Imagination · “Feel It Real”
Programmed Self-Healing Imagery
At the alpha level, direct vivid, positive imagery to a specific part of the body — picturing the area healthy and the trouble clearing — as a calming, morale-supporting adjunct to medical care.
Stone’s self-healing imagery in 5 lines: At your alpha level, bring attention to the affected area. Picture it bathed in healing light, gently cleaned or repaired. Always end on the part fully restored and working normally. Affirm wellness, give thanks, count up 1→5. Use only alongside real medical care.
What it is
Stone’s “going inside the body” exercise in You the Healer: once at the alpha level, the practitioner directs detailed, positive imagery to a specific affected area — visiting it in the mind’s eye and picturing it whole, clean, and working normally.
Stone offers concrete imaginative props: picturing the area bathed in healing light or warmth, imagining a gentle inner “cleaning” or repair of the trouble, or simply seeing the part restored to normal function — always ending on the image of health, never on the damage.
This complements the Mental Screen: the screen views the body at a distance, while this exercise enters and works within the imagined body. It is explicitly an adjunct in Stone’s own framing — preparation for and support of healing, not a replacement for it.
The Method
Performed at the alpha level, ideally daily over the book’s program.
- Reach your level with the countdown; settle into calm.
- Go to the area. Turn attention to the specific body part or system needing help. Picture it clearly — its location, shape, surroundings.
- Apply positive imagery. Choose an image that means healing to you: warm light flowing in; the area being gently cleaned, soothed, or repaired; inflammation cooling; cells doing their normal work. Make it vivid and unhurried.
- End on health. Always finish with the part fully restored and functioning normally — comfortable, strong, clear. Hold this final image with calm, positive feeling.
- Affirm and thank. Add a present-tense affirmation of wellness and a note of gratitude.
- Return. Count up 1→5, feeling refreshed and well. (The alpha-level frame and affirmations are the Silva method; the directed inner-body picturing, healing-light / cleaning imagery, and “always end on the healthy image” rule are how Stone presents self-healing imagery in You the Healer. The structure parallels clinical guided-imagery and Carl & Stephanie Simonton’s imagery work, which Stone wrote within the same era.)
Source & Lineage
Robert B. Stone (1916–1999), longtime Silva Method lecturer, set out the self-healing course in You the Healer (1994). The alpha-level method is José Silva’s.
Directed healing imagery of this kind also has a clinical lineage in the Simonton cancer-imagery program of the 1970s–80s; Stone’s version is a self-help, do-it-yourself adaptation.
Common refinements
Substituting it for care. The biggest error and the most dangerous: this never replaces diagnosis or treatment.
- Ending on the damage. Always close on the restored, healthy image; finishing on the wound rehearses it.
- Forcing or straining. Healing imagery should be calm and gentle; tension defeats the relaxation that gives it value.
- Health anxiety. For some, repeatedly scanning a sick body increases worry — if so, stop and use general relaxation instead.
- Expecting a fix on a timeline. Treat it as ongoing supportive practice, not a deadline for a cure.