How often do you go down rabbit holes of worst-case scenario thinking? A spiral of one terrible situation after another. How often do you replay conversations over and over trying to analyze or makes sense of conflict? How often do you get berated by a relentless inner bully projecting a scene of uncertainty and self-sabotage?
To varying degrees, we all do this.
The root of rumination is a forecasting of thoughts, images, stories, assumptions, and conclusions to create a story or picture of something negative; sometimes it a habitual reaction reaffirming an identity built around trauma or adversity. The brain loves to do this because it is hardwired for survival, and it will do a darn good job of trying to prepare you for harm (thank you brain!). Because the brain is hardwired for protection, it doesn’t discriminate from actual threat or perception of threat. That means if you are thinking harmful thoughts, your body is amping it’s stress response-which only actives a pathway of prior rumination. A vicious cycle. The negatively ruminating paths in the brain are like dirt road, the more we drive down them, the more pronounced they become and the more likely they will take us to undesired places.
To heal, to interrupt these cycles, we need build new dirt roads – we need to create an alternative path, and subsequent network, that captivates our attention.
Imagination captivates attention.
What if we used imagination in all the wondrous ways it is best designed? What if we used imagination to help us instead of hurting us? What about best case scenario thinking?
Positive imagination can divert attention to other possibilities, it can enhance meaning, it can soothe or empower the body, it channels energy into our resilience.
We all need to positively active our imagination for healthy living. Imagination opens us to a creative process and because imagination accesses what some call the soul realm; a place of image, myth, symbol, intuition, faith, liminal spaces; it doesn’t often make sense, so we dismiss its legitimacy.
It doesn’t have to make sense; it just has to interrupt and redirect. Creative imagination will lead to new roads and growth-oriented landscapes.
Many years ago, when I was starting Interferon treatment for melanoma, I was a wreck with worst case thinking. I was preparing myself for high-dose treatment that was 5 days a week for minimum 5 weeks followed by months of subQ. I was resistant to the idea of big pharma going into my body – yet determined to exhaust all efforts to preserve my life. I kept fearing poison in my body, what if it didn’t work, what about my kids? I ruminated down a million muddy roads that only perpetuated fear, left me feeling helpless and ramped up anxiety in my body. I noticed the reality I was creating. I validated and honored my feelings (cause they were allowed and legit) but then I painted a different picture.
The second day of treatment (I’d like to say the first, but I don’t even know if I was in my body that day), I approached the process from a cross in the road. As the nurse prepared my port and brought the bright yellow bag over, I imagined that it wasn’t full of toxins, but instead a rich honey gathered from sacred bee hives on an ancient mountain. The golden elixir dripped into my body and its warm wax became a balm, it grew into a honeycomb heart and my body became a field of wildflowers feeding more bees who made more honey to drip into me. My children were laughing and free, playing nerf ball in the field, taking breaks to let the bees land on them and drink from beads of sweat. I let myself get lost in that place of imagination and my body softened, the fear subsided and eventually the grip of rumination didn’t have such power over me. It was the soul medicine I needed. Did the fears return? Of course, but they became easier and easier to interrupt and less and less credible because I had found a way to create meaning, and roads, that took me to healing lands.
We need to cultivate a practice of activating imaginal realm so it’s easier to apply it in those slippery-slope moments when we are at the edge of a rabbit hole.
Daily or weekly practices that activate imaginal realm:
Guided Meditation/Visualization
Yoga Nidra
Journey work (Shamanic Practices)
Prayer with Visualization (Christian practices)
Any process that encourages you to pay attention to detail of the natural world.
Exposure to surreal and abstract arts.
Contemplative thinking or considering alternative paradigms of existence/existential contemplation.
Any kind of art (I encourage free form, no agenda…see what comes up and out, also drawing with non-dominant hand).
I often combine Journey work with my art. I enter a meditative state of mind, see what appears and then translate that to art (or movement) – usually a large-scale piece of paper with toddler-like scribbles that make no sense whatsoever but stimulates by ability to literally draw from imagination without apprehension.
Our imaginal realm is a wise place, rich with meaning, metaphor, and a depth of the human experience I think we ignore or neglect these days. We are fed thoughts and ideas through persuasion and manipulation…dark roads that are best avoided, much like negative loops. Imaginal realm is a fundamental component to human nature. It is at the root of an evolving self and an evolving culture. It is the land of Galileo, Michelangelo, Van Gogh, Picasso, Dali, Zeppelin, Prince, Jung, Campbell, Rowling, Miyazaki…..you get the idea.
Stir your up your mind in new ways and awaken your imagination, let it rebuild roads and realities that take you to peaceful places.
With love,
Robin