About

Imaginal Practice

Imaginal practice involves opening to the imaginal realm, developing a greater capacity to be in contact with the wholeness of experience and cultivating a more refined attunement to the ineffable over time.

Being in touch with the imaginal means bringing whole-hearted, open-minded presence to the depths of experience.

The most common things that stop people experiencing the imaginal are:

a closed mind, where they are stuck in mentally constructed ideas about reality
a lack of self-trust, where opening to the emotional truth and resonance of a moment is too overwhelming or scary for people
control, where people are unwilling or unable to allow shadows
insensitivity, where people don’t have the skills or knowledge to feel or recognise the imaginal aspects of their experience

A simple example of being in touch with the imaginal is being able to allow an emotion like sadness or joy and feel the textures and shapes that it takes as it moves through experience.

Conditions

It takes time and effort for people to deconstruct habitual ways of being in the world, process the emotions that are in the depths of experience and connect with the more imaginal aspects of experience.

Opening the heart and mind and developing the sensitivity to the imaginal can be done through complementary practices, such as meditation and therapy modalities. Imaginal practices themselves will also help people develop these skills and capacities.

Experiencing the imaginal realm is both a result of and a doorway into deeper presence and the imaginal aspect of experience has more space to emerge if a sense of time and self can drop away.

Uniqueness

With imaginal practice, in every moment you are discovering something new and unique that has never been experienced before and being with the specificity of this in your experience.

Lots of meditative practices promote a kind of peaceful silence or nothingness as their end goal, but with imaginal practice there is a recognition that even in the depths of silence there is always an aliveness. When the mind starts quieting down and the heart is connected, what you open to is being in connection with the living cosmos.

“The imaginal is running in the background of experience all the time. It’s a fabric of dancing realities that is there whether I engage with it or not,” Joost Vervoort

Doorways

It can be best for people to access the imaginal in places where they feel safe and held at first, like meditation and therapeutic spaces.

Psychedelics can also be a doorway into the imaginal, but it’s important that people are given the context of the imaginal realm in order for them to be able to make this connection in a meaningful way.

The practice needs to feel inspiring and alive in some way because emotional resonance is what connects you with the imaginal realm. Some people have described opening to the imaginal realm as like falling in love with experience.

Flow

Being in touch with the imaginal realm is akin to being in a flow state. To be in flow you have to be willing to let go of control, but in order to do this successfully, you have to have done the many hours of practice that allow you to be able to meet experience without collapsing.

Descriptions

One of the most important aspects of experience that we want to share with people is that the experience of the imaginal realm is not something that you just make up.

Imaginal practice is a way of tapping into the depths of the ineffable and unseen aspects of reality. Of being in touch with the energies and invisible parts, that are as real as the physical world, even though they are often hidden and formless.

Imaginal practice gives people the language and senses for feeling these parts of themselves, others and the world.

Guided imaginal journeying is the fastest way to get a taste of this. Here is how some people have described it:

“It felt like a guided meditation that was opening my senses and through that opening up of the senses, I entered into an imaginal space.”

“The practice is like opening an artistic relationship with your interiority, it allows you to relate to your experience as a living art piece.”

“It invites a playfulness that creates an intimacy with the inside, you are not trying to fix anything.”

“The simple, spatial reorganising that the practice opens up as a possibility is a game-changer. I didn’t know that it was an option and it meant I was able to release a stuckness.”

“The practice opens you to synaesthesia and senses beyond what people assume is possible.”

Explore

If you’re interested in exploring imaginal practice, here are some places to start:

Rosa Lewis – Overview of Imaginal Practice
River Kenna – Foundation Courses
Dharmagarage – Guided meditations
Sam Hinds – Communal Reverie

Coaching

One-to-one guidance is one of the best ways to unlock access to the imaginal realm. Here is a list of practitioners who are able to guide you into a direct experience of the imaginal:

Rosa Lewis, Jane Miller, Kristen Stake, Maija Haavisto, Marcel Scharth, Untangling Self, David Lassiter

Value Metrics for Practice

Imaginal practice opens the door to a fuller way of being. It has the capacity to bring people into a place of alignment with the deepest nature of their beings.

In the project’s Vision Document, Rosa defines the value metrics for shared imaginal practice as:

Awakening: becoming aware of aspects of experience that were previously in shadow, freeing up inhibited parts and creating a greater capacity for direct presence
Transformation: moving towards healthy, open and balanced body, mind and social systems
Creativity: increasing the capacity for creative expression and discovering radically new solutions to problems
Embodied soulfulness: cultivating nourishing connections with the ineffable aspect of experience and becoming an expression of this in the world. Increasing and sharing in beauty, interconnection, depth, joy, meaning and purpose

Inspiration

Some of the key imaginal practices and cultures that we are building upon include Jung’s Active Imagination, Rob Burbea’s Soulmaking Dharma, Tantric Buddhism, Shamanic Journeying, Cliff Barry’s Shadow Work Therapy and George Lakoff’s Metaphors We Live By.

Some adjacent modalities that incorporate some elements of working with the imaginal are Internal Family Systems Therapy and Somatic Experiencing.

Other contemplative practices, such as mindfulness meditation, jhana meditation or prayer can also help deepen or open a connection with the imaginal.

Quotes from Imaginal Practice