A Body Centered Visualization

for Arrhythmias of the Heart

1. Introduction

The following contains Body Centered Visualizations (BCV or Body Centered Imagination, BCI) of a woman who sought a cure for arrhythmias of the heart. This example shows how such psychosomatic phenomena can be resolved with the help of the BCV method, which I first developed in the late 1980’s.

Her physician gave the diagnosis of distonia vegetativa and as a remedy prescribed a beta-blocker. But this purely medical treatment did not satisfy her. Therefore she decided to explore the use of the BCV method and e-mailed me.

In order to preserve the originality and aliveness of our dialogue, I present the exchange of our e-mails. The text is made anonymous and therefore it has certain omissions.

2. The first visualization

The woman concerned had found in my remarks in the article Neotantrism and Body Centered Visualization that sometimes I recommend to get the heart with its arrhythmias down into the belly and observe it there. This method she tried out and wrote afterwards:  

I read with great interest your remarks and thank you very much. I am a woman, 62 years old, and have suffered from arrhythmias of the heart for some years. I take beta-blockers, of which I would like to absolutely get off. Even the word "blocker" does not please me, since I would not like to block anything!

I brought my heart along with its arrhythmia down into my belly and got the following pictures:  

I saw first a chicken. This chicken laid an egg and sat on it. As the egg hatched a fire-red Phoenix came out and rose into air.  

I spontaneously thought of the expression "chicken" by which the Americans mean coward. I still have my difficulties with the polarity disease/health, since I have a fear of diseases and thus I am too one-sided toward health. Does this vision perhaps mean that I must accept my fear, “breed it out” for the purpose of transforming it into “higher levels”? Or what could it mean from a depth psychological point of view?  

I would be very grateful to you for your help, because the arrhythmias (and the beta-blockers!) impact me so much. I already tried a lot of methods, but still nothing helped up to now. The diagnosis of my family doctor reads: distonia vegetativa!

I wrote back to her:

Your visualization shows that in you a transformation process is activated, which has to do with the creation of the subtle body (this is the meaning of the Phoenix symbol). That perhaps sounds like “so much Greek” to you. That, however, does not matter for in this phase one is not concerned with understanding but rather with having the experience.  

Just go on trying to see your heart in your belly, to simply look at it there and observe how these images develop. Do not intervene with thoughts or with your will, let it simply happen.

Write down everything you see there, especially also your body and feeling reactions. 

******

3. The second visualization

I obeyed your advice and received the impression that a transformation procedure is really going on. I already felt it before; however, I did not bring the arrhythmias into connection with such a transformation.

Here is my second vision after letting my heart drop down into the belly:

I saw hands hammering on my heart with stones, until the heart shattered. A golden egg became visible. The hands with the stones hammered - against my expectation - and also the golden egg continued to shatter.  

Here briefly the thought of a diamond emerged, but I "saw" a perfectly pure crystal.

I could experience very well the difference between the spontaneously ascending images and my thoughts, which pushed themselves again and again against them. The thoughts seemed to have  the desire to control, to steer, while the images ascended easy and by themselves.  

My intellect tried to convince me that all I did is fantasize, although I "know" that that is not the case. These internal images do not seem to me at all to be just "so much Greek" ...  

Since I have done process work for many years with my feelings, I seem for the moment to be more on a neutral feeling level. The emotional waves smoothed themselves, but I know from experience that this will change again – in which direction I do not know. Anyhow the feelings remained calm during my visions, although I attentively "scanned" internally for them. I only noticed an easy radiating "heat" in the chest area.

My next email:

I will now comment on your second visualization: The egg means a relatively deeply unconscious process still takes place in you. That seems very plausible, if one observes an egg in nature. It needs its time, until it is hatched.

