Visualization of Cellular Healing

When you go to a doctor, s/he prescribes a medication for you to take, or a treatment you will undergo, your body starts the healing process before the medicine is in your system or the exercise or surgical procedure has taken place. For most people, just seeing a doctor gives confidence that healing will occur. Depending on the patient’s cultural background, this is true whether the physician is a neurosurgeon at the Mayo Clinic or a tribal witch doctor. This is attributable to an extraordinary healing ability of the body by a process known as the placebo effect. What happens is that healing starts when you believe it will occur. Your mind buys into it and your body makes it happen. The great physician and humanitarian, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, gives us this insight – “The witch doctor succeeds for the same reason all the rest of us (medical doctors) succeed. Each patient carries his own doctor inside himself. They come to us not knowing that truth. We are at our best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to go to work.”

Our body is a fantastic chemical factory that is capable of seemingly unbelievable things. For instance, there is the case of a 95-pound woman lifting up a two-ton car to save the life of her child who was trapped under its weight. This was due to a gigantic adrenaline release. As impressive a display of adaptability to a need this is, our body is capable of doing even more seemingly miraculous feats. Perhaps the most impressive of all is its’ ability to heal itself – of anything!

There are several methods dealing with visualizing healing meditatively at the cellular level. To begin any of them, use the position, breathing pattern, physical relaxing technique, and emptying of mental and emotional reactivity that you have found best prepares you to fill with the object of your meditation. Try each of these ways separately, and try combining them until your healing has occurred. This may take mere seconds, or decades, as has whatever happened to you that now needs a change back to wellness.

1. In your minds eye, see aberrant or inflamed cells changing into healthy cells. If there is a damaged or corrupted area within the cells, visualize them changing and becoming free from injury. See your whole body becoming pure. Visualize yourself as perfectly healthy.

2. There are cells within your body that act as protectors and actually attack and kill damaging invader cells. See these warrior cells destroy those cells that could cause you injury. See your whole body becoming pure. Visualize yourself as perfectly healthy.

3. There are cells within your body that eat threatening cells. See them devour the harm causing structures. See your whole body becoming pure. Visualize yourself as perfectly healthy.

4. Visualize groups of healthy cells combining to replace any damaged areas of your body. For instance, if you have suffered a broken bone, see the cells come together in healing, bonding together to reform a complete structure. Visualize the bone as perfectly healthy.

5. Visualize healing energy filling you. The energy can be felt to originate from a higher power that gifts you with healing. See this holy energy filling and changing your cellular structure to a perfect condition. Watch as the specific organ, body system, or part heals. See your whole body becoming pure. Visualize yourself as perfectly healthy.

6. Visualize yourself standing, sitting, or prostrating in front of your personal deity. See your deity heal you by touch. See your deity heal you by sending divine energy to you. See your deity end your suffering. See your whole body becoming pure. Visualize yourself as perfectly healthy.

7. Get an anatomy book and study the body structure you want healing to take place in. Look at how the part appears when in a state of perfection. When doing a healing visualization meditation, see your body part as being in this state of perfection.

8. If you are suffering from pain, see in your minds eye, as clearly as possible, the nerve endings that are in the specific area of your discomfort, or all of the nerve endings in your entire body. With every inhalation, feel and visualize healing air flowing from a higher power and enter you and fill your lungs. See your red blood cells absorb the air through the walls of your lungs and flow through your arteries spreading healing oxygen to every cell in your body. Witness the inflamed nerve endings become soothed and witness your body start to glow with wellbeing and serenity.

Perhaps the most important suggestion of all is to sincerely want the healing to take place and believe that it will occur. The Meditation Society of America doesn’t favor one religion over another, or even suggest that one has to believe in God at all for the benefits of meditation to help you, but we do sometimes quote from religious sources. In this case, we cite the Bible – Mark 11:24 “…what things ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”

This 2000-year-old statement is in perfect accord with the most cutting edge scientific and medical understanding of the 21st century. To quote Dr. Herbert Benson of the Harvard Medical School, “We know that belief can lead to healing or at least improvement in 50 percent to 90 percent of diseases, including asthma, angina pectoris, and skin rashes, many forms of pain, rheumatoid arthritis, congestive heart failure. They’re all influenced by belief. We in medicine have made fun of belief by calling it the “placebo effect,” or insisting that “It’s all in your head.” Yet, belief is one of the most powerful healing tools we have in our therapeutic arsenal.”

