Select Page
How to Use Guided Imagery Audio Recordings to Train Your Brain

How to Use Guided Imagery Audio Recordings to Train Your Brain

The suggestions below on how to use guided imagery audio are generally applicable to the use of any guided imagery audio programs, although, they are written specifically for use with Dr. Miller’s CDs and MP3s for Deep Healing, Personal Growth, and Peak Performance.

Dr. Miller's Online Store of Guided Imagery, Meditation & Self-Hypnosis CDs & MP3 Downloads ImageCongratulations! You have already taken the most difficult step on the path to creating optimal health of mind and bodyyou’ve decided you want to change.
You will find these explanations and instructions especially useful for self-healing using Dr. Miller’s Guided Imagery audio, Meditation & Self-Hypnosis CDs and MP3 downloads you have received. Though deceptively simple and enjoyable, the processes have been developed over many years of careful study and application, and are very powerful.
As you listen, you will receive suggestions, ideas, and ways of communicating with the cells of your body and with your own inner healing wisdom. Dr. Miller offers suggestions and guidance for dealing effectively with the challenges in your life, whether it is to facilitate healing, improve your performance or to enrich your life in other ways.
By listening mindfully and regularly, you will find that these deep relaxation and guided imagery audio experiences are potent tools for becoming the person you really want to be. The successes others have achieved working with these processes have been stunning, and the failures are most often due to using them improperly or not using them at all! They cannot help you if they remain comfortably nestled on your bookshelf.
You should find each part of the program simple and easy to do if you discipline yourself to practice regularly. If you find any part difficult or confusing, you may wish to consult a trusted physician, therapist, counselor or guide who can provide additional clarification or support.

Hints for Changing for Good

 Girl Listening to Guided Imagery Meditation.To break longstanding habits and establish new ones, you need skills as well as knowledge. Your Dr. Miller self-healing, CD, or MP3 will teach you the needed skills and provide valuable information and understanding. Here are some practical hints that can help you achieve your desired goals. All of these might not apply to your specific case, but the more you can adopt and follow through on, the better your chances of success. It is OK to start with a few of them then add more as the days or weeks go by.
In the beginning, it is important to create small successes. This produces the belief in your subconscious mind that you can use guided imagery effectively for personal change. The sense of confidence and empowerment that result will then make it easier to successfully take on even larger challenges.
For best results, listen and participate as fully as possible every day. Two or three times per day is best, especially for serious conditions. Experience it at least once since we are retraining your mind and reflex responses that may have been present for many years. Just as learning a musical instrument or a complex dance step requires practice – repeating the desired sequence repeatedly – so too, your mind, emotions, and beliefs will learn best if you expose them to this positive sequence of experiences.

1.  Be comfortable.  Let your whole body sink downwards, imagining it being attracted by the force of gravity.

2.  If you lie down, let your spine sink towards the surface you are on, especially at the waist level.  When lying on a flat surface, it usually helps to raise your knees, with your feet about shoulder-width apart and the toes pointing inward just a little to keep your knees from falling outward.

3.  If you sit upright, keep your spine vertical so you don’t put any strain on your back muscles.  But stay relaxed, keep your chin tucked gently in, your neck gently long, and don’t try to hold your shoulders up.

4.  Except when instructed, relax the muscles of your face, your shoulders, and your upper back.  Don’t be concerned about what you look like!

5.  Breathe from your diaphragm, so that your lower belly, or abdomen, rises a little as you breathe in and sinks back as you exhale.  Imagine a balloon inflating and deflating in your belly.  Don’t hold your belly in, military-style – let it hang out.

6.  Try to listen to the recording in a room that has soft, gentle lighting – a shaded lamp is better than a ceiling light, and both are better than a fluorescent lamp.

7.  Arrange your listening sessions so that you won’t be interrupted by the telephone, family, or visitors.  (You can put a note on the door and leave the phone off the hook or turn it off.)

8.  Listen in a quiet place.  If there are disturbing sounds, it is often better to “white them out” with a steady background noise like a fan or an air conditioner.  Best of all, use stereo earphones to listen to the programs – the kinds that cap your ears are the best.

