The Healing Power Of Visualization

This may be one of my shorter blog posts, however the topic is huge in terms of potential.

For most of my life, I have been deeply involved in sports and athletics. I really enjoy pushing myself and my body to see what I can do. This goes all the way back to my beginning study and practice of martial arts when I was 8 years old.In school I played tennis at the pretty high level. The competition was fierce. I had a fast and powerful first serve. But the accuracy was terrible. I tried many approaches to try and increase my first serve accuracy beyond about 40%. Nothing worked. I was frustrated and so was my coach.

Then my Dad came up with a brilliant suggestion: He suggested I use visualization.

Use a specific image to help me direct the ball where I wanted it to go.

We came up with a very specific visualization that I remember clearly to this day, more than 5 decades later. My Dad suggested that I visualize a giant funnel, floating in the air in front of me. I would see myself hitting the ball into the big end of the funnel. I would see the small end of the funnel touching the court exactly where I wanted the ball to go.

It took me a few days to get the hang of this. But once I did, the power of this technique was amazing. Within a week of working at this, instead of 40% of my first serves going in, I was close to 80%. Wow! And I was hitting the ball harder than ever.

This was a valuable life-lesson for me, which I have never forgotten. Since then, I have used visualization to help me with complete challenging tasks and acquire or improve difficult skills, and better achieve even specific outcomes.

Here is another example from 29 years ago: On August 7, 1989, I was hit by a car and very severely injured. Following the I flew through the air for just over 75 feet. I guess the flight was OK, but the landing not so much. The main bone in my right leg below the knee, the tibia, was shattered into literally several hundred pieces.

My injuries were scattered throughout my body, and were so extreme that I was not expected to survive. I even got a free trip down the white tunnel of light as the amazing trauma team worked to try to save my life. It took about 6 weeks for me to stabilize to the point where it did not seem so likely that my body would die from the injuries.

But then I had a new challenge – not just trying to stay alive. The doctors wanted to amputate my right leg. They insisted that it was hopeless and that it posed a grave risk of killing me because the of the infection that raged through it. Further, they said since it could not be repaired and was not going to heal, why not just remove it and eliminate that threat. From a purely medical point of view, I suppose they were right.

But I knew that I wanted to keep my leg, no matter the risk. So, what to do to at least begin to heal it?

I used visualization. I imagined a tiny construction crew with tiny tools and miniature scaffolding and everything else that might be present on a complex construction project. Several times each day, I would spend 30 minutes or so, with my eyes closed and create the “mind movie” of this internal construction project. In my mind’s eye, I would watch all the workers, scrambling up and down the scaffolding, carrying tools and materials and working as a team to put my leg back together again.

I even had an imaginary cleanup crew, getting rid of the debris and especially removing and disposing of the bacteria that had been putting my life at risk.

The visualizations were powerful and I believe crucial to my healing. It took quite a long time, and by themselves, they were not enough. It still took 5 major surgeries to re-construct my leg. But the visualizations helped to turn the tide enough to demonstrate to the doctors that the healing was even possible. That is why they were willing to try. I also believe that without the visualizations and the power that they brought to my healing, I would have lost my leg.

Visualizations are one of the most effective tools we have for self-healing. In contrast to many other modalities, they cost nothing, and yet they can make a huge difference.

In order to be effective, visualizations need to be practiced frequently and on a consistent basis, at least until the healing is complete. To make them powerful, make them as real as possible. If you use the construction crew model as I did in the example above, bring as many sensory elements as you can into your visualization. In mine, I could hear the miniature construction workers talking and laughing. I could hear the sound of the tools. I tried to feel the weight of the scaffolding, leaning against the part of my leg they were working on. I noticed the glare of the sunlight reflecting off of their metal hard hats. The more real you make your visualizations the more effective and powerful they will be.

Here is another example: Years ago, I worked with Margie, a woman dealing with a challenging breast cancer. We did everything we could on the biological and even the emotional level. We fixed up her diet, balanced her hormones, built up the immune system and much more. Yet the cancer stubbornly stuck around.

That is until we started using visualizations. She loved to go to the beach as a kid. But as an adult had been too busy to go very often. And since she had gotten sick, was really not able to go to the beach. So, I had her visualize being at the beach, lying on a very nice towel, being bathed by the warm sunlight. I had her focus on hearing the sound of the waves, coming in and going out, hear the gulls calling, listen to people talking as they walked along the beach. I even had her notice the small droplets of sweat running down her armpits as she lay under the warm sun.

Within a month the cancer was about 50% gone. Within 3 months it was gone completely. A few years ago, she told me that she believed that without the visualization she would not have gotten well. She still does this visualization whenever she feels that she needs some healing.

To your great health!

Jeff Bell