Visualization for Weight Loss

The more time you spend visualizing, the more you’ll naturally be drawn to other types of mind-body practices, such as meditation, that will contribute to your weight loss success. As I’ve worked through my weight loss, I’ve gotten to a point where meditation isn’t a chore for me. In fact, it’s one of the most pleasurable experiences in my life. I love getting into that calm, relaxed state, and I love feeling my whole body being recharged with energy. Oftentimes I get sudden flashes of inspiration that can be life changing when I’m in a deep meditation.

I’ve also noticed a direct correlation between the quality of my meditations and the quality of my life. When I have a great meditation session in the morning, I know the rest of my day is going to be enjoyable and productive. I’m calmer, more present, and less reactive, and that equals less stress, more clarity, and more vitality. Meditation unblocks your energy channels and gets your subtle life force flowing. I find that when my energy is flowing, my life is flowing. It’s that simple.

Other mind-body practices, such as yoga, tai chi, and qigong, also help reduce stress and contribute to weight loss. They do the same thing for others that meditation does for me, so it’s great to keep these practices in mind as you’re trying to lose weight.

The practice of yoga has been with us for ages. At the Indus Valley, a site in India that archeologists date to the third millennium B.C., images depict people in various yoga poses. That’s quite a testament to yoga’s lasting power as a physical and spiritual practice, though it only reached Western shores in the 1890s. It wasn’t until a century later that doctors began to recognize its health benefits.

In 1990, Dean Ornish, M.D., founder of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, published in The Lancet the results of a lifestyle-change study that included yoga. He found that a whole-person approach combining healing whole foods, yoga, community support, and meditation could actually reverse blockages in the arteries of heart patients. Dr. Ornish’s work prompted a flood of studies on the healing power of yoga.¹

A 2001 study at the University of California, Davis, found that two 90-minute classes a week of hatha-yoga (the most common form taught in the United States) for eight weeks boosted arm and leg strength of the volunteers by as much as 31 percent. And even though they weren’t performing the type of exercise we typically think of as aerobically challenging—walking, running, and so on—their muscular endurance increased by 57 percent and their aerobic capacity jumped by almost 10 percent.²

Yoga can also help you lose weight. Alan Kristal, Ph.D., associate head of the Cancer Prevention Program in the Public Health Sciences Division at the Hutchinson Center, found that regular yoga practice can help prevent the typical weight gain that occurs in most people in their 40s and 50s. In the study, Kristal and colleagues tracked the health of 15,500 healthy men and women between the ages of 45 and 55. He found that middle-age people who practice yoga gained less weight over a ten-year period than those who did not, and the results were independent of other physical activity and dietary patterns.³ “We hypothesized that mindfulness—a skill learned either directly or indirectly through yoga—could affect eating behavior,” Kristal says.

In another study, he and colleagues interviewed 300 fit people to find out how often they engaged in mindless eating—a risk factor for weight gain. About 40 percent of the people surveyed did yoga regularly. Kristal queried the volunteers about behaviors such as eating when full, noshing in response to environmental cues such as television commercials, or snacking when they felt stressed or upset.⁴

Kristal discovered that the yoga group was much less likely to engage in mindless eating. They also weighed less on average. Adding a yoga practice to any weight loss program could make it more effective, he says. Researchers have also found that other relaxation-based, gentle movement practices, such as tai chi and qigong, produce similar results to those seen from yoga.

Let’s look a little more closely at the wealth of research documenting meditation’s ability to increase mindfulness, reduce stress, and aid in weight loss. A study from the Duke University Integrative Medicine Center in North Carolina suggests that overweight volunteers lost more weight when they meditated than they did with just diet and exercise alone. The combination of relaxation benefits and improved awareness of physical cues from the body was responsible for the loss, according to the researchers.⁵

The relaxing nature of meditation grants all the benefits of lowering stress, including decreasing cortisol and inflammation, and boosting immune function. But regular meditation will also alter your brain, allowing you to manage future stressful situations with grace and calm. Neurologists at Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston University have found that meditation actually changes the behavior of the amygdala, which you might remember is the seat of aggression and fear in the brain. As the neurologists closely monitored the activity of the amygdala, volunteers looked at images of people who were in positive, negative, or neutral situations. The volunteers then underwent meditation training for two months, after which they viewed another set of negative images.

