I, Gary Goodwin, draw from a wide variety of training to teach about the nature, art, and science of imagination. Imagination is my umbrella term for a wide array of experiences we have every day, all produced or shaped by our unconscious. The unconscious is an elusive concept and has puzzled researchers since the 1800s and a full understanding of its limits and depths is no where on the horizon.

We primarily know the unconscious from our experience with dreaming or visualizing something, such as how we might want to re-decorate a room with new paint or furniture. But the imagination/unconscious can be seen, in more subtle forms, in daydreaming, reactions to such things like movies, music, literature, and when we get some sensation here and there in our bodies telling us that we are feeling something below the surface of our awareness.

“My goal is to share what you need to submerge into the incredible and creative inner world. With practice, you will be able to enhance your life in surprising ways by communicating with and learning from your unconscious mind. I also want to make imagination study and practice more widely available, much like a meditation practice. For too long imagination practices and study has been scattered and rarely mentioned but only in limited ways or as something of a curiosity.”

I have gone on the road in many instances, to track down what trainers and offerings are out there. This has put me in contact with primarily medical people (physicians, psychologists, nurses, psychiatrists) who train people within their own professions.* I thank all of them for their wisdom, knowledge, and patience.

Another goal is to make what I offer: practical, direct, affordable, and simple to learn and simple to use. I’m constantly working on developing ways to jump-start beginners and keep intermediate users of imagination going. Anything to save people from the long path to this important work. The faster people can get applying what that have learned, the happier I am.

For the record, this is some of the training I’ve completed or are currently pursuing:

Certifications

Certified – Interactive Guided Imagery – Academy for Guided Imagery – Santa Monica, CA – Topic: A comprehensive didactic and tested knowledge course with two practicums.

Certified – Open Focus Coaching and Neurosychrony EEG Equipment – Princeton Biofeedback Center – Training covered how to train people (using and not using biofeedback equipment) to produce alpha brainwaves across the brain)

Certified – Group Facilitator – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy – National Association of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapists

Certificates or C.E.

Certificate of Completion – Center for Healing and Imagery

Certificate of Completion – Initial Professional Training – Center for Mind-Body Medicine

Certificate of Completion – Advanced Professional Training – Center for Mind-Body Medicine

Mind Mirror Practitioners Training – Level One – (alpha, theta, and delta brainwave training – equipment and techniques)

Ongoing – Coursework towards Certificate of Completion – Biofeedback Certification Institute of America

Ongoing – Coursework towards Certification – Creativity Coaching Association

C.E. Coursework

Eye Movement Integration

Belleruth Naperstak imagery training

Guided Imagery and Music – Level One Guide Training

Completed Levels 1, 2, 3, and 4 – Focusing

Dream Group leader many years, since 1991.

General Coaching Training:

Ongoing – MentorCoach

Teaching

Nearly 10 years as a presenter at the Jung Society of Washington, D.C.

Frequent presenter at conferences of the International Association for the Study of Dreams

* Note: I do not offer mental health or medical advice, treatment, or diagnosis. Please check with your mental health and health care provider. I provide education on commonly available techniques and equipment (consumer grade) that can be useful to access and navigate imagination.

Why an armchair?

Yoga has it mat. Meditation has its cushion. Tai Chi has its standing movements. Contemplation generally, and I say visualizing and imaging has its armchair.

The armchair has long been associated with intellectual, dreamy, and wishful activity. A safe and comfortable place to turn inward and to let the mind focus or let the mind roam.

We have the armchair traveller, the armchair quarter-back, the armchair detective.

arm·chair
/ˈärmˌCHer/
noun

1. a comfortable chair, typically upholstered, with side supports for a person’s arms.
adjective

2. lacking or not involving practical or direct experience of a particular subject or activity.
“armchair adventurers”

Would novelists starve if their readers have no armchairs?

We have all sorts of other chairs that will do nicely, but perhaps there is something about the greater comfort of the armchair that is so inviting and perfect for withdrawing from the outer world and moving inward. Inward to a waking dream or, if we have the time, drifting off to actual dreaming.

“I found Sherlock Holmes alone, however, half asleep, with his long, thin form curled up in the recesses of his armchair. A formidable array of bottles and test-tubes, with the pungent cleanly smell of hydrochloric acid, told me that he had spent his day in the chemical work which was so dear to him.”

A Case of Identity, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Armchair detective:
“An armchair detective is a fictional investigator who does not personally visit a crime scene or interview witnesses.”

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia