Welcome to the Imagery Wayside!  No matter what psychospiritual path you have chosen, imagery can enhance your journey by facilitating healing, personal growth, creativity, and spiritual development.  Whether you are just curious, newly involved in utilizing imagery, or a seasoned practitioner, you will find here a new imagery script (replaced every three months) and special information about the imagery technique called SPIRITED IMAGINATION.

 

Your imagination is a powerful force in your conscious and unconscious life.  For a time its importance was much discounted by the scientific world but it is now widely respected by medical and psychological practitioners as an effective tool for treatment and health maintenance.  Increasingly, its transcendental and transpersonal qualities are being explored for their spiritual benefits.
 

 STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IMAGERY

 

Imagery, with its strong link to shamanism, may be humankind's most ancient approach to healing sickness and connecting with the spiritual world.

 

Imagery is an important dynamic in thinking and remembering.

 

Imagery, often equated with visualization, can take place in any sensory modality, i.e., hearing,  taste, smell, touch, inner bodily sensations.

 

Many excellent imagists simply "feel" their images in a non-sensory way.

 

Imagery is the language of the body.  Bodily systems respond to imagery much more intensely than to verbalization.

 

When deeply involved in imaging, you are in an altered or non-ordinary state of consciousness.

 

Guided imagery, in which one person (often a therapist) suggests certain images to relax or in some other way enhance another's well-being, is a popular device but by no means the only format for using imagery therapeutically.

 

Psychotherapist Norman Middleton has been teaching people how to use imagery to help themselves for over twenty-five years.  On this web site he has posted an imagery script which you can put into a tape recorder of have someone else read to you.  If you are new to imagery, it will give you a mild taste of the imaging process.  If you are already a practitioner, you may want to add it to your scripts.

 

You will also find pages describing two books about imagery (with excerpts) by Norman Middleton.   A final page outlines his professional qualifications and describes workshop presentations which he offers to lay and professional groups.