After regularly practicing meditation, the volunteers reacted much more calmly to the disturbing images. Activity in the amygdala decreased, and the neurologists concluded that meditation improved emotional stability while calming the stress response.⁶

Meditation also helps support your visualization efforts because it can actually improve your ability to visualize. Psychologists at George Mason University in Washington, D.C., showed meditators and nonmeditators a series of detailed images, and then later asked them to identify one of the images among a set of previously unseen images. The meditators were much better at recalling the visual memory task than the nonmeditators were. This, say the researchers, indicates that meditation allows access to greater levels of visuospatial memory resources.⁷ Recalling visual memories is extremely useful when practicing visualization. You may want to recall a pleasurable scene when you were fit, happy, and healthy. The better able you are to imagine these kinds of positive memories, the more effective your visualizations will be.

Neurologists are finding that mind-body practices produce many physiological benefits, including altering the expression of genes in our DNA as well as a whole host of cellular and hormonal changes. Eastern and traditional medical professionals attribute the benefits of mind-body practices to another source: chi or qi, a subtle energy current of life force that runs through the body. In Ayurvedic medicine, it’s referred to as prana.

Many medical professionals scoff at the idea of chi, but we didn’t even know we had radio waves until a few hundred years ago. In fact, there are lots of invisible forms of energy that we’re discovering all the time. As we develop instruments to detect the subtle waves, they are “discovered.”

In the visual spectrum, our eyes can only see certain frequencies corresponding to the color spectrum from red to violet. But we also know there is a whole range of other energies in that very same spectrum that we can’t see, such as radio waves, microwaves, gamma ray, X-rays, and so on. All these subtle energies have always existed, but we didn’t know they were there until recently because we couldn’t “see” them and we didn’t have instruments to detect them.

In the same way, we have a subtle life force energy current that runs through our bodies that we can’t detect with our senses, but it is there nonetheless. Eastern medicine has been studying this subtle life force energy for thousands of years, and, according to experts in the field, our chi is at the essence of the mind-body connection.

Ever wonder how thought creates movement? To me, this is one of the greatest miracles in the world and something that has always puzzled me. How does a thought—an invisible, nonphysical notion—translate to movement in our bodies? We think, I want to pick up that apple, and that invisible thought somehow creates movement. Neurons fire and nerves stimulate muscle contractions in an amazingly complex and coordinated sequence and the apple gets picked up. Truly miraculous!

Chinese medicine has an explanation. Our thoughts are a force. Not a strong enough force to move matter—at least not for most of us—but a force strong enough to move chi energy. The chi energy then creates an energetic ripple that affects the electrons in our brain cells. That causes our brain cells to “fire,” sending messages to other brain cells, which results in nerves firing and muscles contracting. So our life force energy, a subtle form of energy that responds to our desires, is the interface between thought and movement.

This subtle life force energy circulates through the body along discrete, invisible pathways, just like blood travels through arteries and veins. Known in acupuncture as meridians, or nadis, these pathways keep the body working smoothly. In traditional forms of medicine, disease originates when blockages occur in these energy channels. Treating disease requires removing the energy blockage and restoring the flow. That’s what acupuncturists are doing with needles: they’re unblocking your energy channels.

You’re at your healthiest and most vibrant when your energy channels are open and flowing freely. When you have blockages, your entire body will suffer as a result. You’ll feel exhausted, you’ll be stressed, and you’ll get sick. All of this can lead to the activation of your FAT programs, so getting your life force pathways open and flowing is the best way to create health, stay fit, and boost your vitality.

Our energy channels become blocked through fear, negativity, and stress. The pathways constrict, trapping healthy energy and allowing negative emotions and energies to dominate. Treating these troubles is possible using any of the mind-body practices we’ve discussed. They all improve the flow of this life force energy.

Dawson Church, Ph.D., the energy researcher and author of The Genie in Your Genes, says, “The body’s connective tissue system is a giant liquid crystal semiconductor,” which means that when you stretch it through yoga or activate it through the gentle movements of tai chi or qigong, you’re improving your life force energy flow. He also goes on to say:

Studies show that points on the life force meridians have much lower electrical resistance (averaging 10,000 ohms at the center of the point) when compared to the surrounding skin (which averages a much higher 3,000,000 ohms). Among other characteristics, acupuncture points propagate acoustic sound better than does the surrounding skin. They also emit small amounts of light and greater amounts of carbon dioxide. When the points are stimulated with a low-frequency current, the body responds by producing endorphins and cortisol. When they are stimulated with a higher-frequency current, the body produces serotonin and norepinephrine. When the surrounding skin receives the same current, these neurochemicals are not produced.⁸

So it’s clear that cutting-edge medical science is recognizing the validity of the 5,000-year-old study of chi energy, acupuncture meridians, and our subtle life force energy channels.

