M4 : Lesson 5: Visualization tips and help with intrusive images
Please see the Module 4 Workbook for Lesson 5 materials.
Transcript
Lesson 5 visualization tips. What do I focus my visualizations on? Dealing with intrusive scary images or thoughts during visualization? And a worksheet of creative visualization ideas. ABC visualization tips.
Speak as much as you can out loud as you visualize in the present tense. Change your voice, your pitch, your tone, and your cadence to bring more vagal toning to your practice as you’re speaking. Singing and laughing in your visualizations can help induce your ventral bagel state of safety during brain rewiring practices. Focus on breathing through your heart and place a hand on your heart while visualizing sometimes to improve your heart, bring coherence, or connection during the practice. Listen to music and move your body while doing brain retraining practices for added somatic rewiring if that is within your capacity.
If music is too stimulating, you can try listening to quiet drumming or sound bowls while visualizing to help regulate your brain patterning. Make a written list or create a poster board vision board of photos or cutouts of ideas to visualize. Focus on finding images and ideas that are based on what you value in life or things on your bucket list for your life. Create a poem, a piece of art, or a dance expression based on what you feel in your brain retraining visualization practice to deepen the new associations. I used to draw images of what I imagined during my practices.
Memories. Focus on positive happy experiences. The main focus is looking for joy filled experiences where you have felt like you were at your best or an ideal happy future experience. Happy experiences can be joy filled or They can be piece filled, meaning it can be simple moments of feeling tranquil and at ease. Any image that you know has a positive association is idea.
Moments of achievement and self respect. Finding a positive sense of self is very helpful for neuroplastic change. Looking for memories where you have accomplish things that you feel proud of or things that you did that were deeply aligned with your values or even moments of serving others where you might have felt self respect as part of the experiences that you had are very helpful. Moments of reconciliation and forgiveness Some of my most profound biochemical shifts happen when I would remember times when my heart reopened after a disruption. Or I imagined my heart opening in the future.
I felt so much love and vital force flow through as I re connected with others in my visualization. Often very tear filled, these visualizations can be potent, transformational moments. We’re also doing visualization to help rewire nervous system safety. This helps you to have a felt sense of your own body. You’ll learn about this more in module 5, but holding attention to the feelings and sensations of your body as you visualize is a very important part of brain rewiring.
Also being grounded into the earth, Your energy body also sends feedback loops of safety by having an inherent sense of support and connection to the energy grid of the earth. And even if this feels like new age woo woo that I’m speaking of, I recommend envisioning a line of light connecting your heart to the earth during Part B of ABC and at the end of each visualization to help direct the flow of energy, emotions through your body. This also helps with detoxification and letting go of the past. Self versus other in your brain rewiring practice is a very important part of rewiring. Self versus other What do I mean by that?
It means that you have your own energetic space and emotional feelings and mental feelings and others have their own space. It’s about finding your boundaries. So in your brain retraining practices, take a moment to notice your thoughts and feelings versus the thoughts and feelings of others. I know for me I had a lot of enmeshed with those around me. I was very unclear on my feelings versus others, and I think it was really depleting to my overall health.
I believe this also helps our immune function to have a better sense of self versus other. I think that our immune is the learns a better sense of self versus toxin and pathogen as well. It’s just a theory, but it seems to me that when our own boundaries improve, our ability to recognize pathogens and parasites and things like that that don’t belong in our bodies also improve. So one thing I would say is that yourself also has a particular voice, your true self. There is a voice inside of us that’s other or more like our super ego or inner critic.
This is something to also notice as you’re doing brain retraining. The voice of you versus the one that might be berating you or devaluing you or perfectionistic. This is not you. So in your visualization, make sure that you let go of allegiance with anything that is not you and work on developing your voice, your sense of self, and we do this more in level 2 as well. Next, let’s talk about what this voice can lead to which is the production of scary images when you’re trying to have a good experience in your brain retraining practice and know that you will have a worksheet full of visualization ideas that I will also go over in a moment, intrusive, scary imagery, and thoughts during visualization.
Sometimes when we’re trying to visualize a positive, safe, and peaceful experience, our brain can produce the opposite especially if we have a history of limbic system overactivation. This happens because our subconscious believes we are better off and safe for being vigilant, looking for threats, and being prepared to respond to bad things. It doesn’t feel safe to let go of the danger and expect safety. It’s almost like you’re walking through a jungle and you’re not looking for the predator when your brain believes that there are predators all around you. So your brain is just trying to keep you safe, but in a very dysfunctional way.
Now the challenge I see here is that when we have allegiance with the scary images and we think we are indeed safer by scaring ourselves all day, imagining all the bad things that can happen in order to find solutions to them before they happen. Does that sound familiar to any of you? I know this is how my brain used to operate. A part of my inner psyche was afraid to imagine health. Because it didn’t want me to be disappointed.
This aspect of me was afraid to imagine almost anything good. It didn’t want me to imagine adventure someone would get hurt. But then when I understood the science of this protective response, I learned that I was indeed better, often safer, expecting good things and reprogramming my subconscious mind, and I did slowly began to teach my brain to imagine good things with more ease. One of the tips that I used when I would get intrusive images was to tell myself. This is a potentiality but it’s not a probability.
In other words, when I’d see this scary thought or whatever, say, yep. That’s a potential reality. But it’s not a probability. What did I mean by that? Well, it means that your brain is showing you one of the potential dangers in your life by saying, you know, this could happen.
And we’re saying, you know, that’s true. That’s a possible outcome. We don’t wanna resist it because what we resist persists, but instead, we’re trumping this intrusive image with logic and rationale. And by saying, that’s only a potential, but it’s highly improbable. We bring our prefrontal mind of discernment into the situation.
And we assess the likelihood of a tiger coming to eat you in your living room or whatever this scenario is. Over time, you’ll start to quickly recognize this trick of your brain, and you won’t pay attention to it anymore. Simply by knowing this is normal, and it’s just a maladaptive dress response of protection. You can move into your visualization and not give emotional allegiance to these images and messages. Yes.
Your preference might be that these images don’t come at all, and that will happen over time as you continue to practice your brain retraining Now another helpful approach is to continue with our level 2 training where you will be able to discern your voice versus the voice of that inner protective psyche much easier, and you’ll be able to grow in your ability to not pay any attention to it while doing your practices. Next up, we’ll go over our lesson 5 worksheet, which is creative visualization ideas. Again, this is attached, so I know it’s a lot of words in a slide to read, but this worksheet will help you with some visualization ideas, and definitely add to it. First of all, make a list of times when you had these different feelings that you see over here on option 1, past and future ideas. Again, I’m not gonna read through all of it.
You can read through it on your own, but make a list. And second, make a list of living words, option 2, words that you want to experience, words that mean something to you. Option 3, make a list of the actions and responsibilities that you want to practice visualizing. 4th, how creative can you get What things would you love to pretend to be if you could be anything in the world? Make a list of that too.
And option 5, again, when visualization is too hard. Make a list of things that you can focus on instead. This might be reminding yourself to go for a walk or Alternatively, it might be looking at magazines or places you wanna visit or appreciating favorite photos. And it can also be simply doing some somatic exercise that you’ll learn in module 5, but make a list for you what you can do when visualization is too hard. And lastly, write a note to yourself.
A reminder of what you can do, when or if an intrusive image appears. Make a list of things. What can I do? And remind yourself to say things like This is simply a potentiality in the realm of 1,000,000,000 of possibilities. This is not a probability.
11:25So I’m going to disregard this and continue to visualize what I want to have happened. This completes lesson 5. Next up is lesson 6. Why change is hard? Unconscious resistance to change.