Your egg is golden, i.e., it is the "philosophical gold" of the Medieval alchemists. It corresponds to the goal of their Opus (work). If it is the challenge of someone, to do this work in ones own body, this goal corresponds to the creation of the breath body, the diamond body, the subtle body, the soul body or the body soul. All these are not any esoteric phantasms, but symbolic expressions for the only internally perceptible aspect of the physical body, i.e., in your case: for the interior view of your heart with its arrhythmias.

Your task consists now of training this inner perception and by this of learning to see the "interior view" of your heart. But be patient, this task is actually never completed; one always is on the way, because the way is at the same time the goal.

Your hands hammered on the heart with stones, and by this procedure the golden egg became visible. This hammering that freed the golden egg is the symbolic meaning of the arrhythmias, which obviously want to cause this birth. It is as if the arrhythmias were the midwife of this procedure.

This is now the crucial point! You allowed the images to develop themselves, instead of giving yourself up to destructive thoughts that wanted to convince you that the vision of the chicken meant that you were a coward. Only by this attitude was the symptom "arrhythmia” able to transform itself in the parallel symbol (image) of "hammering on the heart with stones”. Like this the physical symptom, felt as extremely unpleasant, was transformed into the psychophysical symbol of the golden egg. In the language of the old alchemists it sounds like this: In stercore invenitur – in the dirt we will find it [the philosophical gold].  

With this behaviour you have initiated the process I call the subtle body’s creation. Like this you see, feel and sensate that this procedure does not correspond to a weird esoteric phantasm but to the liberation of the internally perceptible aspect of the physical body, to the interior view of your heart with its arrhythmias. This is nothing less than the body soul, the soul body, the diamond body, the breath body or the subtle body.  

Your visualization then continues autonomously. I see the fact of this autonomy and spontaneity, because you write to me that the process happened against your expectation. This is the most important aspect: You let it happen; you simply perceived what happened all by itself! In such a way you become acquainted with the difference between normal fantasies, which come almost 100% from your consciousness and brain, and real new creations, which come up, occur spontaneously and completely autonomously, perhaps also against your will or your moral-ethical conceptions.

In such moments something intervenes, which I call the inner Goddess, i.e., the World Soul or the body soul. She is hurt, because you - naturally without fault, since this is a collective problem of the Western world due to its extraverted Logos culture – did not give yourself up to her and thus you paid too little attention to these inner pictures. Therefore, the deeper reason for your arrhythmias is because your inner life was ignored and the only way your inner Goddess was able to react was through the psychosomatic condition of arrhythmias.

In this way the "inner movie" advances to the crystal. That is now the realized diamond body (subtle body), i.e., from the egg, the yet potential life of the body soul or soul body, its actual life was born. This is the first and most important result of your efforts, and it is the direct effect of the fact that you could let it happen, although “the carousel of thoughts” (Germ.: “Gedankenkarussell”) wanted to turn everything off again and again.

You now might try to go further into the visualization process. If you see the crystal again, try to "touch" it, to examine it with your internal hands. Which sensation does it possess? Does the latter change? Does the crystal change into something else? You should experience this.

If however the crystal is no longer there, you may not want to force anything. Very many beginners make this error with these internal processes; however it is wise to remember the saying: "Where there is a will, there is no way!" The breath body disappears sometimes in the air (therefore it is called breath body) and comes back in another form. You should learn to wait patiently in the so-called Wu Wei. This Taoist attitude corresponds to an "active passivity", which observes with increased attention, but does not want to affect or force anything.  

I find it very good that you return again and again to your feelings. They should direct your process, i.e., good feelings inform you that you should go on, (so called) bad feelings that you should perhaps stop for the moment. However, negative feelings can also sometimes serve as signposts or guides. But in you they seem to be neutral for the moment.

Here is however the critical moment. Modern people are very often deeply unconscious about their negative feelings; they repress them. Then it is possible that the transformational process stagnates and the symptom begins to “journey” in the physical body and new symptoms or/and a different illness arises.  