Healing Meditation Technique Using the Breath

One of our personal favourites. This meditation helps you to relax quickly and deeply and it has a very positive effect on your health and vitality.

In this exercise, our breathing is our object of meditation. We try to focus on the rhythm of our breathing. In the beginning, also dependent on your air capacity, we take ten seconds to breathe in. Then we hold our breath for ten seconds and we take ten minutes to breathe out. If you can do this easily you can take 15 or 20 seconds for each stage of your breathing. We count in our mind and concentrate on our breathing. If possible we breathe through our nose and we try to let each breathing in and each breathing out last exactly ten seconds that we count from one to ten. Start your breathing in from your belly, then send the air to your ribs and diaphragm and ultimately to the upper part of your chest. When you breathe out you do the same, but in the reverse order. When you hold your breath you can concentrate on your navel or any sensations you might feel in your body. Every time our mind wanders away we return to our breathing. The highest aim you can reach after a while is being able to stick to a cycle of 20, 20, 20 seconds.

This is not only a good meditation but it is also an excellent exercise to improve your breathing and to enlarge your air capacity.

In the beginning it is possible that you will experience some dizziness or other sensations in your body as a result of this exercise. This is normal, but if the twinklings start to bother you either do things more slowly or do the ordinary count your breaths meditation. You can do this meditation quite well while you are walking. Do not get discouraged if your mind wanders away all the time or if you find it difficult to breathe in and out in the right rhythm. If you find ten seconds too hard you can also do this exercise in a cycle of 5 or 8 seconds until things go more easily. For many people it is quite hard at first to control their breathing and therefore this is an exercise in which in the beginning focussing is easy because doing the exercise well requires a lot of concentration. Even if you find the exercise easy try to keep concentrating on your breathing to make this not only a good breathing exercise, but also a good meditation exercise.

As is the case with all meditation exercises the essence remains being well focussed and present. In the course of time you will certainly become better and better at focussing your attention on your breathing and to make your meditation deeper. As is the case with every form of meditation we try not to judge, we try not to get angry when things do not go so well and we try not to be too goal-oriented. Let us begin!

1. Sit down, close your eyes and concentrate on your breathing. Be aware of every breathing in and breathing out.
2. Breathe automatically and freely, do not try to control your breathing.
3. Pay attention to how the air slowly passes through your nose, fills up your lungs and goes out again.
4. If, after taking a few breaths, you feel fine and at ease you start to count.
5. Breathe in steadily over ten counts.
6. Breathe in, one…., two….,three….,four….,five….,six….,seven….,eight….,nine….,ten….
7. Hold your breath and concentrate on your navel or the point between your eyes, also called your third eye. one…., two….,three….,four….,five….,six….,seven….,eight….,nine….,ten….
8. Breathe out steadily over ten counts
9. Breathe out, one…., two….,three….,four….,five….,six….,seven….,eight….,nine….,ten…
10. Breathe in from your belly, to your ribs and diaphragm and ultimately to the upper part of your chest.
11. Breathe in, one…., two….,three….,four….,five….,six….,seven….,eight….,nine….,ten….
12. Hold your breath one…., two….,three….,four….,five….,six….,seven….,eight….,nine….,ten….
13. If you start to think of something else instead of your breathing or you start to feel something else instead of your breathing, be aware of this and just return to your breathing.
14. Breathe out from your chest, to the diaphragm and then from your belly.
15. Breathe out, one…., two….,three….,four….,five….,six….,seven….,eight….,nine….,ten…
16. Notice the sensations of your breathing. De depth, the speed, see if your breathing becomes increasingly slower and quieter, if your breathing more and more goes to your stomach or your chest, if your body becomes more relaxed through your breathing, …etc
17. Breathe in, one…., two….,three….,four….,five….,six….,seven….,eight….,nine….,ten.
18. Hold your breath. one…., two….,three….,four….,five….,six….,seven….,eight….,nine….,ten….
19. Breathe out one…., two….,three….,four….,five….,six….,seven….,eight….,nine….,ten ….
20. If all of a sudden you notice twinklings in your body or relaxation reactions in your muscles, that is all right…..just observe and return to your breathing.
21. If the twinklings become unpleasant or you become a little dizzy slow down your speed of breathing or pass on to the easier count your breaths meditation.
22. Continue doing this in a steady rhythm until the time you have set apart for your meditation is over.
23. All right, now slowly take your thoughts back to the rest of your body and the sounds in the room. Move a little, stretch your muscles a little and open your eyes.
24. Finished!

