Chakra Therapy and the Imaginal: Transformation and Healing Through Image by Franceska Jones

I’ve been interested in the relationship between these two concepts for some time – chakra therapy as a form of bio-energetic healing and the imaginal as a realm in which we can locate symbolic images that also have the potential to transform and heal us.

The source of this interest lies in my role as a qualified practitioner of chakra therapy or bio-energetics, as it’s also known, which I have practiced as much as my corporate London career has allowed for the last five years or so. And while the term ‘chakra therapy’ might evoke for some of you an idea of a highly spiritual and esoteric healing modality, for me as a student of the practice and later as a practitioner, my learning and application of chakra therapy were founded almost entirely on science and on the observable, empirically proven, apollonian elements of the human energy system.

So when I started early on in my development as a practitioner to be presented with all manner of images during my sessions, there wasn’t any theory within the course content that I could fall back on to explain what was happening and/or how I could use that material to help my clients. It wasn’t until I came on this course and learned certain frameworks – the mundus imaginalis, alchemical hermeneutics, divinatory practices – that I was able to locate some of the decidedly unscientific, mystical experiences that I would have during my sessions, which was revelatory for me.

This project was an opportunity to really explore what would happen when I gave as much space to the image content that came up in my sessions as I did to the biological and anatomical aspects of what was showing up kinesthetically.  To do this I took on three case studies – three wonderful and brave women who were willing to explore with me, one of whom is here with us today and who will later share some of her experiences with us – and I’m going to spend today’s presentation telling how I arrived at this place of needing to integrate the science and the sacred and showing you what the sessions ultimately looked like and produced, in terms of image content and personal development and transformation – both for me and my clients.