The Mindful Migraine

In a recent post, I mentioned subconscious visualization. Rob, a fellow blogger from Things I have thought of… in case you haven’t mentioned that the approach sounded a lot like Carl Jung’s Active Imagination… Well, I hadn’t thought of that, so I just had to find out more.

First stop: Wikipedia. They note that the approach was developed by Jung between 1913 and 1916 as “a meditation technique wherein the contents of one’s unconscious are translated into images, narratives, or personified as separate entities. It can serve as a bridge between the conscious ‘ego’ and the unconscious. […] Jung linked active imagination with the processes of alchemy.”

They suggested the process can be done through visualization, journalling, or whilst creating artistic outcomes (dancing, painting, and so on). The idea was to encourage your fantasies to act out for a while. Jung apparently cautioned people not to take the process too lightly, as patients could get ‘carried away’ and move too far from reality.

Next, the Jungian Center for the Spiritual Sciences noted that Jung didn’t apply the term ‘active imagination’ to the process until years later in a lecture, and suggested it was a ‘visionary meditation’ where a sequence of fantasies could appear through deliberate concentration; “Jung would urge us to be open to whatever the psyche presents”, be it symbols, animals, feelings, figures, unformed or fantastically detailed, fragmented or tied to a whole drama.

The Jungian Vault refers to it as “a deliberate, disciplined encounter with the living contents of the unconscious – conducted while fully awake, with the ego present as a participant rather than a passive observer.”

They then explain a step-by-step approach, which I have summarized here:

1. Quiet the ego: sit quietly, alone, focus on your breathing or do a body scan; “The point is to arrive at a state of alert receptivity.”
2. Find an entry point: be it a memory from a recent dream, a bodily sensation or strong emotion, and focus your attention on that and see what happens next; “Do not invent. Wait.”
3. Engage with it: once the image begins to move / change, ask questions and see how the vision replies. The idea is to be neither too controlling nor too passive; “The therapeutic value lies precisely in the tension between the two positions and what emerges from holding that tension.”
4. Give it form: after you finish, record what you experienced through journalling, painting, or sculpting; “It anchors the ephemeral in something tangible.”

Interestingly, they note that Jung often painted or sculpted his sessions and even made mandalas.

I say ‘interesting’ because I made up my mind to create a ‘healing mandala’ as one of my first get-well activities. No one told me to, and I didn’t really understand the attraction, I just knew that I needed one! The image felt so ‘right’ that it became my ‘logo’, and I use it instead of a photo of myself in all of my digital profiles. Here’s my post on how I did it: Make-a-healing-mandala

The Jungian Vault discusses these mandalas in more detail: “…Jung began drawing small circular figures in his notebook every morning. He did not plan them. He did not know what they meant. He simply felt compelled to draw them. Each day the form shifted slightly, and Jung noticed that these drawings seemed to correspond to his inner state.”

Later, when he had learnt about the mandala in the religious traditions of the East, Jung “understood that the circular images were not random doodles. They were the psyche’s attempt to heal itself, to impose order on chaos, to picture a wholeness that the conscious mind could not yet grasp. He later wrote that the mandala was the expression of everything that leads toward the goal of psychological completeness.”

OK, so mandalas are AMAZING… but potentially off topic.

Except that they are not.

These sorts of ‘random’ images, symbols or themes that keep clamoring to be recognized, keep clambering out of your subconscious, are often a form of soul-searching and inner-healing you didn’t even know was happening.

They are EXACTLY the point.

In my previous post about subconscious visualizing, I did two separate exercises and was granted with two visions. The first was a reminder that sitting alone at my office desk was powerful because it gave me solitude and silence, but too much of it was disconnecting me from my family and the wider world, trapping me in shadows that were no good for long-term transformational healing. The second imagining was me asking for a ‘symbol of calm’ and being rewarded with an image of me wrapped in a blanket of moss.

Combined, these two visualizations made a nice blog-post, but also became seeds that finally broke the surface of my subconscious soil: for the next phase of my healing endeavors, I needed to spend less time indoors on my computer, and more time outside with family, friends and nature.

Not long after, I switched from 3 posts a week to 2, and I started devising projects I could do in my garden. Activities which had nothing to do with migraines or mindfulness, but everything to do with rest and soul-deep refreshment.

[Disclaimer – Remember, I’m not a doctor or therapist – not all techniques are suitable for all patients – please be sure to speak to a healthcare professional before embarking on self-help techniques that might be better done in the company of professionals.]

I’m looking forward to trying the Active Imagination technique next time I wake from a dream from which I can still recall whisps… I will be curious to see how these traces choose to interact with me, and I with them.

Thanks Rob for the tip.

Take care taking care of your inner selves,

Linda xx

PS – I chose the little ladybug girl as my opening image, because the concept of Active Imagination made me think of how easily children create and engage in the imaginary worlds of cops and robbers, dragon-chasing princesses, and so on. When my daughter was very young, she had two lovely little invisible friends called Bunny and Africa. There was a third invisible friend, a nameless boy who occasionally sat on the end of her bed at night. He gave me the ick. Eventually, however, all three of her pals grew up and moved away with their invisible families to some other, unknown address. (Phew.)