Imagery For Relaxation

Give your mind positive images and caring, encouraging self-talk, and change worrying thoughts to helpful healing thoughts. Positive images raise energy levels. Negative images produce gloomy moods and tired muscles. To be able to use the mind effectively it needs to be quietened, you cannot relax if your mind is jumping hurdles.

Form a clear image of a pleasant scene. Include images from other senses. If everyday thoughts come into your mind, just note them mentally and let them pass, don’t hang onto them, bring your attention back to the chosen image.

Include images from all of the senses:-
See the shapes and colours
Smell the scent of flowers
Feel the grass beneath your feet
Hear the birds singing in the trees
Taste the salt air on your lips

1. Sunny beach
2. Field of wild flowers
3. Cool forest
4. Clear stream
5. Sloping hill
6. A vase of flowers
7. A picture or a painting
8. Trees blowing gently in the wind.
9. A favourite room in your house.
10. A garden you know well.
11. Go for a walk in your mind.
12. A harbour with boats on the water.
13. Use your ears and listen to the sounds around you.
14. You are on a mountaintop on a tropical island. Below there is a tropical rain forest, The morning rains are ending. In the distance there is a white, sandy beach and a palm tree.

15. Imagine a tree filled with song birds. The birds fly away from the top branches, then the next branches, and so on until there is just one bird left. Concentrate on this bird until it flies off, then look at the branch it was sitting on and focus on just one lovely pale green leaf.

These are only suggestions. If these do not work for you, make up your own scene or try an alternative method of relaxation.