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If you're in chronic pain, you probably want 7 things. If you can learn to use visualization statements to program your subconscious, you may be able to attain most or even all of them.

The 7 things you probably want are to directly relieve your pain by any safe means possible, to indirectly relieve it using the mind-body connection, to avoid dependence on pain medications, to avoid dependence on doctors, to avoid helplessness, to be able to function despite your pain, and to avoid more ongoing costs related to your pain.

Visualization statements provide a useful tool for attaining many of these goals. These statements represent the specific language that your subconscious wants you to read back to it to help ease your pain. They're simple and are targeted directly at the main factors that could bring you relief.

You can obtain these statements by learning how to communicate directly with your own subconscious mind. The process is straightforward and can be done at home by working with a facilitator over the telephone. You you need no special skills and no previous experience in working with the subconscious.

Goal 1: Directly Relieve Pain

You're probably most interested in anyting that may directly and safely relieve your pain. Through visualizations you can attempt direct relief yourself, using the subconscious to try to influence brain chemistry in ways that may reduce the pain signal. You can also use visualizations to try to minimize body system triggers of pain such as the musculoskeletal, immune, and endocrine systems. And you can further use visualizations to try limit lifestyle triggers of pain such as emotions, food, and lack of sleep.

Goal 2: Indirectly Relieve Pain

You might want to be able to use aspects of the mind-body connection to lessen the pain. Visualizations may allow you to use the subconscious to try to access positive feelings, provide distractions, obtain relaxation, and generate acceptance, all of which have been shown to help ease pain.

Goal 3: Avoid Dependence on Pain Meds

You probably want to reduce your dependence on pain medications that make you groggy, make you sick, or don't work. To this end you can use visualizations to influence the subconscious try to limit the four main chemical amplifiers of pain--glutamate, substance P, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine. You can also use visualizations to attempt to strengthen the four main inhibitors of pain--endorphins,GABA, serotonin, and dopamine.

Goal 4: Avoid Dependence on Doctors

If any of your doctors are providing callous treatment, invasive procedures, or under-medication, you probably want to reduce your dependence on them. Through visualization statements you can try to use the subconscious to address your pain yourself. Specific visualizations can be aimed at back pain and pain in the neck area and other extremities, fibromyalgia, arthritis, and neuropathic pain (nerve pain), and may possibly produce relief.

Goal 5: Avoid Helplessness

If you're feeling helpless you probably want the ability to take back psychological control of your life despite your pain. You can use the subconscious to try to talk down the pain, naturally alter brain chemistry, increase self-esteem, and build expertise about your pain, all of which helps to build self-confidence.

Goal 6: Be Able to Function

You probably want to be able to function despite your pain. A major factor in allowing you to do this is to consistently get good sleep. You can use visualization statements to try to program the subconscious to improve your sleep by allowing you to find a comfortable sleeping position, stay asleep despite the pain, get back to sleep quickly, and handle the poor sleep of fibromyalgia.

Goal 7: Avoid Ongoing Costs

You no doubt want to avoid taking on yet another series of ongoing costs related to your pain. Unlike drugs or surgery, use of the subconscious is a learned skill obtained via a one-time investment, rather than as a consumed service that must be repeatedly paid for.

Engaging the Subconscious

The subconscious is quite powerful. When programmed through the very visualizations that it suggests, it may be able to turn episodes of uncontrolled pain into events over which you have a degree of control.

Ben Plumb is CEO and President of The Visualization Group, Inc. The company's service is delivered by people like himself who personally suffered from years of chronic pain, and used the visualization method described in this article to obtain relief when nothing else worked.