breathing long, deep breaths in this manner, and, as you inhale, visualize sending the breath all the way to the place in your body that needs healing and allowing that part of your body to fill up with healing energy, as your torso fills with breath.  As you exhale, visualize the body gently releasing some of the pain, resistance, anxiety,  sadness, or toxins from that part of your body, and the out-breath carrying it away, out of you.

·         At  any point, it may happen that the part of the body you are focusing upon suddenly feels much more easeful or less painful, and seems to have had ‘enough’ healing for now, and  some other part of the body will register the need for healing energy. When it happens, honor it, give thanks to that part of your body for healing itself – and with your next breath, you can shift your visualization of healing energy to the next point in your body asking for it. 

·         This works on any part of the body, not just over the parts over which you have conscious control --  even your brain, your heart, the insides of your bones, your eyes, anywhere -- you don't need to be able to consciously control the function of a part of your body in order to send healing energy there.

·         Continue for at least a few minutes, as long as you wish, up to a few hours even. 

 

If at first you can’t feel your healing energy focusing itself where you’re visualizing , don’t worry – it’s in you. This will becomes more apparent the more you relax into it.  Often, I know it’s beginning to work because I feel a mild tingling in that region of my body I’m focused on – quite literally, my cardiovascular system is relaxing in that area, allowing more blood to flow in, and with it more healing happens – more nutrients, oxygen, and white-blood cells go to that part of me -- and more red blood cells to carry away by-products and toxins.  With some practice, you will be able to focus your healing energy wherever it is most needed with ease, and the sensations will be unmistakable. 

If you’re comfortable with this simple practice, you can experiment -- as you breathe out, while keeping focused in the flow of healing energy through the body with the breath, you can experiment with different out-breaths and sounds -- nose-only, mouth-only, sighing, cooing -- whatever is most easeful, whatever provides the most release.  One that really helps me is to sigh like I've just finished a big job.

 

For those with old emotional wounds – often currently expressing themselves through depression, anxiety,  compulsivity, or trouble focusing or sleeping -- coupling this exercise with yogic postures can help accelerate the healing process tremendously.   Deep emotional releases may occur, as there are often many tensions held in the body from un-processed events over the years.  For example, bodywork healers have long known there is often tension stored in the deep musculature of the hips to do with old injuries to one’s emotional security.

 

One such experience I have had is of emotional memories coming up of the loss of my grandfather, who was I’m told was my ‘best buddy’ as a small child, until I was two years old, when my family emigrated to America.  He died shortly thereafter. I have no visual, cognitive, olfactory or other memory of my grandfather, but I did have emotional memories of my loss of him held deep within my body, that came up through the combination of this deep releasing breath and pigeon pose on my left side.  I found myself quietly crying tears I had needed to for nearly thirty years, re-connecting with the spirit of a man I had long thought I’d lost, and feeling my load in life is a good bit lighter ever since.

 

As soon as you’re just a bit comfortable with this practice and can quickly focus your healing energy  --  you can try to do it any time of day while doing anything – simply taking a deep breath and directing the healing energy to whatever part of your body may be tight or troubled.  For me, it works especially well to direct the healing energy to the front of the brain when I’m a bit mentally astir about something, and the tummy when I’m anxious.   I’ve done it often at my desk at work, in the line at the store, walking down the street, even in the middle of a challenging conversation.  As I said, it always helps me -- let me know if it helps you too!

Lessons of 2009

1. No single relationship can completely fulfill me. My fulfillment plays out through my relationships with myself, with the entire community of people in my life, and with my God -- all of whom will be with me until my last breath.  I, my God, and the people in my community may change but my relationships with each will persist to my last breath.  I can only act with the experience and hope I have gained on my path toward my fulfillment. However, its realization is out of my hands.  When it comes, it comes, and when it goes, it goes.  Pressing forward on the journey is all I can ever do.

2. However, pressing toward trying to fulfill myself through any one thing -- whether a person, an idea or ideology, a substance or behavior -- is powerful, subtle and insistent force in me and in many people. I have long known this about myself, and been vigilant of it daily, and yet that cycle arose again.  A strong, clear, convicted sense of self and of the importance of balancing all the relationships in my life toward my fulfillment is the antidote.  I have to take this antidote in every situation in which I feel that pull toward a 'fixed idea' that will 'fix' me or everything.

3. Friends are deeply important to my survival and happiness.  They are the people to whom I owe nothing, and who owe me nothing, but we, of our own free choice, give gratefully of ourselves to each other.  The time, empathy, honesty, affirmation, and strength I get and that I am able to give is the very stuff of life. May I also ever be a friend to myself.

4. 'We work that we may know the seasons.' So writes Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet.  Work, being of service to others, is my anchor, to the Earth and to the Sun, and to humanity.  Whatever storm may come, I am always held by the very fact of work, of service to others.  This remembrance of the needs of others restores my perspective, puts whatever wounds or challenges I face, into their right context, as but one small bit of a much grander flow.

5. In every crisis lies the opportunity for transformation into the being for whom it is not a crisis, but a matter of course.  If I can allow healing of whatever karma it is that causes me to view the situation as a crisis, it ceases to be one.

6. I may want a life partner, but do not need one. I can be open to the possibility, but I must be aware that in seeking it out, it is possible, in a deep but subtle way, to close myself off to the beautiful fullness of the present moment.   Let me ever remember to be here now, and allow that to make possible futures increasingly obvious.

7. I love teaching. I am a teacher. I love learning. I am a learner.  For myself.    But I am only ever, at best, a guide to others, a guide to remembrance of their own inner teacher and student. Above all else, guides exemplify. Formal instruction or direction, only if invited and only if necessary, can be but one tool of such remembrance.  However, it must be used sparingly, as there is a great danger in it of putting the student's own inner teacher and learner to sleep -- putting the application or improvement of a faculty or skill at odds with the greater development or realization of the Self.

9. Highly skilled and gifted people can be quite foolish or confused, as much as anyone can. Oftentimes moreso, because they may mistake their skill or gift for wisdom and clarity, and others who do the same may often encourage them in this mistake.  So be discerning in choosing one's guides, teachers, and examples.  Above all else, look for people with the humility to be aware of, and in contact with, their own fallibility.

10. Elegant as it may seem, lists do not have to be ten items long. But while we're at it, I suppose I also learned that I can keep writing even after a longish absence, that consistency and persistence are not the same, that both are good, and even one is far better than none.

I end with a note of reverence and gratitude to my late father.  These are his feet.