Guided Imagery and Music

What is GIM?

Guided Imagery and Music (GIM) is a music-assisted therapy used to explore one's own inner world and help clients to work on significant life issues.  GIM offers an exciting opportunity to see the "big picture" of life while accessing personal experiences and connecting to the inner wisdom. Understanding of oneself and the personal life path helps to live with more conscious awareness.

The uniqueness of this method lies in the synchronicity of music and imaginative experiences. In this process, music plays the role of a strong co-therapist and active partner. It acts as a mirror and reflects ambivalences and both light and shadow. GIM encourages unresolved issues to surface and helps the traveler to find new levels of problem solving.

How Do GIM Sessions Work?

Before the journey begins it is helpful for a traveler to formulate an intention. A clear intention enables the facilitator to choose the music that best matches the purpose of the journey. After the pre-talk, the client is asked to lie down and listen to the guide providing relaxation techniques. This is helpful for the client to quiet the mind and focus inwardly. As the music is playing, the guide is asking simple questions, which allows the traveler to move into the inner world and to deepen the relationship with the emerging material, e.g., images, memories, body sensations, vivid sensory experiences, strong feelings, and surprising insights.

As the music comes to an end, the traveler is invited to open the eyes, come back to the outer world, and move on to the post-session. Clients who experience GIM have profound changes and, as a result of one or more sessions, make choices that lead to a more meaningful and fulfilling life.

GIM in short terms:

• connects the conscious to the unconscious
• stimulates the intuition and the creative potential
• activates our innate capacity for healing and transformation
• provides encouragement to get through difficult emotions and life situations and carries the client through the heights and depths of an experience
• helps to reduce fears and anxieties
• reduces stress and enhances a state of well-being allows unresolved issues to surface and helps to remove mental and emotional blocks
  

What are the Possible Outcomes of GIM sessions?
GIM has been successfully used with adults and children. It is applied as a problem-solving therapy for a wide range of personal themes. It has been found especially effective for clients seeking help with:

• anxieties, grief, and loss;
• relationship and divorce related issues;
• career changes and stages of transition in life;
• health issues;
• stress and burnout situations;
• trauma and sexual abuse;
• creativity blocks and negative thinking;
• old and burdening memories that need to be resolved.