9.  Allowing your eyes to remain closed can help you concentrate.  You may find they want to stay open first, but eventually, you’ll probably want to close them. (If you are one of the minority of folks who can relax more deeply with eyes open, then feel free to allow this.) You will probably be more comfortable with your glasses off and contacts out.

10.  You may become more relaxed than you are accustomed to being. Sometimes this may even feel as if you are a bit “out of control.” Fine . . . the part of you that has been in control needs to let go a bit in order to allow the flexibility you need to change.

11.  Don’t worry if you find you have a stream of thoughts going through the back of your mind while you’re listening.  This is not uncommon, especially at first.  Let the thoughts come and go, without paying them any particular attention.  If you find your mind following a train of thought, don’t get upset. Just let the thought go, focus again on what you hear on the recording, and move on.

12.  Don’t let your conditioned mind tell you that you are doing this wrong.  There is no one “right” way of doing it.  Exactly what you are doing is right for you at the time.  Like all skills, this one takes learning and practice.  You will become more expert with time.

13.  You may have some novel sensations, perhaps a feeling of floating or of tingling in your hands.  Don’t worry about such mild and unusual experiences.  Enjoy them and recognize that they reflect the positive inner changes that you are undergoing.

Enjoy the process. Sometimes it’s good to ignore the words and just flow with the music and nature sounds. Balance, Stress and Optimal Health Suite is a great place to start, or Total Stress Relief Suite if you have significant stress symptoms. Single CDs you might like include Healing Journey, Letting Go Of Stress, and I Am: Awakening Self-Acceptance.
Check out all the different options in our Online Store — one has got to be right for you, whether you are interested in Deep Healing, Personal Excellence, or Healing Our Planet, there’s something there that can help you find Serenity and achieve Peak Performance and…

Don’t forget why you are doing this!

It is for your Well-Being, for your Growth,

and your Complete Enjoyment of Life.

Our Good Wishes are with you!


 

More about Dr. Miller’s Mind Tools:

 

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Although it takes some dedicated attention, most of us can learn to keep our stress within reasonable bounds. But sometimes fate throws us a curveball and we end up being exposed to situations so severe that they overwhelm our adaptive capacities (such as military combat, terrorist attack, rape, or a serious accident), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can result.
The symptoms of PTSD can be placed into 3 broad groups:

  • Re-experiencing — intrusive memories, nightmares, flashbacks, triggered distress;
  • Avoidance — isolation, withdrawal, emotional numbing,  detachment, memory gaps; and
  • Hyperarousal— insomnia, irritability, anger outbursts, poor concentration, hypervigilance, exaggerated startle reaction.

Beyond these “official” post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, PTSD can produce a wide range of symptoms of mind, emotions, body, and behavior leading to poor occupational and social functioning. Depression, alcohol and drug abuse, guilt, shame, and inability to trust are common. Often those with PTSD become over-controlling and can become disruptive and even violent.  Some people react in the opposite way, and they withdraw, avoiding the outside world completely. Commonly people dealing with PTSD have few if any close relationships – they become isolated, unemployed, and divorced. Domestic upset, violence, and child abuse are not uncommon.
It is important to remember that, although severe PTSD in a combat veteran may be obvious, there are many others who suffer from this disorder whose trauma was less obvious. Sometimes the trauma took place in early childhood or may involve situations the sufferer is unable or unwilling to share often due to shame and embarrassment.

Type II PTSD – the “Everyday” Variety

Although there is no such “official” category at present, perhaps there should be – a mechanism similar to, but much milder than the classic examples. Dr. Miller noted through careful observation and history-taking, that many of the issues and imbalances that disturb our balance and functioning seem to be a variety of PTSD on a smaller scale. For instance, many people feel stage fright, shame, embarrassment, guilt, or find they overreact, withdraw, or are prone to procrastination when these are maladaptive. Yet there is no obvious traumatic event.
Dr. Miller, in the 1970s guided many of his patients and clients through the Selective Awareness Exploration, a kind of age-regression analysis. He found that many of a person’s current difficulties, whether mental, physical, emotional, behavioral, or relational, could be traced to events in their lives that overwhelmed their ability to think and respond rationally.