This also goes together with the observation of many physicians - which sometimes nearly drives them to despair - because the psychosomatic symptoms in the body move from one place to another. They hope for improvement; however the patient comes back to the consulting hour with a symptom located in another part of the body, frustrating the doctors.

In this critical situation therefore possibly the company of a psychotherapist is necessary, who is experienced in these things. Since you write me that you have done "process work for many years and dealt with negative feelings", I trust for the time being in the fact that you will also feel the negative feelings and body sensations during visualization, if necessary. …

So much for today. I can imagine that you have had further visualizations in the meantime. If so, please send me these. Do not forget to try to "touch" the crystal, if this image should come up again, i.e. "observe" it with your "inner hands", however, do not force anything.

How are the arrhythmias?

4. The third visualization

Soon another e-mail with the following message came:

I "saw" the crystal in my hands and it liquefied and began to flow between my fingers.

"Once again, everything slips between your fingers". I registered shortly this thought, nevertheless continued to stay with the inner image.

That water became a bubbling source. Then it transformed into a spiral flow. Finally, this spiral became rather a light flux.  

Now my feelings changed. I felt a deep joy, the tears came – I do not know why - and I felt deeply affected and touched in my heart [RFR: the arrhythmias concern the heart!]. The vision of this light spiral was at the same time vitalizing, deeply affecting and calming.

The image of this light spiral has a long lasting effect on my feelings. The image is very beautiful, and again and again it gives me tears in my eyes. It releases such a strong feeling in me that my body begins to tremble. I let it do, what it would like to do, and stay in these intense feelings and bodily sensations.

I feel a great love in me for this light flux, and have a feeling of confidence beyond everything that I know. The tears still flow and the body goes on trembling. I "know" in fact that I am a part of this light flux. However, this insight causes not pride, but a great humility. My head bends itself downward as if in prayer and my palms turn upward; both movements happen absolutely spontaneously.  

This is as far as I have come. The light spiral left a deep emotional echo and yet touches me very deeply.

As a first answer I wrote back:

Remain as long as possible in these feelings and avoid destructive thoughts ("Once again, everything slips between your fingers"). These negative thoughts will only strengthen the arrhythmias, and will perhaps cause psychosomatic symptoms to travel to different parts of your body.  

5. The autonomy of the inner process  

The deep inner movement, so impressively described above, led to the fact that the woman soon after wrote another e-mail with the following contents: 

That water vision, which I had described in my last e-mail, took on a life of its own. It was like a movie, which runs alone, because I had not especially prepared for it. Suddenly, these images did something completely spontaneous, and I consciously engaged in them. I still feel very grateful for this inner beauty, which was given to me.  

With this "movie which runs on its own", the climax of the visualization process was reached. A very interesting detail is shown in the fact, that in the case of this woman the diamond body, the subtle body does not have a solid state but is something liquid or flowing.  

Now, however, the Logos intervenes, which wants to prevent the progress. The Logos function tries to tell the woman that a negative development had begun; that what she positively experiences as flowing, is not at all that but a destructive process of melting away.  

In this moment the danger of the beginning of a pseudo-logical process arises. In her life the visualizing woman had many traumatic experiences, which she described using the idiom "everything slips between your fingers". The all-killing Logos, in its pseudo-logical way, now turns around and tries to falsify this absolutely positive and deeply moving experience. The negative force of this obstinacy (German: "Meinungsteufel") tries now to betray her in suggesting that in this "inner movie" the same “program” of events is constellated as in her earlier traumatic experience. She is in danger of being seduced by the pseudo-causal devil who, in this case however, "always wants the evil however always creates the good" (J.W. Goethe; Faust) because she had already learned the correct attitude to it (s. also below).  

She thus recognizes the danger, ignores these destructive thoughts and lets the images take on a life of their own without intervening with her conscious will. Therefore the so-called "melting away" transforms into a healing source in the form of a spiral light flux.

