Abstract

Guided imagery is a transformative practice for reducing stress, healing mind and body, and improving performance. This definitive collection brings together leading pioneers in the field of guided imagery to share its theory, practice and history.

Readers are introduced to the extensive uses of imagery, from its medical application for pain relief, cancer care and other physical healing, through its significant contribution to mental health and depth psychology, to its application within the arts and as a vehicle for social change. An exploration of the place of imagery within spiritual and religious traditions includes a never before published guide to the internal alchemy of Daoist imagery.

Transformative Imagery will enable professionals to tailor guided imagery to their individual practice, demonstrating how to use it with people of all ages, from chronic pain patients to athletes to combat veterans and for both mental and physical health.

It's often assumed that imagination is a fantasy flight away from reality. But paradoxically, Transformative Imagery is just the opposite. The practice ushers us into deep inner spaciousness where we experience the immediacy of the Present, bringing into focus the Real which dwells within. It is a guide in how to see beyond our limiting, preconceived notions and connect with the Mystery that infuses our daily life.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, author of What the Mystics Know: Seven Pathways to Your Deeper Self

Dance an image that you have drawn. Dance the physical response, the emotions it stirs and dance the mental image. When I explored this process on myself, I drew a gray smudge in my pelvic area that I couldn't or wouldn't dance. My intuition, sent me to my doctor who discovered the gray smudge was a tumor. It was removed. 45 years later, I am still dancing my images.
This book is inspiring, revealing and life changing. I highly recommend that you read it, study it and discover innovative ways to change your life and your practice.

Anna Halprin, Ph.D., co-founder, Tamalpa Institute
Leslie Davenport has done a masterful job of weaving this collection of essays on Transformative Guided Imagery into a beautiful journey of its own. As this book guides you down the path of body, mind and spirit, you first visit the historic and scientific story of Guided Imagery and its uses within the medical world. Here you can review the research surrounding Guided Imagery and get an appreciation for those who have contributed to the evolution of this field. As you delve deeper into the book, the discussion gets more personal, giving you guidelines on how to use imagery for your own health and well-being and offering some starting points for your journey with this healing modality. This path into the personal then opens the door to exploring the spiritual realms for a more collective and transpersonal experience. I highly recommend this engaging, informative and surprisingly touching look at Transformative Imagery in all its manifestations and encourage you to step on the path with this book as your guide.
Molly Roberts, MD, integrative physician, LightHearted Medicine, San Francisco, and past president, American Holistic Medical Association

Leslie Davenport has assembled a broad array of excellent contributors to her fine
volume, Transformative Imagery. Individually and collectively, they reinforce the vitally important message that our inner worlds contain a richness of personal resources that can first be discovered and then utilized to improve well-being on many levels. What a gift from Davenport to give readers the chance to be able learn and use these experiential approaches in so many beneficial ways!