What’s common to nearly all mind-body practices is that they use visualization and/or breathing techniques to direct life force energy to different parts of the body and unblock energy channels. Remember that life force energy is moved and controlled by your mind. In yoga, tai chi, and qigong, you’re using breathing, visualization, and gentle movement or stretching to direct life force through the body. In guided meditations, you’re using breathing and/or visualization to circulate your life force energy. As you direct life force energy to various parts of your body, it clears out blockages, so that your channels are open and flowing.

On a very practical note, when your energy channels are open, and your chi is flowing, you simply have more energy, which means you will have fewer junk food cravings. One of the reasons we crave empty-calorie junk food is because we’re chronically exhausted, and one of the reasons we’re exhausted is our life force energy isn’t flowing. When you get your energy channels flowing, you have an entirely different way to energize your body, so you are not as dependent on food.

To help unblock your energy channels and circulate healing life force vitality throughout your body, you can use visualization in addition to the mind-body practices we’ve discussed above. In this visualization, you’re using the power of your mind to direct life force energy throughout your body, nourishing and healing your entire body.

Sit straight with your chin slightly down, so that your spine is like one long line from the bottom of your spine to the base of your head. Keep your mouth closed if possible and comfortable and let your tongue slightly touch the roof of your mouth. Have your hands gently folded together on your lap.

Now take a deep breath in, and then let that breath out and relax. Just imagine there’s a ball of light in your navel and it’s circulating around. And it’s getting brighter and brighter, and as it’s circulating around it’s pulling energy up from the earth. Energy is coming from the earth, into your feet, and into your shins and ankles, and into your calves, and into your knees, and it’s circulating around your legs and your bones, and it’s going into your thighs, and it’s going into your pelvis, and it’s going into that ball of energy in your navel.

And as this ball is pulling energy up from the earth and spinning around your navel, imagine that it’s also pulling energy down from the sky. That energy is filling your head with bright white light, and if you touch your tongue to the roof of your mouth, you might feel the trickle as that energy goes into your tongue and into your throat, filling your throat with bright white light. And you feel it move into your heart, filling your heart and your lungs with bright white light. And then down into your navel.

So your whole body is being filled with light. Energy from the earth is coming into your legs. Energy from the sky is coming into your head, and it is all meeting in your navel. And your navel is spinning around with bright white light, getting brighter and brighter and brighter. And this ball of white light is getting bigger and bigger so that it’s filling your whole stomach and your pelvis and your thighs and your chest and your shoulders and your shins and your ankles and your head. It’s getting bigger and bigger and brighter and brighter. And it’s above your head and it’s below your feet and you’re covered in a big ball of bright white light. And every cell of your body is being bathed in this bright white light.

Imagine the energy starting to move from one arm, into your hand and then into the other hand and up the other arm. So in this way, energy is flowing around your arms, as well. So now you have a ball of light in your navel that’s circulating like a galaxy of light or a vortex. It’s pulling energy up from the earth, into your legs and into the vortex. It’s pulling energy down from the sky, into your head and chest and into the energy vortex. Energy is also circulating around your arms, and your entire body is covered by an ever-growing ball of beautiful bright white light.

Now just sit for a few minutes, with your back straight, your tongue lightly touching the roof of your mouth, and your hands folded together on your lap. Breathe into and out of your navel and imagine that while you breathe in, the spiral turns faster, like a pinwheel in the wind, and as you breathe out, the spiral turns faster, as well. Don’t worry about which direction it turns, either way is fine, you are circulating energy through your body. Just spend a few minutes breathing into and out of your navel and imagining the energy circulating and moving in all directions as you breathe. See the energy coming up from the earth, down from the sky, all converging in your navel and growing into an ever-brighter, ever-larger ball of energy.

When you’re ready to finish, imagine the vortex of light in your navel sucking up all the excess light that is coming up from the earth, down from the sky, and circulating all around your body. Imagine it all gets sucked into this circulating vortex and stored there as life force vitality that you can use anytime you want or need.

Doing mind-body practices, including visualization, not only helps you open your energy channels and improve your life force; they can also help you increase your intuition, which, as we’ll talk about in the next chapter, can also be extremely useful for weight loss.