Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
If your imagination runs away with you, use it rather than fight it. Guided imagery gives a vivid mind somewhere to go.
Being able to disappear into a scene is a real ability, even when it has mostly got you into trouble at school and in meetings. A recording that walks you through a place in detail puts that ability to work. The voice matters more than people expect: if a narrator irritates you the practice will not land, so try several and drop the ones that grate without treating it as another thing you failed at.
Qur’an and Sunnah
He shaped you, formed you well (Quran 40:64). The mind you were given, including the part that wanders off into pictures, was part of that shaping.
ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِي جَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلۡأَرۡضَ قَرَارࣰ ا وَٱلسَّمَآءَ بِنَآءࣰ وَصَوَّرَكُمۡ فَأَحۡسَنَ صُوَرَكُمۡ وَرَزَقَكُم مِّنَ ٱلطَّيِّبَٰتِۚ ذَٰلِكُمُ ٱللَّهُ رَبُّكُمۡۖ فَتَبَارَكَ ٱللَّهُ رَبُّ ٱلۡعَٰلَمِينَ
It is God who has given you the earth for a dwelling place and the heavens for a canopy. He shaped you, formed you well, and provided you with good things. Such is God your Lord, so glory be to Him, the Lord of the Worlds
Qur’an 40:64read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A randomised experiment comparing mindful breathing, progressive muscle relaxation and loving kindness practice found they did not all do the same thing, with mindful breathing producing the most decentering. Different practices work along different routes, so a poor fit with one says little about the next. That study did not test guided imagery, so read this as a reason to keep sampling rather than as evidence for the technique itself.
Feldman G, Greeson J, Senville J. (2010). Differential effects of mindful breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and loving-kindness meditation on decentering and negative reactions to repetitive thoughts.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
It is easier to point a strong habit somewhere useful than to shut it down.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
If you are going to try a mindfulness course, give it the full eight weeks before deciding. Expect a real but moderate change rather than a different life.
Four steps you can do in ten seconds in the middle of anything: stop, take one breath, look at what is actually happening, then carry on.
Offer any movement in three sizes: small, medium and full. Let people take the one that fits today, and let them change their mind halfway through.