Lived Body, Imagination,
and Somatic Regulation:
A Healing Journey.
By Julie Vander Poorten
When I was diagnosed in March 2023 with grade‑3 breast cancer, my response was immediate: I made the conscious choice to experience this ordeal not as an end, but as an opportunity—to create a true healing project. Rather than allowing the diagnosis to overwhelm me, I mobilized my inner resources and therapeutic tools to go through this transformation in an active, embodied, and sensitive way.
Very quickly, I felt the need to find an inner stance that would allow me to fully embrace the metamorphosis that serious illness imposes.
— To “surrender,” not to “fight against,” but rather to embrace the process with open eyes.
This approach aligns with Buddhist teachings, particularly the Four Noble Truths: recognizing suffering (dukkha) as an inherent part of existence, identifying its causes, envisioning the possibility of liberation, and walking a path of transformation. This perspective allowed me to open to the present experience, even in its harshest form.
My personal journey then took shape as a living exploration, rooted in my own bodily, emotional, and symbolic experiences. It led me to develop several hypnotic inductions—designed as accessible, supportive tools—which I now deeply wish to share to support other patients in oncology (all pathologies) as well as their caregivers.
In the current context of integrative health approaches, recognizing the body as a living, interactive, and meaningful system invites a profound rethinking of caregiving modalities. This recognition fits within a systemic vision: a symptom can be read as a functional response to a larger system—familial, relational, environmental, symbolic.
This healing journey has thus relied on different practices: Ericksonian hypnosis, universal/experiential shamanism (“core shamanism” as taught at the Foundation for Shamanic Studies), and the Alexander Technique. By activating the imagination, embodied attention, and psycho‑somatic plasticity, these approaches promoted deep neuro‑physiological regulation and supported a more conscious, vital, and aligned traversal of illness.
Three practices for embodied awareness:
Shamanism, hypnosis, Alexander Technique
Although coming from different cultural and epistemological contexts, shamanism, hypnosis, and the Alexander Technique share common interfaces: they mobilize bodily awareness and imagination to regulate internal balance and facilitate self‑repair. In each of these practices, the body is not merely a support, but a subject and agent of a dynamic process.
Shamanism, by mobilizing altered states of consciousness, grants access to the spirit world—deep symbolic spaces where the body dialogues with archetypes, natural forces, or buried memories.
Ericksonian hypnosis engages sensory re‑association, allowing access to internal resources through guided visualizations.
The Alexander Technique offers a relearning of body use through fine perception of tensions and redirecting attention toward a fluid, integrated posture.
These practices facilitate somatic grounding and a living presence to the body—rather than mechanistic—while stimulating favorable neurophysiological responses for healing.
Breast cancer as a phenomenological observation field
Illness—far from being a mere biological failure—is here viewed as an existential event that unsettles identity, landmarks, and body representations. The experience of chemotherapy and mastectomy initiated a profound bodily and psychic metamorphosis, touching on femininity, vulnerability, and the relationship with time.
Rather than repressing or rationalizing this experience, a phenomenological presence approach allowed me to accompany the different phases of the therapeutic journey (surgery, chemotherapy, convalescence) by paying attention to what manifested in bodily, emotional, and symbolic lived experience.
Imagination as an agent of regulation
At the core of this process, imagination played a decisive role. Not as escapism, but as a force of integration—capable of articulating sensation, emotion, and representation within a meaningful dynamic. I developed a daily practice of intracellular dialogue, based on consciously visualizing cells and tissues.
This practice echoes research in psychoneuroimmunology, which shows how mental states influence immune response, and in cellular communication, where even symbolic information can modulate the body’s responses.
Regulating side effects and strengthening adherence
This embodied, imaginal approach helped me better endure heavy treatments, especially chemotherapy. Several effects were observed: reduced perceived side effects, better acceptance of treatment, and an autonomous emotional support during moments of exhaustion. The alliance between subjective experience and conventional medicine opened a space of inner cooperation, where care becomes a co‑constructed process with the body.
Far from opposing medicine and imagination, bodily and symbolic practices like hypnosis, shamanism, and the Alexander Technique can enrich a care pathway by engaging the intelligence of the lived body. In this perspective, healing is not limited to the disappearance of symptoms but is rooted in a transformation of the relationship to oneself, others, and the world.
Hypnoses
Here are a few freely accessible hypnotic inductions.
For the sake of simplicity—and as a personal choice—I’ve written these inductions using feminine language. That’s how they resonated most deeply for me. Feel free to explore the question of gender in a way that speaks to you, using the linguistic forms that feel most natural.
Don’t hesitate to adapt these inductions so they align as closely as possible with who you are.