The Extreme Sensitivity of the Human Organism

Image of woman and solar system
At birth, the human infant is extremely vulnerable, and if it is exposed to frightening experiences, such as having to be in the hospital for a few days, or an emotionally trying experience, or other situations it is incapable of coping with, it can be traumatized even at this early time. A similar vulnerability to trauma persists through childhood and beyond. Teasing, judgment, criticism, over-zealous punishment, random painful losses – all these can be the source of one or many sensitizing events.
During a sensitizing event, neural networks are formed in the subconscious part of the nervous system – networks that trigger ongoing dysfunction and illness. From that point on, throughout a person’s life,  normally harmless events can trigger extreme autonomic responses.
If a person is of a somewhat sensitive nature, the stress of everyday life may create lasting traumatic wounds. The culprit here is the insensitive and often abusive nature of our social environment – which has exposed us all to potentially traumatizing events. These may include:

  • having one’s home foreclosed upon,
  • being fired after a lifetime of loyal service,
  • an insensitive spouse,
  • a frightening neighborhood or school experience,
  • family crises,
  • to name a few.

If there are persistent maladaptive patterns of behavior in one’s life, it is worthwhile to consider that one of these “everyday traumas” may be at the causal root of dysfunctions ranging from:

  • procrastination to anxiety,
  • from shyness to hostility,
  • from shame to guilt,
  • as well as many physical and social disorders.

The treatment of PTSD includes tools for bringing emotional reactions into balance and guiding mental imagery in rewarding and positive directions. Discovering how to be sensitive to one’s own emotional needs, being able to respond effectively to them, and developing self-esteem are important parts of recovery. Deep Relaxation and Guided Imagery are effective aids in this process.

Suggested Programs for PTSD & Trauma

Accepting Change and Moving On: Loss and Letting Go (CD or MP3)


Read more about How to Heal & Recover Following Major Loss or Trauma – PTSD Treatment and Prevention with Guided Imagery & Meditation.  Other specific programs are:

 

Social Anxiety and Social Phobia

Social Anxiety and Social Phobia

Understanding Anxiety and Social Phobias (image)Social Anxiety is a type of social phobia involving fear of being negatively judged by others or a fear of public embarrassment due to something you might say or do impulsively. Symptoms of social anxiety include stage fright, a fear of intimacy, a fear of humiliation and other such fears which can lead to enormous anxiety. Social anxiety can cause people to avoid public situations and human contact to the point that normal life is rendered impossible.
But don’t over-diagnose yourself! Most of us at one time or another have felt some degree of stage fright. Social Anxiety disorder, or Social Phobia, is considered to be a clinical illness when such symptoms become severe and/or persistent. If you think you have severe enough symptoms, consult a health professional who understands Anxiety Disorders for an evaluation and suggestions to begin your social anxiety therapy.
For milder cases of social anxiety, or for use along with any other kind of social anxiety treatment, there are ways to use Mind Tools to abolish anxiety and write a new life script for yourself. Escape From Depression along with Letting Go Of Stress may be helpful as well.  Sometimes what is needed is Nurturing Spirit or an Awakening of the Leader Within.

Social Anxiety Treatment

As with so many other specific types of anxieties and phobias, part of treating social anxiety disorder has to do with learning how to relax and be at peace – learn how to come into the present moment. This sets you free to be able to choose whether to make tomorrow a carbon copy of today or choose a different set of behaviors.
Remember, your emotions are behaviors, internal behaviors, they belong to you and you have the right to change them. When you have learned to enter meditation or deep relaxation, you will have the power to change them. Guided imagery is the tool to use – it is excellent for creating cognitive behavior change. Together with deep relaxation, it can provide the unparalleled potential for cognitive restructuring.
You visualize re-approaching the kinds of situations you have until now, feared – except that you do it while deeply relaxed, and imagine you are totally calm in the chosen situation. Finally, you systematically desensitize yourself by intentionally approaching these trigger situations while maintaining a calm mind and body. This is called Writing Your Own Script, a mind tool that can permit you to reprogram your mind and rewire your brain. (You actually create new neurons and new synapses in your physical brain which replace the old ones that were maintaining the old behavior.)
For difficult cases, Dr. Miller recommends Freeing Yourself From Fear, a powerful adjunct to any treatment of Social Anxiety, as well as The Serenity Prayer, and I Am: Awakening Self-Acceptance. And although some cases may benefit immensely from medication or a professional therapeutic relationship, all the tools mentioned here can still play an important part in treatment – they serve to catalyze any positive process you are going through.