This "light spiral", which reminds us of course at the double helix of the DNA of the genes, seems obviously to correspond to the goal of visualization, a result neither she nor I could have known beforehand. This process and its goal developed spontaneously and autonomously, without any effort of her consciousness. On the contrary, if the Logos - she will call it below the "alter Ego" – would have intervened, it would have blocked this constructive process. In the same way the beta-blockers recommended by the physician interrupt the arrhythmias, however, they block these spontaneous processes in the belly, too.

In such a manner she now penetrates into the central experience of the light spiral, and it is just this completely new insight, which lets her experience that "her feelings changed", filled her with "deep joy", and lets her "feel deeply affected and touched in the heart". It is the experience of the vitalizing essence of life (the elixier vitae), the medicina catholica, the all-healing medicine of the Medieval alchemists. Tears of happiness fill her eyes, which show that the visualization has also activated the second Chakra in the belly, the svadhisthana. This Chakra actually calls itself the "aqueous". As my experience shows, such a medicine effects also – much more than any sort of Eastern meditation method – a deep calming and imperturbability.  

At this point I would like to take the opportunity to point out the difference between my visualization method and all the pseudo Tantrist exercises of "Chakra opening", which are now also being practiced in institutes that carry the name of Carl G. Jung. In such pseudo Tantric workshops, usually under the guidance of a self-proclaimed Guru, the participants are instructed in trying to see assumed colors of the different chakras, the centers of the vegetative nervous system in the body. Of course such “exercises” are nothing else than a fixation of the participant’s Logos on arbitrary phantoms of the Guru’s will-centered consciousness.  

Such "Neo-Tantrist" are under the illusion that such fantasies, produced in their head, have something to do with the spontaneous and autonomous processes in the Chakras, the vegetative centers. They cannot see that, in fact, they are still possessed by the Western identification with the Logos and by such "Tantric exercises" even solidify their one-sided view of the world. This behavior the old alchemists called the imaginatio phantastica, in contrast to the imaginatio vera, in which the consciousness, in wise humility, simply observes without any prejudice the spontaneous processes that could occur in one’s own soul.  

6. The revenge of the “alter Ego” (Animus)  

The reader may have also probably had the experience that exactly at the moment of reaching the deepest peace an outside mischief-maker emerges. Also in Body Centered Imagination it is not different. As I had expected, soon the first revenge of the Logos world came. In accordance with my past experience a success in the transformation of the symptom into a picture (symbol) leads to the fact that the realm of the Logos, the head, the word, the causal prejudice – she will call it the "alter Ego", in Jungian terms it is the Animus (see below) - feels "hurt" and strikes back harshly. This revenge expresses itself usually in destructive thoughts, which attack either in the sense of an auto-aggression or a rape on the imaginating persons themselves or on persons associated with her process. If one accompanies such a process as a psychotherapist, one must be prepared therefore in this phase of the fact that one can suddenly be confronted with completely unexpected attacks and outbursts of rage.  

I received the following email:  

I cannot really understand, why still, after everything I so far already did, these arrhythmias have not become loose.

Thus, there was the first act of revenge. The voice full of impatience required that the process had to happen "subito"...

Then it happened – as the "devil" frequently likes it – her e-mail I begin to cite below, was deleted by either her or my Internet provider [in that time there was a virus on the Web, and so e-mails were deleted, if they were suspected as contaminated]. Of course, I did not reply and received the following message:

I would have nevertheless still expected a few friendly parting words …

Full of surprise I wrote back:

My last e-mail from you was on Monday. I did not get an answer. Now I get such an e-mail! - What’s wrong?

I did not at all have the intention to end our contact. This I would have communicated surely to you...

For me it seems that your impatience sometimes thwarts your intentions. Likewise do your destructive thoughts. With these you should fight, as I wrote in the last e-mail.

