Guided Imagery is a gentle but powerful technique that is used for all sorts of reasons. It is gentle in that it takes place within a relaxed, altered state of consciousness.  It is powerful due to the mind's amazing ability to viscerally experience through imagery. 

 

For example, close your eyes and imagine a bright yellow lemon sitting on your kitchen counter.  Now imagine cutting the lemon in half. Notice the droplets of juice as they glisten on the pulp. Now pick up one half of the lemon and squeeze some of its juice into your mouth....    For most of us, this simple guided imagery will cause the mouth to water, just as if you were tasting the sourness of the actual lemon.  

 

It is this power in the imaginal process that inspires sports coaches to use it to prepare athletes for competitions, and health practitioners to enable patients to boost their immune systems. Psychotherapists use it to help clients tap into an internal reservoir of intuition, creativity and compassionate wisdom, that may be unnoticed by the linear, rational part of the mind.