Guided Imagery: Benefits & Techniques of Guided Imagery Meditation

What Is Guided Imagery?

Guided imagery is a type of meditation for anxiety in which a person creates a mental image of a specific object or experience and uses the body’s five senses to calm their mind. It can be used to manage stress, depression, anxiety, and physical pain. It can also be used to improve one’s relationships and self-confidence. If you struggle to picture anything at all, you may have aphantasia, an inability to form mental images that makes imagery-based practices harder.

Common uses of guided imagery include:

• Promote relaxation
• Reduce anxiety
• Lower blood pressure
• Reach weight loss goals
• Assist with quitting smoking
• Pain management
• Promote healing
• Improves sleep

Examples of Guided Imagery Techniques

Guided imagery visualization is not only used for relaxation but also to help you visualize and strengthen positive outcomes in certain situations. You can use it to reduce stress and anxiety, but also to achieve specific goals. Using your five senses to make them as vivid as possible will make these visualizations more powerful.

Examples of guided imagery techniques include:

• Imagining a pleasant scene in a favorite location to relieve stress or reduce anxiety
• Using visualization techniques to see yourself crossing the finish line or winning an athletic competition
• Visualizing a calming, cooling colored mist enveloping areas of pain
• Envision yourself in the perfect setting to have a good night’s sleep
• Imagining yourself up on stage, with a round of applause after speaking confidently to boost your self-esteem
• Visualizing a protective forcefield around yourself to keep yourself safe or protect your energy
• Imagining yourself achieving a goal with your desired outcome

How to Learn Guided Imagery

Guided imagery can be practiced on your own or with others. It’s used in hospitals, therapy, support groups, and yoga classes for anxiety. It can be a great way to ease into meditation because you’ll have a script to listen to and follow. You don’t need any special training to get started and can use a meditation app, such as Calm App, to guide you.

Common ways to learn guided imagery include:

• Instructor-led classes: Joining a meditation or yoga class can teach you how to incorporate guided imagery into your mindfulness routine. Instructor classes are helpful for debriefing as well if needed, and understanding what works best for you and your imagination.
• Audio recordings: Using a meditation app, YouTube, or downloaded recordings, you can use these as a guide on your phone, tablet, or computer to guide you through the visualization.
• Creating your own recordings: By creating your own recordings, you can control the scenario and lead yourself through it in a way that’s most helpful to you.
• Using your inner voice: You have a built-in guide within you- your inner voice! Use your own inner voice to direct your guided imagery for you.

Benefits of Guided Imagery Meditation

Even brief meditation has been shown to have significant positive impacts on one’s mood, memory, attention, and emotional regulation.¹ Guided imagery is a powerful tool and can disrupt patterns of rumination to increase your resilience toward stress and anxiety. You can also use guided imagery instead of movement to boost your mental health if you have physical limitations.

Benefits of guided imagery include:

1. Relieves Pain

Research has shown that meditation can decrease pain intensity.² One study discovered that long-term meditation affects the aspect of self-reported pain that relates to the feeling of discomfort, with participants being able to notice the pain without dwelling on it.²

2. Decreases Anxiety

Using guided imagery can help decrease anxiety and fear, as it engages the body’s relaxation response. Using nature-specific guided imagery has been shown to decrease anxious symptoms.³ Guided imagery can distract you from the worries and fears that come with anxiety and bring you back to the present moment, where you’re safe.

3. Relieves Stress

One study revealed that using guided imagery decreased reports of cognitive and emotional stress, along with promoting a lower heart rate and lower levels of physical symptoms of stress.⁴ The more you practice guided imagery meditation, the stronger your stress reduction will become. If you are chronically stressed, you might find it difficult to find time or engage in meditation. Still, even a brief guided imagery visualization can benefit your mental and physical health.

4. Decreases Depression

Repeated guided imagery has demonstrated significantly increased comfort and a decrease in depression over time in one study.⁵ Practicing guided imagery can lessen ruminative thoughts, a key symptom of depression, and assist with diminishing dysfunctional beliefs about oneself. Meditation can change one’s brain functioning and help relieve symptoms of clinical depression, even in those with major depressive disorder.⁶

5. Improves Sleep

Chronic stress, physical problems, and the busyness of our day-to-day lives can make sleeping difficult. When we’re in bed trying to fall asleep, we’re processing the day’s events, and our intrusive thoughts can intensify. Guided imagery can allow you to fall into a state of deep relaxation, helping you fall asleep and stay asleep.

