What will I experience?

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You will be guided to a meditative state in which you feel safe and extremely relaxed, detached from your surroundings yet aware enough to hear the music and be conscious of its effect.  The experience is like a conscious dream state in which memories, emotions, and imagery bring insight and meaning to past life experiences that affect mental health. A typical Music and Imagery session involves deep physical relaxation, mental concentration, and a heightened attention to your emotions and feelings, which emerge during the music listening period. 

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How is Music and Imagery different to hypnosis or meditation?

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Music and Imagery and Clinical Hypnotherapy are evidenced based practices that can bring healing and self-actualisation through accessing the unconscious in different ways. Therapeutic Hypnotherapy targets the rational and analytical left brain with primarily words, verbal direction, and is occasionally supported with artificial imagery directed by the practitioner. With words, we can go into denial and ignore messages from our unconscious. Whilst some hypnotic instruction/suggestion can remain active for decades through the continued use of key words, in most cases it does not always hold, whether by choice or lack of strength for long term cohesion. On the other hand, Music and Imagery bypasses the rational left brain and works solely thought the right brain and emotional centres, thus evoking imagery purely supported by creativity and imagination. This is where past memories and emotions reside. We cannot go into denial. The music, imagination, and emotions become the therapeutic agents. Music generated imagery retains a longterm link to our unconscious, the messages received, and efficacy for growth and change. As a Clinical Hypnotherapist, I have both witnessed and experienced the effects of both hypnosis with clients, and myself through self-hypnosis. Through my research and experience with M&I, received from a practitioner and self-administered, I have found M&I most therapeutically efficacious for healing, growth, and self-actualisation.

 

Meditation can be light, deep, or a trance state. True meditation takes us to a deep, trance state where no awareness of the outer world remains. We become deeply connected with the unconscious and higher self. Within this deeper state we can leave the physical world, find inspiration, answers, transcendence, and bliss. During most true meditations, awareness becomes too deep to evoke the memories, emotions, and messages in the form of imagery that arises through M&I. Whilst some visualisation may be experienced, deep meditation does not create the pertinent multi-imagery responses required for targeted therapeutic needs. The intention of Music and Imagery is to reach the optimum altered state that retains a simultaneous link to the conscious in order to evoke the messages and wisdom of the imagery. 

 

Will someone be speaking when the music is playing?

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Music and Imagery differs from other creative guided visualisations. There is no verbal direction once the music starts. The music alone supports the imagery journey. Verbal guidance is only applied through the relaxing induction to the meditative state. Music is not played during the induction. So, induction with words, music with no words spoken.  

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How is Music and Imagery listening different to how I would usually listen to music?

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Listening in Music and Imagery does not require conscious attention. There is no benefit to listening to the music with an analytical or musically educated mind. It has been shown that there is actually no desire to do this. Listening in Music and Imagery is experienced as being bathed in the music, sometimes caressed, sometimes energetically uplifted. Naturally, these sensations can occur with normal music listening. However, music is experienced in a more holistic sense, as a complete essence rather than a work comprised of many elements. 

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Will my imagery be the same every time with the same music?

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Not necessarily. The subjectivity of memories, personal associations, current circumstances, and psychophysiological processes that sometimes change on a daily basis means that specific imagery cannot be predicted. Your imagery is similar to ordinary dreams. Even recurring dreams are not always the same each time. Considering the highly individual experience of music listening, no two people will experience the same imagery to the same piece of music. No single person will necessarily experience the same imagery to the same piece of music at different listenings. Like dreams, the messages from your unconscious can change in form, intensity, and the fundamental communication. The music shows you what you need to know at that time.