Buy Abolish Anxiety CD

Abolish Anxiety
Potent mind-tools to create peace and calm whenever you need it.
Buy CD or Buy MP3


Take a little time and learn about what stress is and how you can deal better with the challenges in your life. The principles of Mind-Body Medicine are important to understand. See the tools for dealing with anxiety in our Online Store, and follow some of the links below to learn how to deal with this problem.

Suggested Guided Imagery, Meditation & Self-Hypnosis Programs:

Phobias and Fear

Phobias and Fear

Fearful looking manWhen a person has one or more irrational fears and an avoidance of certain objects and situations, we call it a phobia. The difference between phobia and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is that the phobia is a fear response to something specific (fear of spiders, flying, heights, groups of people, etc.). Even if you know your fears are irrational and unreasonable, it is almost impossible to control the anxiety response that is triggered.

Phobias take place through the action of deep brain structures such as the amygdala, which have been provided by nature to ensure a flight response when we encounter a life-threatening challenge. Due to life experiences and perhaps a genetic sensitivity, many people become conditioned (programmed) to react intensely to stimuli that are not at all dangerous.

Agoraphobics, for instance, will almost always sit near the door or carry out other behaviors that will make it easy to escape a situation without embarrassment.


Freeing Yourself From Fear

Freeing Yourself From Fear Available as CD or MP3

Suggested Guided Imagery, Meditation & Self-Hypnosis Products:

Panic Disorders and Panic Attacks

Panic Disorders and Panic Attacks

Nurse with a Panic AttackCharacterized by brief or sudden attacks of intense terror and apprehension, panic attacks are a form of anxiety that often leads to trembling, confusion, dizziness, nausea, and difficulty breathing. A Panic attack tends to arise abruptly, peak at about 10 minutes, then subside. But for some people, they then may last for hours.

What Causes A Panic Attack?

Panic Attack symptoms often come on for the first time during the teen years or during adulthood. Most of the time when the first panic attack comes, the person feels suddenly at the mercy of a powerful and unexpected flood of overwhelming sensations – emotions, muscle tensions, and physical discomfort – and they feel as if they have been stricken with some seemingly terrible illness, like a heart attack or stroke.
Often, the feeling of panic will ensue soon after a frightening or overwhelming experience or after prolonged stress. For some people, however, panic attacks seem to arise spontaneously as well. For folks in this latter group, we may, in therapy, often discover there were “subliminal” thoughts of fear that triggered the panic attack symptoms.
When you are in the midst of a panic attack, you will feel a distorted sense of your body. Normal changes in body function (like a pain or unfamiliar tension) may trigger the fear that you have a life-threatening illness. Clinically this is called “hypervigilance followed by hypochondriasis.”
One of the worst features of Panic Disorder is that the sufferer begins to develop a fear of future attacks. This fear may lead him or her to avoid situations, even to the point of being afraid to leave the house (agoraphobia) as well as other drastic behaviors. This vicious cycle produces “the perfect storm” – you become afraid of fear itself!!

Panic Disorder Treatment with Dr. Miller’s Programs

Dr. Miller has produced many self-healing programs for overcoming panic attacksWhen periods of panic disrupt your life in any significant way, it is best to seek professional evaluation and help where needed. This is one condition where treatment with anti-anxiety medications is often a very wise choice. They can help you to stay functional and confident that you can deal with the attacks whenever they occur. Meanwhile, you can undergo whatever panic disorder treatment or therapy using Mind Tools and guided imagery that will work for you. Gradually, you can desensitize yourself and Free Yourself From Fear.
Dr. Miller has published a number of guided imagery audio programs such as Abolish Anxiety and Letting Go Of Stress that can help you learn how to control some of your panic attack/panic disorder symptoms. Check out the links below. Some may lead to other valuable information you need to know.


More about Anxiety: