Visualizing Healing

Foxy New Year, Part 1

Good Evening, My Foxes!

In my last newsletter, I wrote about the actions we can take to let go. But what can we do when apologies, conversations, paying it forward, and other attempts to let go don’t complete our healing process?

We can visualize our healing.

I’ve been trying to write this newsletter about visualizing healing for a while, but I just wasn’t ready with the right words. Like my creative process, healing takes time. It takes readiness, and an openness to moving forward. It feels right when it is right.

Visualization isn’t a new concept. It’s a tried and true approach that has led to desired results for Olympic athletes, entrepreneurs, yoga practitioners, and many others. I mention yoga practitioners because it was in a yoga class that I first realized the power of visualization in healing.

Years ago, I carried into yoga class a hurt that wasn’t healed. I had taken every action within my power to resolve it, but I could not think about it without feeling pain. Yet by the end of class, I was transformed.

My instructor led us through the routine poses and breathing. Daniella has magical powers with with words and inspiration. Every class, she would weave a theme into her spoken instructions. We’d do downward facing dog while contemplating what it meant to be whole in our hearts and minds. We’d backbend into our weaknesses and find our inner strengths. Although I am a wordsmith myself, nothing I say here could be more than a tribute to her magnificent and transformative guidance.

The day I learned to visualize healing was the day that she urged us to think about something painful, and to let it go. I wish I could remember her exact words. I am not sure what she told me versus what I told myself. But what I do remember from that day, as I relaxed into our final pose, is imagining the ocean. I sent my mind out as far as I could imagine, as deep as I could fathom, and found a place of quiet. I imagined an infinite, timeless place that had plenty of space to absorb whatever I needed to let go of. I felt a presence there that might have been a sizable cavern, a giant clamshell, or perhaps an enormous kraken.

Immersed in that wild place, I looked into my heart and brought out the hurt, like a ball of painful energy. And I released it. I gave it up to exist outside of myself. I did nothing to extinguish the memory or the pain. I just let go. And I left it there, deep in the ocean, for the kraken to eat or play with. As my yoga instructor brought us back to consciousness, I realized that I had tears on my cheeks. I had wept with relief and release. And I felt at peace.

Occasionally something reminds me of a prior hurt, but I experience only a distant memory, rather than a trigger of pain. I check in and visualize my heart to see if it has healed, and it appears like untouched skin never wounded. It looks healthy and whole: ready to give life to my next endeavor. Ready to love.

Now, when I experience unresolved pain, I have a place to send it. I don’t let bad things burden me forever. Such memories are best as lessons learned, rather than festering wounds that fuel insecurities and fear.

I have a lot to thank my yoga teacher for, and although I wrote her cards and gave her my thanks, these actions never felt sufficient. I hope that by sharing my visualization experience, I can pay the benefits forward to you, my foxes. Later, if I still feel regret for not thanking her enough, I’ll visualize feeding my thanks to the kraken, and go on my way with my heart whole.

Have a wonderful, whole-hearted week.

Three cheers for my lovely foxes,

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We must stand strong with our hearts soft.
— [paraphrasing] Daniella Cotreau

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