ABSTRACT
The human imagination has the power to bridge the gaps between people and between the body and the mind by integrating the unconscious, lived experience of the past and present, releasing tension from unknown fears and offering new perceptions of the future. Imagination functions on a higher cortical level than sensation, movement, and emotion, offering an organizing symbolic mode of discerning the truth of lived experience. Somatic inquiry into sensations of images gives a voice and animation to creative life that has not been accepted in experiences of relational trauma. Skillful changes to the implicit memory with life-enhancing embodied imaginal perceptions allows the trauma to reconsolidate in the optimal arousal zone. A practice of reading poetry and prose and listening to music from one's own culture or another cultural heritage can also provide sensory-based imaginal healing, possibly of historical trauma. Poets and musicians who express a contemporary relationship to nature can offer sensory-based imaginal perceptions for transformation of implicit memories.