The last sequence which I heard of your visualizations is the following: "I ‘saw’ the crystal in my hands and it liquefied…" [s. above ]  

7. The “letting out of the wild horses”  

My answer [that e-mail, which had been lost; RFR ] on your diagnosis was not a further vision, but reflections on the fight against my negative thoughts. I communicated to you that I had many bad experiences while fighting against thoughts, because they come, as they like. However, I can approach the origin of the thoughts that try to come out of my alter Ego, which according to my experience produces these kinds of thoughts! I informed you that I had for one moment lost sight of this process, although I know from experience that it becomes active, if I have to do with humans, who have a doctor before their name. I wrote you that normally no negative thoughts arise, if I make fantasy journeys, which I do not communicate to anybody. These are not situations, in which my alter Ego or negative thought process is aroused. Obviously the alter Ego does not smell any danger in such cases for its conceited importance, behind which the fear and worthlessness lurk. I communicated to you that I should have already had to become distrustful, when for one second I wanted to ignore the negative thought of "Once again, everything slips between your fingers".

[Comment of RFR: With this rape of the "alter Ego", the woman concerned, without knowing Carl G. Jung’s depth psychology, describes the process he called the Animus’ possession. During this process the feminine Ego becomes identical with the Animus and begins to argue in a very irritating manner, and it is always right. As we will see, she, in contrast had found a method to outwit her Animus.]

The alter Ego [negative thoughts] asked: What does Dr. Roth now think of you? And answered it itself [RFR: The Animus is always very "subito"!]: "He will interpret it to your disadvantage!"  

However, because I have learned to stay with my truth and not let these maneuvers of avoidance interfere, I reported the facts. I wrote you that it is clear for me that my alter Ego on occasion wants to trip up my heart and let it stumble.  

I begin now to see the arrhythmias as occasional disagreements between my head and my heart, between thinking and feeling.  ...

Still today I apparently try to prove to men that I am worthy; that they - representatively for my father – have to love me and not to abandon. You see, that the whole situation is not so simple!

For a moment I had lost sight of this important detail. I took it for granted … eye be watchful! I did not deal with the fact before that you are not my daddy; that I do not need to impress you and that nothing changes in my own valuation, whether you abandon me or not.

If I would have done that, according to my experience, the negative thoughts would have stayed away. I know these situations. I had become inattentive, because I did not experience this situation anymore for a long time. I believed apparently that this situation was definitely settled. That was obviously a mistake!

With the help of my feeling work I found out that often behind displaced, suppressed old feelings a thought pattern hides, which reveals itself to me only if I simply let the feelings pass without intervening. Like this, the thought pattern breaks down themselves and automatically.  

In addition I obeyed what Buddhists call the "letting out of the wild horses". If I noticed that negative thoughts or "worries" turned around in my head [RFR: the well-known useless "carousel of thoughts"], I played the neutral observer. I listened only attentively, what imbecility these thoughts produced. As an effect of this behavior they trickled away very quickly. Obviously they do not like it, if they are observed by an emotionally neutral observer!  

I have thus, as you see, already taken some action in this direction [RFR: of "fighting" the negative thoughts]. In my soul, they are with security issues, which are an exception rather than the rule in my life, and I am accustomed to regard my psychic state honestly. On this you can believe me.  

I hope that you get my E-Mail this time! I have already enough difficulties with my beta-blockers! It is not necessary that also my e-mails are blocked.  

8. The “inner movie” and the question “What for?”  

This time it worked.

I have learned in the course of my life that it is much better to deal with psychosomatic problems in the way that we try to start from the present and then move into the future instead of "analyzing" them and by this going back through the past, as is usual in a psychoanalysis after Sigmund Freud. In other words: The question ”What for?” is much better than the question "Why?”  

Actually this idea is also behind the special kind of the visualization I propose, my Body Centered Imagination. While the thoughts always circle around the "why?” - somehow they concern always causal connections, the nexus of cause and effect – I discovered that the images or the "inner movie” are directed to the future and spontaneously and independently of our Logos (your "alter Ego”) try to find a way out of the crisis. Therefore, in these visualizations I always pay attention to the question if something spontaneous happens, something that cannot be influenced by our will.  