Michael D. Yapko, Ph.D., clinical psychologist, and author of Mindfulness and Hypnosis and Essentials of Hypnosis
This well-written book offers a comprehensive look at the power of imagery to transform our lives. Leslie Davenport has assembled an impressive array of leading experts in their fields to guide us in a practical and inspiring way to grow, heal, and live a more satisfying life. I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to explore this powerful path toward opening our heart and connecting with life in a deeper and richer way.
John Amodeo, PhD, author of Dancing with Fire: A Mindful Way to Loving Relationships
Leslie Davenport has outdone herself with her new book, Transformative Imagery: Tapping the Source of Personal and Social Change. It is comprehensive, varied and fascinating. She has gathered together editors who are a who's who of the imagery world. Their chapters include historical, research and applied uses of imagery. This book is a must read for anyone who wants to know about or use imagery for implementing change. Transformative Imagery will contribute to your soul growth and evolution at many levels. I highly recommend it!
Kay Porter, Ph.D., CC-AASP, author of The Mental Athlete
Leslie Davenport has created a beautifully crafted and essential text tracing imagery's roots as a healing force from pre-history to the astounding array of modern-day research and applications. A must-read for change agents in integrative health and healing, these chapters will convince the reader that the most important tool in medicine remains one's own imaginative power.
Professor Meg Jordan, Ph.D., RN, CWP, chair, Department of Integrative Health and Somatic Psychology, California Institute of Integral Studies
Author Leslie Davenport has a broad background in dance, spirituality, and the humanities. Her new book, Transformative Imagery: Tapping the Source of Personal and Social Change, is a rich collection of authors and topics addressing imagery. Her gallery of authors includes such much loved figures as Rachel Naomi Remen, Martin Rossman, Glenn Hartelius, and many others. The perspectives she taps range from Sufism to Taoism to Jungian depth psychology to psychoneuroimmunology to clinical guided imagery. Her prose and that of her contributors is readable, referring to scholarly sources yet not encumbered with an excess of citations. I recommend this book for practitioners and academics alike.
Donald Moss, Ph.D., dean, College of Integrative Medicine and Health Sciences, Saybrook University, Oakland, CA
At the heart of dance is the transformation of images into a physical language - bodies that express poetry through movement. Dancers expand possibility by moving inward, as a dancer's process arises from the inside first before it is outwardly expressed. The insightful compilation Transformative Imagery by Leslie Davenport, is the truth of how we create our life's dance in a similar way, expanding our own individual human potential from the inside out. It embodies the past while pointing to the future, making the present vibrant and full of possibilities.
Ann Marie DeAngelo, artistic director, DeAngelo Productions, and former ballerina and associate director, Joffrey Ballet
Thanks so much for your beautiful offering to bring healing into the world....
Bob Stahl, Ph.D., author of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook
Transformative Imagery provides a template for significant change on both personal and professional levels. Imagery is a valuable gateway for inner-outer alignment, resulting in greater fulfillment while leading to peak performance whether in organizational leadership, business, healing, the arts or sports. The contributions from experts in a range of fields are insightful and eminently practical, providing both theory and practice. It is a highly recommended read for anyone ready to embark and succeed with transformational change.
Behnam Tabrizi, Ph.D., bestselling author of The Inside Out Effect, and consulting professor at Stanford University’s Department of Management Sciences and Engineering
Imagery may be our most profound resource for change and transformation. In this book, Leslie Davenport brings together a wealth of cutting edge experts to explore this notion. She covers it all; from science to spiritual traditions. This book is a must read for us in clinical practice as well as all who want to learn more about the power of imagery.
Susan Ezra, RN, HN-BC and Terry Reed, MS, RN, HN-BC, co-founders of Beyond Ordinary Nursing and past presidents of Imagery International
Mind body skills, contemplative practices and positive psychology are increasingly validated components of an emerging integrative paradigm of mental health and medicine. The breadth and depth of the spectrum of imagery make it an important implicit or explicit component of most, if not all, of these practices. Leslie Davenport's Transformative Imagery provides a unique and valuable historical and contemporary review of imagery's clinical and popular applications and will be extremely valuable to academics, clinicians and the general public.
John A. Patterson, MD, MSPH, FAAFP, senior faculty, Center for Mind Body Medicine
If there were a Hall of Fame for "Consciousness Technologies," this prolific collection of essays on guided imagery for self-healing and transformation would be inducted into it. Within this compilation is a compelling depth and breadth of essays, including evidence-based research, on the curative and creative powers of an age-old spiritual practice-using our inner minds to support physical, mental, and emotional health. Enhanced with excellent guided imagery scripts for using the body's language of imagery as a therapeutic tool, Transformational Imagery sets a high standard and establishes guided imagery in its rightful place-as a leading edge technology in this era of emergent conscious self-realization.
Julie Clayton, author and editor of award-winning books: www.sacredwriting.com
Leslie Davenport's Transformative Imagery is essential reading for serious students of the imaginal world. The heart of healing is imaginal. The soul of being is imaginal. Love, wisdom and will are sourced in the fountain of the imaginal. Some make do with superficial practices not grounded in the infinite richness of the imaginal. Superficial practices are a disservice to clinician and patient alike. Read this book. You will benefit. So will all those whose lives you touch.
Michael Lerner, Ph.D., president and co-founder, Commonweal
We humans are endowed with an incredible capacity for health, healing, balance, and transformation: the gift of mental imagery. It is not possible for us to live without imagery; only computers and robots can do that. Transformative Imagery is accessible to both professionals and laypersons. It reveals how this universal ability can be enlisted in increasing anyone's level of joy, meaning, and fulfillment.
Larry Dossey, MD, author of One Mind: How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters
Since imagery is utilized by every person most of the time, it behooves us to harness its extraordinary positive potential for skill building, emotional and physical healing, and spiritual transformation. Leslie Davenport has woven together an exceptional book that shows us how to do just that. Presenting both ancient wisdom and cutting edge theory and applications of imagery, this book brings together the writings of highly skilled clinicians, coaches, and researchers with extensive experience utilizing imagery. Transformative Imagery is a real gift for anyone interested in learning more about the healing power of imagery and how to apply it both personally and professionally.
Robin Casarjian, author and executive director, The Lionheart Foundation, sponsor of The National Emotional Literacy Projects for Prisoners and Youth at Risk
There are many forms of seeing and blindness. Most do not involve the eyes and the visual pathways from eyes to brain. Leslie Davenport and her expert co-contributors have created a comprehensive resource which opens multiple pathways to the seen and unseen realms of our existence. Transformative Imagery is a way of seeing ourselves and engaging the wisdom and medicine of our 'inner healer'.
William B. Stewart, M.D., medical director and co-founder, emeritus, Institute for Health & Healing, and author of Deep Medicine: Harnessing the Source of Your Healing Power