Guided Imaging for Cancer Patients

Although doctors have suspected for some time that the mind plays a key role in the development of cancer, it wasn’t until the late twentieth century that guided imagery has been recognized as a promising supplemental treatment. One of the concerns was that patients would opt for imagery rather than traditional treatment. But as more studies were done, researchers found that guided imagery not only reduced the effects of the disease but reduced the side effects of treatment. By the 1990s, guided imagery was used in most hospitals; and even the American Cancer Society had accepted it as a useful adjunct to regular treatment.

What finally convinced many doctors to change their thinking was a group of studies that showed guided imagery actually boosted immune function. In 2008, patients with breast cancer either received guided imagery intervention or standard care. Four weeks after surgery, the group receiving guided imagery in addition to regular treatment showed significantly higher NK cell activity against cancer cells. A year later, another study found that guided imagery stimulated T-cells and increased anti-cancer defenses during and after chemotherapy and radiation. And in a recent 2013 study at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, researchers showed that men with prostate cancer who used guided imagery had significantly higher NK cell cytotoxicity and other tumor fighting responses compared with controls.

While these studies and others have clearly shown the positive effects of guided imagery, this complementary treatment should be a way to enhance the healing process and never a substitute for traditional therapy. Since cancer invades organs and causes a breakdown in the body’s immune response, anything that boosts that response will have a destructive effect on cancer cells. In order to maximize the effect of guided imagery on riding the body of cancer, you should follow three important rules:

• Condition yourself to relax. Guided imagery is difficult unless your mind and body are completely at rest. Once you’ve learned to trigger the relaxation response, the neuro-endocrine-immune system will respond as well. Practicing meditation techniques before you begin visualization will help you achieve a much better outcome.

• Know what your cancer looks like. You can’t visualize something if you don’t know what you’re visualizing. Look up the type of cancer you have and study it. Make it more real and personal so that you’re able to see it in your mind when it’s being destroyed. To make the exercise even more effective, visualize the cancer inside the specific organ that’s being attacked.

• Visualize positive results. By now you know how pow-erful negative mental images can be. What’s the point of using guided imagery if you don’t visualize cancer cells being destroyed? So, it’s critical for success to end each session with cancer losing the battle and being wiped out. The more you view positive results, the more your mind-body connection will become conditioned to respond in a more forceful way.

Each guided imagery session must begin with proper breathing and a relaxation exercise such as meditation or progressive muscle relaxation. Conditioning your body to relax is critical, because if you don’t become deeply relaxed and tension-free during imagery, the healing process will not be as effective.

Once you’re totally relaxed, begin visualizing the specific cancer in a way that’s most powerful to you (a mass of tissue, a blob with spiked fingers or jagged teeth, for example), or visualize the cancer exactly as you’ve seen it in a book. Think of these cancer cells as weak and helpless, and easily destroyed by your body’s immune system. Now visualize the treatment you’re undergoing as strong and powerful. Radiation, for instance, may be seen as bursts of light energy, shattering the cells into a million pieces, which are then swallowed up by thousands of hungry white blood cells. Chemotherapy can be visualized as a bright chemical that poisons the cancer cells but leaves the normal cells alone.

To be most effective, imaging exercises should be per-formed several times a day for at least fifteen minutes at a time. It’s the repetition that leads to mind-body conditioning. It’s also critical to visualize the cancer responding to the treatment and the healthy cells not affected and becoming healthier. Finally, never focus on the negative aspects of the cancer, but rather on the positive healing process so that you allow the mind-body connection to maximize the immune response.

Self-Healing Images that Work Best

Researchers found something remarkable when they looked at scans of cancer patients who used strong, positive, and familiar images as opposed to patients who used weak and unfamiliar images during their treatment. The first set of patients became conditioned to respond much more quickly to the imaging exercise, and they were much better at trig-gering the body’s immune system. This discovery proved that something as simple as an image can trigger a powerful self-healing response, as long as the image is seen as more powerful than the disease itself.

According to Dr. Simonton at the University of Oregon’s Medical Center, Department of Radiation Oncology, specific images are necessary in fighting cancer. “The reason they’re effective,” explains Dr. Simonton, “is because they lead to a strong belief in recovery, which in itself is vital for proper health and well-being.” Because the mind part of the mind-body connection is just as important when it comes to self-healing, it’s essential to use strong and positive images that get the body into cancer attack mode. Based on years of research, Dr. Simonton lists five elements that create the most effective and powerful self-healing images:

• An overpowering treatment that destroys tumors. Patients who are at their most vulnerable often view cancer as unstoppable and overpowering, which is why their immune systems fail them. Instead, they need to visualize cancer as weak, and their treatment as powerful enough to destroy it. To make that image most effective, the cancer should be a neutral color like gray or light brown and the treatment should be a distinctive, bright color like red or yellow, which makes it easier to visualize. Children, who are usually good at visualizing, could start off by drawing pictures of the cancer using different colored crayons to make the distinction between good and bad cells.

• Soft and fragile cancer cells. Continuing the idea that cancer cells are not overpowering, patients need to condition the mind to see them as weak and helpless in the face of strong treatment. According to researchers, you must never use the colors black, red, or orange for can-cer cells because these colors trigger strong emotions. Always use those colors for the treatment.

• Normal healthy cells. The problem with most treat-ments is that, in the process of destroying cancer cells, they also destroy many healthy cells as well. To help stimulate the body’s ability to recover, it helps if patients visualize their normal cells as strong and healthy enough to withstand the onslaught of treatment. As the chemo or radiation is destroying the soft and fragile cancer cells, the normal healthy cells are repaired quickly and remain strong and vibrant.

• Aggressive NK cells. When a person develops cancer, the immune system sends out a special type of cell whose only job is to kill cancer cells. Because these natural killer or NK cells are so important, patients need to visualize them as extremely aggressive, attacking the cancer like an army of soldiers that destroy everything in its path. Just as important, though, is to visualize the dead cells being flushed from the body so that nothing is left behind to threaten again. The most powerful images, according to researchers, are ones in which cancer cells are outnumbered and overwhelmed so that the brain is conditioned to see the body’s defenses as stronger than the disease. They also found that using familiar images such as swords that slice the cancer tissue away are more effective.

• A successful and positive end result. As everyone knows, having a positive attitude can elicit positive results. Cancer patients who are depressed and negative seem to have the worst outcomes, despite the best treatments. So, even after the final treatment is over, it’s critical for patients to visualize themselves as cancer free, and winning the battle over their illness.

Guided imagery should never be a patient’s only treat-ment option. But recent studies clearly show that using imaging together with traditional therapy is more effective than using treatment alone. That’s because the brain can easily be conditioned to trigger a strong immune response that stimulates the release of NK and white blood cells. The more you use these imaging exercises, especially if you follow the rules for creating powerful images, the more spon-taneous and powerful they become.

From: Stress, Disease & the Mind-Body Connection: Using the Power of the Brain for Health and Self-Healing by Dr. Andrew Goliszek