6. Assists with Quitting Smoking

Guided imagery meditation also shows promise as a technique for smoking cessation.⁷ Implementing guided imagery visualizations can help you notice when you have cravings to smoke and remind you that you don’t necessarily need to act on them. Stress is also a major trigger for smoking, and with regular practice, guided imagery can make stress more manageable.

How to Do Guided Imagery Meditation

Guided imagery visualization is easily accessible to anyone. You don’t need special equipment, and although you can take classes or practice this technique in therapy, it can be done anywhere with no extra financial cost. The more you practice this technique, the more you will benefit from it and can go into a deeper meditative state more quickly.

Steps for practicing guided imagery meditation include:

1. Sit or lie down in a comfortable area free from distractions.
2. Take several deep breaths and use diaphragmatic breathing or the 4-7-8 breathing technique to become relaxed.
3. Set an intention for how you want to feel afterward, such as calm or free of worries.
4. Begin to bring up the image of a place where you feel completely relaxed, such as the beach.
5. Add details to what your place looks like – At the beach, what colors do you see? Are there people or animals around? Is it bright or dark?
6. Imagine any smells associated with your image – for example, saltwater or sunscreen at the beach.
7. Visualize what you could touch, where in your body you feel these things, and what emotions you feel- for example, the warm sun on your face and the grainy sand on your feet.
8. Imagine the sounds you’d hear in this place – At the beach, are the ocean waves crashing, or is there a soft breeze?
9. Envision how the place would taste – At the beach, is it salty or sweet?
10. Continue with this image for as long as you would like.
11. When you’re ready, orient back to your space and journal any insights. Notice how you felt before and how you feel after.

Guided Imagery Tips for Beginners

Guided imagery looks different for everyone. Find an experience or place that feels calming and easy to visualize. If it’s a place you’ve been before, you can also look at a picture of it if that’s helpful. The more vivid the images, the more effective this practice will become.

It can feel overwhelming to start a new practice, but it is easy to learn with practice. The benefits of guided visualization can be life-changing, and all you need to do is make the choice to start.

Here are some tips for beginners doing guided imagery:

• Choose a quiet place with no interruptions
• Do not rush the process
• Be gentle with yourself
• There is no right or wrong way to practice
• Start small
• Make the experience resonate with you

How to Do Guided Imagery Meditation With a Recording

It can be difficult to completely empty our minds and try to come up with a relaxing and vivid image. You can use a meditation app like Headspace or search for guided imagery meditation on YouTube to use as a guide when practicing visualization.

When first getting started, it may be helpful to use a YouTube video to watch along with the audio to help you get a deeper visualization. You can search by category and length of time and can find unlimited kinds of guided imagery, from nature scenes to scripts to walk you through placing first in a marathon. Whatever your goal, there is likely a recording to support you.

How to Do Guided Imagery Meditation With a Therapist

Guided imagery is often used in therapies for stress and to manage symptoms of other mental health disorders, such as anxiety and depression. If you’ve experienced trauma, working with a therapist is important to ensure that meditation is done slowly and in a safe, contained environment. Guided imagery is used in many types of therapy, such as somatic experiencing, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

You can find a therapist who uses guided imagery using an online therapist directory and searching for meditation or other modalities that incorporate meditation. It’s possible for therapists using online therapy platforms to use guided imagery in their sessions, making it more accessible, and you’re also able to practice this technique in your own space where you feel most comfortable.

In My Experience

Guided imagery can seem “simple,” but it is a powerful technique. Using guided imagery has helped me manage my own anxiety and heal my burnout. I use guided imagery with most of my clients, especially when preparing for EMDR, to strengthen their stress response and engage their parasympathetic nervous system (the body’s relaxation pathway). Guided imagery can be as short or as long as you’d like, and adding this to your self-care routine can help you become more present and practice self-compassion.