Exactly that spontaneous process happened with you. And in such a way you found your way into these intensive and positive feelings inside.  

I am convinced therefore - and your last email confirms this - that you have found the correct method. You are right, it is actually the fight between head and heart, which you win obviously, if you let "the horses run", not do pay attention to the thoughts and instead of this explore the inner images or the "inner movie”. I do not believe that you need anything more.  

I do not know whether the arrhythmias will disappear completely in the near future. According to my experience, that can take months or even years. But you know now that you can use them as a signal, which wants to show you that you should enter a visualization. Like this you give them the chance of transforming into something positive.  

By the way, you do not have to impress me. What impresses me most in humans today is not their conscious, will-centered strength for achieving any goal, but their perseverance, which enables them to remain with this "inner movie" with its spontaneous new creation. This way of life I call the real dialogue with the creative aspect of the inner Goddess. It is this ability that characterizes the modern Mystic.  

9. The symptom of the disease as the “inner ally”

And then the next to last email:  

I have been deeply pleased about your last words. I felt accepted and supported. Through our short exchange I have got a new view of the things now. I was not conscious about the fact that I fought the arrhythmias like an enemy, although I practice for a long time to accept myself as I am. As a result of your last e-mail I discovered the readiness in me, to go with my arrhythmias, instead of fighting against them. I will now use them like a counselor, as an inner ally who helps me with such "heart jumps”, instead of regarding them as a pest, which one would like to get rid of as soon as possible.  

I would not have changed my mind and attitude alone, I’m sure. Therefore it was also not a meaningless coincidence that I landed on your Website. [RFR: It was of course a meaningful coincidence, a synchronicity; see www.psychovision.ch/rfr/roth_e_synchronicity.htm ] Therefore, a new movement came into my problem and I’m wondering in which direction it will develop. I will do everything I can for my mental and physical health...  

My present condition: The sea is silent! A few pleasant small waves at the surface and peace in the depth! That light spiral is for me now an inspiration, with which I can lift my mood for quickening me in times when my alter Ego wants to trip up my heart. We are multi-dimensional, bipolar natures and must learn to live like this. I thank you!  

Finally the last email with the following contents came:  

Very briefly I would like to communicate still another unexpected vision, which spontaneously came to me this afternoon. It seems to mean that I should resolve to accept the arrhythmias as something helpful. The arrhythmias in my belly became a lighthouse on an island. I find the picture in this context really appropriate. The great Goddess seems to like me; therefore she sent me this confirmation.  

10. The overcoming of the Logos  

Most of us know - as did this woman with the psychosomatic arrhythmia - that one should not fight the symptom or the disease but accept it. But all this just happens in the head, with the help of the Logos. The real transformation happens, however, only due to an intensive feeling experience. This experience occurs with the help of a transformation method in which as a first condition the Ego quits the brain and enters the belly, as for example in my Body Centered Imagination.  

In contrast to thinking, which can force the truth of ideas with the help of causality or pseudo-causality, in the transformation process feeling experience happens spontaneously, i.e., without any influence of the conscious will (that for its part is nothing else than an accompaniment of the causal conception of the world). This transformation happens in the moment when we let loose our hold of the destructive thoughts or – as in our case here – just do not react on them.  

By this behavior we step out of our identification with the Logos principle and open in such a manner the gates for the "completely different one", for the feeling movement [German: gefühlsmässige Bewegtheit], which we cannot control by will.  

This is the reason why the visualizing woman was finally able to state: "I 'know' now that I am a part of this light flux, and this idea causes no pride but a large humility." In such a way she found her place in the universe again, as a small, but infinitely important part of the inner Goddess. This idea is one of the most important contents of the inner process of individuation I propose.  For me it is some sort of a renewed Mysticism, independent of religios confessions.  

see also Neotantrism and Body Centered Visualization

English Homepage Remo F. Roth

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