Guided Imagery & Music (GIM)

The Bonny Method of Guided Imagery & Music is a music-based therapy rooted in Humanistic, Jungian, and transpersonal theories. Developed by Dr. Helen Bonny in the early 1970s at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, the method evolved from her earlier work creating music programs to enhance psychedelic experiences with Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). After LSD was banned, Bonny hypothesized that music alone could produce similar altered states of consciousness. The method’s uniqueness lies in the synchronicity of music and imaginative experiences, where the imagery reflects personal relationships, emotions, and personality. Embracing these experiences helps individuals accept and understand themselves better.

How it benefits: 

  • Helps to reduce fears and anxieties by accessing positive resources 

  • Allows unresolved issues to surface and helps remove mental and emotional blocks 

  • Reduces stress and enhances well-being 

  • Provides encouragement through difficult emotions and life situations 

  • Stimulates intuition and awakens creativity 

  • Activates our innate capacity for healing and transformation 

  • Connects us to our unique sense of meaning/spirituality 

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With music played on the Ukrainian bandura in this video, I speak to the power of Guided Imagery & Music for being mindful and healing: 

Transcript: “Can you imagine letting go of anything that no longer serves you? Allow this music to join you on this journey. 

Guided Imagery & Music puts us in touch with our core essence of who we are. It’s beautifully therapeutic in that way because it connects us to ourselves again. We recover ourselves. We find out that we’ve been here all along for ourselves. It puts us in touch with our innate sense of spirituality. 

So when the music comes on, it gives you that journey, it gives you that experience. Those messages come from a subconscious place within us. It’s almost like having a waking dream. It takes people exactly where they need to go. I don’t know what’s going to happen and neither do they but that’s where the magic is. That’s where the experience comes. It’s like WOW! 

The more we resist the fact of what is happening right now, the more we suffer. And if can just allow ourselves to feel those emotions in the music then eventually they will dissipate over time. The memories will always be there but the emotions will get less. That is becoming mindful through Guided Imagery & Music”. 

“Guided Imagery & Music takes me to a place in my mind that wants to be heard. Tuning into my spirit and grounding myself, I can finally look at things differently.”

— Jesseca A.