Joanne Smith teaches a five-minute imagination exercise to break the cycle of worrying about your chronic condition all day. You imagine your body moving and focus on sensations rather than visuals, keeping a curious and playful attitude. The goal is to give your mind a brief rest from constant preoccupation.
Because it's common that when you've got a chronic issue, you spend all day, every day thinking about it, expecting it, anticipating it, worrying about it. It's very, very natural, and it makes sense that you'd do that, especially when it's there and it's gonna grab your attention. But if you're able to just set aside, literally just even 5 minutes— I know the one I've shared is 15, but there's some that are shorter— even just the 5 minutes to yourself to just do some Vivid imagination to yourself. You don't have to have an audio, you can just be on your own in a quiet space and you can just— you don't even have to close your eyes if you don't want to, you can have your eyes open, you can have them closed, you can just imagine, feel yourself. If you can't see, that's fine, if you don't really see visions or pictures, you can feel how it will feel, you can just feel your arms and legs moving the way they're moving. Just don't overanalyse it, just play around with it, just get curious. It's something you'll probably do without realising, you might just do it naturally. And just set aside 5 minutes to just have a go doing it. Share with me how you get on, I'd love to know.
