Along the way, you cross a small wooden bridge over a brook; then the pathway opens into a field of brightly coloured poppies and sunflowers. A faint floral scent is in the breeze. A yellow Lab and a black horse meet you, acting as guides to an old wooden cabin. From this cabin emerges a learned teacher, or maybe a favourite aunt, who provides calm, caring answers to your questions. This is the scene that Jane Thomson, diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer in May 2006, imagines several times a week. “It’s about trying to find my peaceful centre, where I really know I’m calm and relaxed,” says Jane, 63.As the director of broadcast traffic for a bustling Toronto mediabuying company, Jane is no stranger to high-stress days. But her cancer diagnosis created another level of anxiety. “Cancer spins you out of control,” she says. “I’m not a control freak, but I like to have things well ordered.”Jane is not alone in seeking help to deal with the turmoil that follows a cancer diagnosis. “The mind under stress is like a wild horse,” says Claire Edmonds, who conducts a relaxation and visualization program at Wellspring, a network of centres that provide free emotional and psychological support to people living with cancer. She finds that patients in her program tend to sleep better, have improved appetite, are less anxious and are in a better mood.Visualization, also known as mental imagery, helps people with cancer create a sense of well-being, cope better with painful treatments and, sometimes, feel they are taking action against the cancer itself. But the term visualization is a bit of a misnomer. “It’s not all visual,” explains Edmonds. “You can imagine a favourite song, the sound of church bells or the smell of apple pie.”Mental imagery has proven helpful in diminishing a patient’s perception of pain. During the intense radiotherapy before her bone marrow transplant, Sonia Lussier, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 29, concentrated on being on a beach in Costa Rica. “It helped during those really painful moments,” she says. Studies have also found that visualization can help reduce the nausea that patients often feel in anticipation of cancer treatments.

“However, there have been many  studies showing changes in blood pressure or enhancement of  the immune response,” she says. Whether or not these physical  changes are targeting the cancer still needs to be determined,  but Esplen says that for many people these anti-cancer images  are still worthwhile because they help them get in touch with  their bodies and enhance their physiological responses.  More than a decade after her initial diagnosis, Sonia still  turns to visualization when she isn’t feeling up to par. “I just  do two or three minutes,” Sonia explains. “For me, it makes a  real difference.”