Cancer guided imagery

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cancer guided imagery is an internal process that creates messages with images. These messages include directions and goals that are communicated to your entire body and/or any area you choose. For this reason, cancer guided imagery has been labeled a “mind intervention with the body.” This intervention incorporates the power and resources of the mind to convey desired positive responses and changes.

Cancer imagery has also been described as the interface, or connection between the body and the mind because of the positive chemical and biological changes it can produce in the body. Research has shown these changes are useful in the successful treatment of and recovery from cancer.

Cancer guided imagery claims to help reduce and relieve side effects and also to lessen the fear and stress of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. According to an article from the University of California, San Diego, a review of 46 studies conducted from 1966 to 1998 by the American Cancer Society found that guided imagery was effective in managing stress, anxiety, depression, pain and the side effects of chemotherapy.^[1] Cancer guided imagery is recommended to be used in conjunction with prescribed medical treatment, not as a stand-alone therapy.

Cancer guided imagery has been called the language of the mind, because it is seen as a language that the mind can use to talk to the body, a language the body can understand immediately and without question.^{[citation needed]} It described by its practitioners as a way of communicating internally with the parts of us that cannot speak in words.