Bodyscan Meditation Technique

Here our body is our object of meditation. It is an excellent exercise, derived from the world of yoga, meant to relax our body and enjoin silence on our mind….

The body scan is an excellent exercise that is often done at the end of a yoga session, but for many people it also forms part of their daily meditation exercises. The exercise is also often done (sometimes under a different name) as a relaxation exercise in warming ups, in stress management courses, in psychiatric therapies, etcetera. It is an excellent exercise for begin-ners. If we do this exercise in a lying posture we prevent the kind of problems that we might encounter while sitting. For beginners it is therefore advisable to do this exercise while lying.

In this meditation our body is our object of meditation. We make a journey through our body in which we flood every part of it with attention. Every time when our mind strays away we draw it back to the body part that it should be focussed on. In this way we train our powers of focus and concentration. During this exercise we also try to be aware of and to feel all physi-cal sensations in our body. We become more and more aware of which parts of our body are less relaxed and we become more and more conscious of the effects of relaxation on our mus-cles, our posture and our organs. In this way we develop the kind of body awareness and the kind of sensitivity for our physical sensations that many of us have lost during our lifetime. We often hear that as a result of this exercise and our breathing exercises many people begin to appreciate, accept and experience their body in a more positive manner. If you do this exer-cise more regularly you will notice that your physical sensations vary every time and that you can control these sensations better and better. If you experience problems during this medita-tion because, to give an example, you have difficulty feeling certain body parts or you be-come aware that certain body parts cause pain, the best thing to do is to accept these feelings and to try not to be bothered by them.

In short: if we do this exercise regularly then it will help us to experience deep levels of re-laxation. It will help us to achieve a higher level of body awareness and body acceptance. It will teach us to deal in a better way with physical sensations and aches. And last but not least: the exercise will improve our power of concentration and our self confidence. As is the case with every form of meditation we should try not to judge ourselves, we should try not to get angrier with ourselves if things do not work out so well and we should not be too goal-oriented. Every time you breathe out you should try to relax the part of the body you are fo-cussing on. Let us begin.

Exercise: Bodyscan Meditation

1. Sit down or lie down, close your eyes and concentrate on your breathing.
2. Be aware of every breathing in and breathing out. Let your breathing be something automatic, do not try to control it.
3. Observe how the air slowly passes in through your nose, fills up your lungs and goes out again.
4. If, after a few breaths, you feel at ease and fine we start with our scan.
5. Direct your attention to your forehead. Try to feel the skin, try to be aware of any twin-kling or tension that might be there and relax by means of breathing.
6. If you do not feel anything at all, that is all right.
7. Allow yourself to feel nothing at all.
8. Do the same with your nose, your ears, your eyes, your eyebrows, your jaw, your mouth, your lips and the skin of your face and the back of your head. Feel how the mouth and the jaw relax and how the eyes sink back into their sockets.
9. Then direct your attention to your neck, your collar bones, your shoulders, your left upper arm, your right upper arm, your elbows, your lower arms, your hands and fin-gers. Concentrate on each of these areas one by one, both left and right.
10. Every time your attention wanders off, do not panic but calmly return to the area where you had last been.
11. Again: try to feel and to experience all sensations.
12. If you can do this, try with every breathing out to relax the area that you are concen-trated on.
13. Direct your attention to your chest, your diaphragm, your belly muscles, your upper back, your lower back, your spine.
14. Be aware of how your breathing, perhaps also your body posture, changes as a result of the relaxation. Does not your body feel different already?
15. Go on in this manner and direct your attention to your pelvis, your sex organs, your but-tocks, your two upper legs, your knees, your lower legs, your ankles, feet and toes. Take your time!
16. Notice the differences between the various areas. Feel the twinklings in your body, feel how your muscles get more and more relaxed and observe which body parts are rela-tively hard to relax.
17. Let yourself become extremely heavy. Now you are totally relaxed and at ease.
18. When you have refreshed and relaxed your entire body, return for a while to an area in your body that felt relatively tense. Concentrate wholly on that particular area and try to make it feel relaxed. Do you feel the difference? Does it call forth certain thoughts or emotions? Observe and let things go.
19. Finally: tighten all your muscles for three seconds and do this twice and after each tight-ening let things go on a breath.
20. All right, slowly take your attention back to the rest of your body and the noises in the room. Move a little, stretch your muscles a bit and open your eyes.
21. Finished!