As a clinician working with patients suffering from a broad spectrum of medical and psychological problems, Dr. David Bresler has explored a wide variety of therapeutic and educational approaches over the past 30 years.
As the Co-Founder of the Academy for Guided Imagery, he has worked with many leading health-care professionals to develop Interactive Guided Imagery℠ or (IGI℠), a highly specific approach to guided imagery that fully utilizes the natural language of the unconscious mind. IGIsm is an extremely powerful modality that helps a patient/client connect with the deeper resources available to them at cognitive, affective, and somatic levels.
These tools are used to facilitate an enhanced awareness of the unconscious imagery the patient/client already has, and they can help clients learn to effectively work with this imagery on their own. This process is capable of bringing about profound psychological and physiological change, as it simultaneously both empowers and educates the patients.
For example, a client can be asked to close her eyes and to allow an image to form in her mind that symbolizes her problem. Using IGI℠ techniques, the client may then be guided in an imaginary dialogue with this image to explore and reveal its meaning and relevance to her problem or issue.
These images can provide important information about the why the problem has occurred, what it wants, needs, and has to offer, as well as information about the client’s beliefs, expectations, fears, resources and solutions. Since many clients have uncannily accurate intuitions about their problems and solutions, the imagery process makes these insights much more easily available to them and their clinician.
It’s important to remember that imagery has profound consequences, for the body tends to respond to an image as it would to a genuine external experience. If you vividly imagine slowly sucking on a sour, tart slice of a fresh, juicy lemon, for example, you will soon begin to salivate. Other examples include sexual fantasy or bringing to mind something that makes you ferociously angry and their attendant physiologic responses.
Imagery has been shown to affect almost all major physiologic systems of the body, including respiration, heart rate, blood pressure, metabolic rates in cells, gastrointestinal mobility and secretion, sexual function, cortisol levels, blood lipids, and even immune responsiveness.
With respect to producing specific physiological changes that can promote healing, guided imagery represents an important alternative to pharmacotherapy with much greater safety and far fewer complications, precautions, and contra-indications.
The clinical applications of IGI℠ in medicine are tremendously broad, and include, but are not limited to:
• Acute and chronic pain relief
• Addictions
• Anxiety disorder
• Cancer treatment and life-threatening illness
• Couples and relationships
• Depression
• Family and parenting
• Fertility, birthing and delivery
• Fitness training
• Grief therapy
• Immune augmentation
• Issues of aging
• Managing chronic illness and preventing acute exacerbations
• Meaning and purpose
• Medication compliance and adherence issues
• Mind/body issues
• Post-traumatic stress disorder
• Preparation for surgery and medical procedures
• Relaxation training
• Sleep disorders
• Smoking cessation and weight control
• Spirituality
• Stress reduction and management
• Survivors of abuse
• Teaching self-care
• Terminal illness and end of life care
Dr. Bresler and his staff include the most highly trained and experienced researchers, teachers, and practitioners of guided imagery, and patients throughout the world have benefitted from their expertise by visiting their offices or consulting online through Zoom Video Conferencing.
