Thursday, 18 October 2012

Creative Visualization and Reverse Engineering.


That’s a big headline.

Shakti Gawain has written some beautiful books and one of them is “Creative Visualization”. It is one of my all time favourite and if I do not have new book to read before sleep, I would read this book, few pages at least, before falling asleep.

I believe that mind is the most powerful asset we have and we can control the mind and create happiness or unhappiness. I think it is possible to train the mind to visualize good things happening in life and make those things actually happen. The obstacles on the way are our sub-conscious doubt. Therefore, even while practising creative visualization, we sometimes do not really believe in the power of the mind and fail to achieve what we have set out to achieve. Kind of self defeating cycle.

For many years now I have made a combo of creative visualization and meditation. And I use this combo method to reverse engineer my body. But before I go any further, few lines about meditation is in order.

At a basic level, meditation is simple. Just control the mind and make it focus on certain things. Stop the monkey from jumping around. But problem faced by most of us while doing meditation is, we find it is extremely difficult to concentrate on something which we cannot visualize. Practitioners of meditation tells us, concentrate on your breathing. Yes, that’s how it should be done. But can you visualize breathing? So after sometime the mind starts to wander off.

In devising the combo of creative visualization and meditation, I started with something which we know intimately and always love it. That is our body.

The process then becomes simple enough. Lie down in a peaceful place, without too much noise.
Close your eyes and start visualizing your body as if you are seeing yourself in a mirror. We all look at ourselves in the mirror, spend countless hours praising ourselves. Only, this time, see yourself in your mind.
Start with your toe.
And say in your mind: My toes are relaxed, my toes are relaxed, my toes are relaxed. All the time, visualizing the toes.

Move on to heels, say in your mind my heels are relaxed few time while visualizing.

And the process continues till you have visualized all parts of your body relaxing them, giving them strength.

Visualize your whole body as relaxed, covered with light and chant in your mind “I am happy, I am relaxed, I am peaceful”.

Before I started doing this, my blood pressure used to be 150/100. After a year or so, it is 80/60. The health care professionals like nurses get alarmed when they take my blood pressure. So I can guarantee you that this system works.

After all, there is no powerful medicine to heal your body than your mind.

2 comments:

  1. Great post. I have tried this method of "letting go" when I wake in the middle of the night and can't sleep. Thanks for the reminder. It is very hard for me to let go of my moving mind. How long did you do this until it became easy? I do not do it on a constant basis so I can't say if it worked for me. I do know it changes my mind flow so I can relax.
    Thanks,

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You have to do it consistently, till it becomes effortless and 2nd nature. We surrender the control to the monkey mind too easily. Get that control back. You can.

      Delete