16th century writer Montaigne stated that `a powerful imagination begets the things itself’.  Experimental & clinical studies confirm that immune functioning may be influenced by the use of the imagination.  Dossey (1982) went as far as to say that the associated effects of imagery `were as real as any drug’ and that the workings of the imagination are powerful therapeutic agents and could therefore be said to be medicinal (Graham, 1995).

The implications of these findings are considerable, possible evidence of `mind over matter’, the facility and power of the mind or consciousness to affect by design the matter of our physical body.  By utilising the mind as a therapeutic agent, it can be possible to not only diminish disease, but promote optimal health, wellness and vitality.

Working therapeutically with the imagistic and symbolic nature of the unconscious mind we are afforded an unusual and valuable relationship and experience of time.   Here we exist in an eternal now in which past, present and future are not linear: behind, beside and before us.   We can consciously experience aspects of childhood, our past, a future.  We can live or relive these experiences with a present moment consciousness, bringing the experience back into the present moment like time travellers.  Not only can we access different spheres and fields of time and historicity but we might also find ourselves exploring facets of existence which lie outside waking consciousness.  In these spheres we might develop dialogues with our fears, our past, with symptoms of disease. We might create idyllic landscapes in which we feel supremely confident, safe, resourceful and loved and to which we can return in our waking life, bringing with us all of the accompanying  positive experience and resources.