A visualization exercise

The following visualization exercise for healing is from W. Brugh Joy’s book Joy’s Way: A Map for the Transformational Journey, pp. 150–154. Joy recommends that the following six steps are practiced three times a day—in the morning, at midday, and at the evening:

1. Relax as completely as possible. In the end, all tension in the body must be released. One should feel the body to be relaxed and not just imagine it. If you feel pain in this process, don’t resist it. Relax into the painful areas. If you don’t try to push it away, it will not push back, and you may find that it diminishes by itself.
2. Recapture a memory of an inspirational experience. Begin to flood the body with a sense of well-being. Naturally and spontaneously envision health and a sense of vitality. The sense of relaxation and well-being increase the body’s defenses and sense of integration. Love, happiness, and a sense of fulfillment are keys to invoking well-beingness.
3. Make all the feeling sensations of that inspiring memory present in the body. Guide the awareness into that space in consciousness that produces a sense of well-beingness in the present moment. The memory must be transposed to the present moment, and its feeling tones must be fully activated in the body. Combine the feeling tones with imagery.
4. Know that this feeling and this state of consciousness are supportive to the healing process of the body. Feel it counteract the disease or stimulate the healing of any problem in the body. Focus the sense of well-beingness directly into the problem area or areas. Don’t think it. Feel it! Trust that your consciousness will carry this healing sensation to every cell of your body that is not healthy and vital.
5. Visualize the disease actually improving, becoming less and less intense and finally being replace by normal healthy tissue. Don’t worry how this process is to be accomplished. The body knows how to eliminate disease, even if your conscious awareness does not. Just see and feel the disease disappearing, and see and feel healthy tissue filling in where the disease was. Your body will cure you.
6. Visualize yourself as perfectly well and engaged in a future activity. Use great detail. Feel your sense of well-beingness, and feel the excitement of your total recovery from the illness. Really get into it! Conclude this exercise with a deep sense of your wholeness.

This visualization exercise can be fatiguing. The last three steps, especially the final one, must be accomplished with the same energy as the first three. Above all — enjoy the exercise!