Hi,
Before we begin the guided visualization please find a place where you feel comfortable.
Maybe a peaceful quiet room where you won't be disturbed.
Lie down or sit comfortably.
Gently close your eyes or gaze softly at a place in front of you.
Clear your mind and focus on your breathing.
If thoughts occur don't focus on them.
Just allow them to come and go like waves on a beach.
In your peaceful place you'll allow your imagination to set sail to a remote tropical island in the southern hemisphere.
In Greek mythology Calypso was a minor goddess who lived in a cave on the island of Gozo.
One day Ulysses shipwrecked on the island and when Calypso found him she fell madly in love.
She promised Ulysses immortality if he stayed with her but he wanted to go home.
Calypso kept Ulysses captive on her island for seven years until one day she decided to free him.
She gives Ulysses a drill and an axe and then leads him to another island nearby where he can chop down trees to build his ship.
She also provides Ulysses with wine,
Bread,
Clothing and other essentials for his journey and then finally after seven years he leaves Calypso who sets the wind to his back when he sets sail.
Jacques Cousteau the famous marine biologist named his boat after Calypso and sailed her on the seven seas for almost half a century.
During this time he documented the beauty of the oceans bringing awareness and understanding about the importance of marine conservation.
In this guided visualization you'll imagine a day to yourself on board the Calypso.
The noisy motor from the boat of the research team leaving the ship wakes you up.
It's early in the morning,
Brilliant sunlight streams through the small portal casting wavy patterns of light from the reflection of the water onto the cabin ceiling.
Several days ago the ship crossed the equator and here you are in a southerly latitude moored in the bay of a tropical island.
It's low tide now so the sea is calm,
Dimples in the water,
Rock the boat in a relaxed way.
When you look out of the portal you see the lush mountains surrounding the bay.
A fresh smell of coffee wafts through the cabin so you get out of bed to search for the source.
When you arrive in the galley kitchen you discover the coffee the crew made for breakfast is still hot.
You pour yourself a cup and take it outside.
The air is warming up so you find a shaded place on the wooden deck to sit down.
A couple of seagulls circle lazily in the sky above,
Interested in your presence.
The water here is not just turquoise but shifts from light to electric green,
From aqua to peacock blue.
Pure.
The mountains surrounding the bay rise straight out of the ocean and connect and over there is the research vessel,
A dot now,
Almost at the wide beach fringed by palm trees.
When you finish your coffee you decide to have a swim and a snorkel so you change,
Adjust your mask and walk down to a small wooden platform then slip into the water and another world.
The temperature of the sea reflects that of the air.
In fact you don't even feel wet but instead enveloped by the smoothest,
Saturniest silk.
When you look through your mask into the deeper blue waters to your right they loom like a dark ominous shadow land.
So you start swimming the other way towards the coral reef close to shore.
The water is crystal clear.
After a short time you're soaring through a canyon that widens to a gentle valley over undulating coral hills.
This area teems with life where shimmering dense shoals of fish break apart as you swim through them.
You fly weightlessly through the water soaring over a ridge line and swooping into an underwater kingdom gliding over an endless meadow of massive sculptural blossoms.
Inside the crannies and crevices of coral you see all manner of life bright pink and white sea anemones expand like soft brilliant flowers where colored wrasse and clownfish huddle a delicate coral banded shrimp a glittering disco light that morphs into a fish floated nudibranch slide over some rocks with wavy speckled orange skirts and there a tremendous giant clam sunbathing right beneath the surface then an octopus pours out moving like a gray mist dissembling and reassembling using camouflage to mimic a piece of coral a rock suddenly seeing you its body turns rosy with a pulsing color before scuttling away into a narrow notch you've drifted into a blissed-out trance and lost track of time and how far you've gone it's time to turn back to the calypso flying back through the crystal-clear water gliding back over the coral hills passing through another shimmering shoal of tiny fish then a school of needlefish flashing like crystal wands and a jellyfish floating up to the light it's frilly bell more lovely than anything blown from glass finally you arrive back at the ship take off your mask while holding on to the ladder and climb out you sit down to dry out in the Sun with your legs draped in the water the lagoon throbs with color and a gentle breeze carries the notes of wild ginger and sultry frangipani from the island after a little while you climb back to the deck and find another shady place to rest your body feels relaxed from the swimming so you close your eyes and take a few moments to breathe the tide has started to turn and the boat begins to rock gently from side to side on its anchorage the waves breaking distantly on the shore add to the soothing feeling and the pulse of the ocean starts to match your own heartbeat drifting to sleep now compounding the beautiful experiences of your waking hours and stirring them back as dreams into your relaxed muscles giving yourself over to the soothing sound of the breathing ocean sleep seeping into your skin and spreading through your limbs allowing your subconscious to take its prime directives from this moment the breeze the gentle movement of the boat pieces of sunlight caught in a long tangle of nerves wandering the shifting landscape of your earth-born body like shiny fish moving across the coral canyons
