Back in the early 1980s, I came across a book that would change my life. This book is “Getting Well Again” by Carl and Stephanie Simonton. He is an oncologist and she a psychologist. Together they discovered a promising way to help cancer patients heal their disease. They found that when cancer patients visualized their immune systems fighting cancer cells, the cancer diminished or disappeared completely. 
Back then the video game Pac-Man was a big hit, so the Simontons used this game’s notoriety to demonstrate their technique. Pac-Men were little round bubbles with huge mouths that gobbled up everything in their path. The Simontons suggested that patients imagine their white blood cells were Pac-men, and that these voracious allies could be directed to wherever the cancer might be in order to encourage their immune system to gobble up unhealthy cells.
Because this method seemed so off-the-wall at the time, Carl’s fellow oncologists were reluctant to send patients to the Simontons’ clinic. Consequently, most of their patients were those that all other oncologists had given up on. The amazing success of this methodology was therefore all the more surprising.
After this book came out, there followed others that touted visualization and imagery as important tools for healing. However the radical nature of this approach prevented researchers from investigating it and doctors from taking it seriously. As a result, visualization fell by the wayside and was soon forgotten by most people (until recently).
But I never forgot.
I decided that if visualization could cure cancer, it could cure other things as well. In the years since I discovered this book, I have used this technique over and over with myself, family, friends and clients, with great results.
My first success came when I was able to cure a persistent urinary track infection that sent me to the emergency room over and over again. No matter how religiously I took my medication, the infection was back in just a few months. Right after I read the Simonton’s book, I had another attack in the middle of the night driving through a snowstorm from Wisconsin to Texas. Because I had no other recourse, I began visualizing Pac-men gobbling up the infection. After a couple of intensive hours of work, (and no medication), both the pain and the infection were gone. AND IT NEVER CAME BACK. I have never had another UTI in over 35 years.
When my son was six, he got a staph infection on the back of his hand. The doctor prescribed a very expensive antibiotic, probably because staph is so serious. Since the infection was on his hand where I could closely monitor it, I decided to try visualization first. (We had no insurance at the time, and I was not then aware of how dangerous staph infections can be.)
My son was obsessed with school buses at the time, so I told him to imagine hoards of school buses traveling around his body picking up white blood cells and transporting them to his hand where they spilled out of the buses and attacked the infection. Additional buses brought more fighters as well as took away the tired ones to rest and fight again. Within a few hours after our initial meditation, I could see definite improvement, so we just continued with periodic visualizations. The infection disappeared in a couple of days with no antibiotic needed.
Just recently both a close family member and a client used visualization to successfully turn around their terminal diagnoses after their doctors had given up on them.
Visualization is amazing but it’s not magic or a miracle. It’s communicating with the body through energetic principles, and it’s something we all can do for ourselves.
The advantages are many. It is not invasive, has no negative side effects, and can often encourage healing in other parts of the body as well. In many cases it seems to be permanent, with much less chance of relapse.
The disadvantages (if you can call them that), are that visualization takes honesty, curiosity, creativity, commitment and dedication on your part. It is not a pill you can swallow and forget about. This dedication, however, may be what convinces your body that you are really committed to continuing your life on Earth and creating a healthier you, resulting not just in the elimination of the disease you are targeting, but general improvement of overall well-being. You may also have to confront a medical team that thinks you’re crazy despite your improvement.
If you would like to try this technique yourself, here are some guidelines.
Before starting a visualization routine, be sure and remove any external factors or internal blocks that might prevent the body from responding. External factors could be environmental toxins or allergens, drug side effects or drug interactions, or foreign objects. Internal blocks may be stuck emotions left over from past trauma where the emotion was not allowed to defuse itself and now needs to be released. There may also be subconscious reasons why being sick is serving you.
Visualization is best done in a calm, relaxed state much like meditation or guided imagery. While it is often easier to have someone else guiding your visualization, it is not necessary. You can easily create and conduct a successful visualization routine on your own. The more personal and passionate you are about your visualization, the more effective it will be.
While it is important to know the nature of the disease and how it is disturbing the healthy functioning of the body, it is not necessary to conform your visualization to strict anatomical or functional details. In fact, visualization works best when it is more symbolic than literal, for example, Pac-men or school buses. One client visualized little birds sitting on her hands and pulling the disease from her body with their beaks.
If you are a pacifist and fighting Pac-men turns you off, don’t worry. You can easily design a more compassionate way to deal with the situation. You could imagine your brain sending golden fairy dust to surround the wayward entities, dissolving them or turning them into healthy cells.
If you are not a visual person, you can talk out loud to your body. Speaking out loud provides much more resonance and energy than just internal thought. Talk to your body just as you would to a friend. Thank it for all it has done for you and then give it detailed instructions on how it can serve you. Instead of visualizing what you want to happen, feel it happening instead. The more senses you bring into the process the more effective it will be.
Although visualization is often first learned because of healing needs, it can also be used for many other purposes. For example, visualizing a surgical procedure beforehand can greatly reduce both complications and pain. Successful athletes have been using visualization for decades to improved performance and break records. Visualization has also helped people create abundance for themselves and achieve life goals that many thought were impossible.
Visualization is a powerful tool for direct communication with your body’s intelligence. Your body wants to hear from you. It wants to know what you want, but it needs to know you are serious. You also need to speak it’s language. Taking the time to learn to communicate energetically through images, symbols and feelings is a compelling testament to your commitment.
If you would like to learn more about visualization, as well as how and why it works, here are some resources.
Carl and Stephanie Simonton. Getting Well Again, 1992 (reprinted)
Jeanne Achterberg. Imagery in Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine, 1985
Gerald Epstein. Healing Visualizations, 1989
Martin Rossman. Guided Imagery for Self Healing, 2000
Les Fehmi. Dissolving Pain: Simple Brain Training Exercises for Overcoming Chronic Pain, 2010
Lee Pulos. The Power of Visualization, 2013
Norman Doidge, The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers Of Science, 2007
____________, The Brain’s Healing Way: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity, 2015
You can learn more about the energy realm in my book, “It’s All About Energy: Adventures in Expanded Reality”, found on Amazon, and on my website, www.transformationalexpansion.com.