Imagination
Happy first new moon of the new year! *deep breath* Ah! Doesn’t a new beginning feel sweet? That energy of a fresh start can be light and expansive.
The start of my new year began with lots of rest (like, so much rest I was sick of sitting on the couch! It was glorious) and then a whirlwind of activity. I didn’t feel like I landed in my “normal” routine post-holiday until January 13th and by then my brain was telling me that the month was almost half over. It felt like I missed the start of the year! Which is silly because the calendar year is a human made structure and thank goodness for the moon cycle, which gives us fresh starts frequently and often!
Last weekend, thanks in part to the snowstorm that visited Minnesota, I finally cracked open my copy of The Body Keeps the Score that’s been sitting on the pile of books by my bed for almost exactly a year (I discovered early on that it was not a pre-bedtime book and never moved it to the coffee table where I would see it…).
I’ve been thinking about this one concept a lot since I read it and I’d love to share it with you about:
the healing power of our imaginations
In this part of the book, the author Dr. Bessle Van Der Kolk is working on a study with veterans where they show the ink blot image and have them share what they see (the Rorschach test). What they found was the vets would either only just see the image as is (aka a blot of ink) or they would be brought back to the one traumatic image from being in war. Their trauma had effected their imagination.
He writes:
Imagination is absolutely critical to the quality of our lives. Our imagination enables us to leave our routine everyday existence by fantasizing about travel, food, sex, falling in love, or having the last word - all things that make life interesting. Imagination gives us the opportunity to envision new possibilities - it is an essential launchpad for making our hopes come true. It fires our creativity, relieves our boredom, alleviates our pain, enhances our pleasure, and enriches our most intimate relationships. When people are compulsively and constantly pulled back into the past, to the time they felt intense involvement and deep emotions, they suffer form a failure of imagination, a loss of mental flexibility. Without imagination there is no hope, no chance to envision a better future, no place to go, no goal to reach. - Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD
On one hand, I knew this. I use imagination every day in my healing and meditation practice by visualizing and tapping into that elusive feeling of energy.
On the other hand, I hadn’t heard imagination described in this way and was delighted to read a scientist and researcher’s take on it. Often, I find myself thinking of imagination as something we do as children. That art of make-believe that was fun and carefree as youth. BUT WE ACTUALLY HAVE THIS TOOL AVAILABLE TO US ALL THE TIME.
The other point that was important for me to read was how trauma can freeze our mental flexibility, where we might lose our imaginations while being stuck in a memory or painful moment of our past. All of us have experienced trauma in some way and this is why I love breathwork in collaboration with therapy and other healing modalities. When we feel safe and held, we can use our breath to loosen and soften the trauma from the somatic memory of our being and release it from our bodies gently in order to re-invigorate our imaginations and create space for a different story to lead our lives.
In honor of the new moon, now is the perfect time to practice using the healing power of your imagination.
Plant some seeds for your new beginning and your new year.
Do you need more self-care in your day to day? Use your imagination to visualize what that would look and feel like?
Do you need to ask for more help? What would that look and feel like?
Do you have a project or desire that’s ready to be worked on, created, brought into fruition?
What can you plan for yourself as something to look forward to and work towards over the coming cycles and seasons?