Guided Imagery Exercises

Quick Stress Relief Tips…

March 1, 2020 by Carol Leave a Comment

Trying to find the time to implement stress relief techniques can be stressful itself, so I wanted to share with you some quick stress releasing ideas. It really doesn’t take long to shift your energy and calm your nervous system and access a sense of relaxation and peacefulness. Here are a few of my favorite, very quick stress releasing tricks.

#1 – EXHALE… A few focused, deep breaths can shift your mood in a moment. Exhaling slowly stimulates the Parasympathetic part of the nervous system, the part that calms and nourishes our system. Inhaling stimulates the Sympathetic part, the part that controls the Fight or Flight response. Think about the difference between a quick gasp and adrenalin surge when you are startled, vs. a long, slow sigh of relief…

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Letting Go of Our Old Stuff with Guided Imagery…

May 6, 2018 by Carol Leave a Comment

We talk about letting go in a lot of different contexts, but what does it really mean? We take stress and trauma into our body and energy field, and that’s fine, it is how we function as physical beings. Where it becomes a problem is when we keep it and carry it with us for the rest of our lives. Our traumas and experiences and beliefs – whether they are conscious, or buried deep in our unconscious – continually impact how we function in the present.

Tapping and imagery work give us simple and elegant tools to bring this stuff into our awareness and truly let it go. Not just mentally, by talking about and analyzing it, but by actually physically releasing it from our body and most importantly, from our energy field.

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Being at peace with choices…

July 20, 2017 by Carol Leave a Comment

Many of my clients are dealing with a major life change or decision, such as serious health issues and decisions about treatments, divorce or separation, relationships and marriage, decisions about having children, abortion, or adoption. It is so common to experience many different and often conflicting feelings, like anxiety, fear, anger or guilt, as well as excitement, hope, joy, relief.

Acknowledging, validating and empowering all your feelings, your inner wisdom, and ultimately your choices, allows you to find peace and healing with your decisions and with your self. But that’s not always easy. In highly personal life choices, you may often feel unsupported or invalidated by those around you who have different perspectives, and may find it difficult to talk openly about your feelings. Guided imagery meditation can be a helpful tool to give you a safe space to experience the support and validation you need and deserve.

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Tossing and turning…

May 29, 2016 by Carol 2 Comments

I can’t sleep, I just toss and turn for hours” is such a common complaint in my office these days. Thirty five years ago, when I began my private practice, I was working in New York City, and seeing a lot of people in high stress jobs. But curiously, people slept OK. Now I work in a peaceful rural setting in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York, and insomnia or other sleep disturbances are disturbingly common. What’s happening?

STRESS! That’s what’s happening. We live with a level of chronic, unremitting stress that our bodies were never designed for, and we are paying the price with stressed adrenals and elevated cortisol levels that keep us wakeful when we should be sleepy. Stress hormones were supposed to be released when the proverbial tiger was jumping out of the tree to eat us, not when we sit in traffic, worry about the economy or stress about our work, relationships or the state of the environment. Now, so many of us have constantly elevated stress hormones, and that is a real problem (for many reasons!) but especially when it’s time to wind down and relax for sleep.

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Imagery, Visualization and Kindness…

June 8, 2011 by Carol Leave a Comment

Often clients have told me that they can’t do guided imagery because they “can’t visualize.” I find it ironic, because the truth is, we are all absolutely expert at what I call ‘negative imagery.’ Sending our bodies messages that they obediently respond to; “I’m clumsy, I’m fat (and I’ll always be fat!), I have a bad back, a sensitive stomach, that medicine will make me nauseous, I’ll never heal…” the litany of negative thoughts and negative imagery goes on all day.

So what if we could harness this ability we all seem to have and creatively use it for health and healing? What if the messages were positive and health-promoting, instead of critical and judgmental? What if we were actually kind to ourselves? Somewhere, most of us got the message that criticizing and judging ourselves would somehow make us better. It’s worth asking yourself these very important questions: What aspects of yourself do you judge most harshly? Who else in your life (parents, teachers, etc.) judged you for these things in your past? Do you really think they were right? Has the judgement and criticism ever helped you?

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safe space…

August 1, 2010 by Carol Leave a Comment

And what I find particularly interesting, is how do we create safe space for our bodies?

Lately I’ve been involved in a very interesting conversation about creating safe space. It came up in talking about working with clients, but it really applies to our lives as a whole. How do we create safe space for ourselves?

I don’t mean wearing a seatbelt, and picking up broken glass before you step in it! I mean how do we give our bodies the opportunity to relax, to feel the sense of safety that allows us to let go of the stress response that keeps us vigilant, ready for danger, ready for confrontation, or ready to run. How do we allow our bodies to be at peace?

So many of us walk around in a perpetual state of fight or flight readiness, with stress hormones coursing through our veins, muscles tense, sympathetic nervous system on alert. If your mother was severely tense or anxious when she was pregnant with you, you were bathed in her stress hormones, and born accustomed to a high level in your bloodstream.

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