Medical research suggests that positive mental imagery can promote healing.
The largest such study included 130 patients, aged 18 to 75, who underwent bowel surgery. For three days before surgery and six days after, half the patients listened to audiotapes with music and relaxing imagery twice a day. During surgery, they listened to music tapes. Compared to a control group, the listeners reported sharply reduced levels of anxiety and pain, allowing them to cut their use of painkillers by half and, ultimately, speeding their rate of recovery. In a smaller study, people who experienced nightmares learned to recall their bad dreams during the day and then change those nightmares by visualizing different images.