Man as Medicine

Sometimes it helps me to zoom out and imagine my healing path as an actual, dusty, packed earth pathway beneath my feet.

There’s the bush and red sands behind me, black sand beaches, towns and forests, clearings, deep quiet valleys and empty shacks along the way. I mark my milestones with flags in the ground, with twine tied to trees, with ashes buried in soil. I build and dismantle boundary walls by hand, one stone at a time. I cross bridges — some sturdy, some not, more than one left to blaze behind me — and the path ahead winds ever onward.

This imaginal landscape helps me make sense of what’s happening inside when my emotions are in overdrive and my nervous system is frayed. It gives form to the chaos: thorny branches tugging at my clothes, narrow tracks opening into fields of sunlight, cosy looking houses appearing on the roadside.

Why Imagery Works

I began imagining my healing path long before I knew there were psychological terms for what I was doing.

Guided imagery is one. Mental pictures that regulate the body — easing stress, calming trauma, and giving the nervous system somewhere to rest. What I thought of as “painting a landscape” was, in clinical terms, a way of shifting my state.

There’s also narrative coherence. Trauma fragments story; time itself breaks apart. Imagining a path restores the sequence. Because if there is a path, then there is a before and an after. If there is a bridge, then there is something I have crossed. My brain could relax, even just slightly, because it felt less lost in the chaos.

Psychologists call it cognitive offloading — moving overwhelming emotions into something external, even if that “external” is an image in the mind. By placing bleak deserts, sparkling chasms or stormy night skies outside me, I was giving my nervous system a map.

And then there’s polyvagal theory. Stephen Porges showed that our nervous system is always scanning for cues of safety or danger. Story and imagery can act as those cues. The map tells the body: this is where we are, this is how we got here, this is what might come next. With that reassurance, the body can downshift out of fight, flight, or freeze, and move toward connection again. On my path I came to a house, and the man inside told me about storm watching as a child, up the river, through the valley , while music played. That story gave my body a cue: memory, tenderness, depth. My nervous system read it as safe, and softened into connection.

Jung had a term for this too: active imagination. He saw inner images as living material, not “just imagination.” The psyche, he said, speaks in images. To walk through my imagined path was to engage directly with my unconscious in a way that was both creative and regulating.

Do you have a place you go the mind? A safe haven for your thoughts to rest?

From Science to Psyche

Modern science tells us the subconscious comes online before conscious awareness — from inside the womb. Long before words or explicit memories, the brain is already filtering the world through sensation and feeling. The unconscious is not secondary — it is primary.

Jung explored this terrain. He used the word psyche to describe the whole of our inner life — instincts, emotions, memories, dreams, and unconscious processes. And he believed the psyche speaks in images. That’s why dreams and imagination matter. The figures we meet there aren’t accidents; they carry meaning, shaped by both our personal history and universal patterns of human experience.

Jung called this practice active imagination. It is not about inventing fantasy, but about collaborating with the unconscious when words or reason cannot carry us further. By observing the images that arise — engaging them in dialogue rather than dismissing them — something changes in the psyche.

Modern science echoes this with what’s known as the observer effect: the principle that the act of observation alters the observed. In physics, this means particles behave differently when measured. In psychology, it means that when we witness our own inner images — instead of ignoring or repressing them — they shift. They reveal new dimensions, new truths. Observation itself is transformative.

This is where Jung and science meet: the simple act of looking inward, with presence and attention, changes the inner landscape.

I’ve seen this play out in my own inner life. When I turn toward an image instead of brushing it aside — a thorny branch tugging at my sleeve, a stone wall rising before me, a house appearing at the edge of the path, a kiss inside that steadies me, an anchor pulling me back into the physical world. In those moments the image itself feels like a salve, almost angelic, soothing the shakes in me. Sometimes the wall becomes a boundary I needed. Sometimes the branch softens when I acknowledge it. Sometimes the house opens its door. Simply by observing these images with attention, they change, and I change with them. This is the observer effect at work in the psyche: awareness itself is the catalyst.

Rituals can become a kind of collective active imagination. When I first entered Balinese ceremonies, I didn’t know the words, the prayers, the meanings of the movements. I only knew the scent of incense thick in the air, the rhythm of chanting, the bright petals of marigolds scattered across grey temple stone, the wax dripping from candles, the rustle of sarongs as people shifted and bowed. I felt the cool splash of water on my forehead, the smoke rising around me. In that not-knowing, my mind and body had no choice but to surrender. The gaps filled with images, sensations, and meaning of their own. Jung would say: this is the psyche speaking in its own language.

Being in a different culture heightened this. Disoriented, my body became alert in new ways. At home, my environment was familiar — predictable streets, language I understood. In Bali, I was navigating motorbikes weaving through narrow lanes, offerings laid out on the ground, priests chanting in a language I couldn’t follow. My body read the cues without comprehension: the weight of ceremony, the heat of candles, the hum of collective reverence. The unfamiliarity stripped away my normal maps, forcing me to trust presence over explanation.

Every surrender became part of the work. And because these ceremonies were held by grounded leaders, my nervous system picked up cues of safety even without understanding the words. Safety made surrender possible. Surrender made imagination possible. And imagination made integration possible.

It was the same when I came to the house at the edge of the path. Inside, a kiss steadied me, a touch anchored me back into my body. My nervous system read it as safe, and in that safety I could soften. Softening gave my imagination permission to light up again — to follow storms through windows, music threading through the dark — and those images became part of my integration too. In that place, the angel in the house reminds me what it feels like to be met in both body and mind.

This is how the house on the path first appeared to me: not as invention, but as a gift of the unconscious, rising in the silence left by everything I did not understand.

The Animus: Wound and Balance

In Jung’s framework, every psyche contains both feminine and masculine principles, regardless of sex or orientation. He called the feminine principle the anima and the masculine principle the animus. These are not about gendered roles, but about energies: the anima linked with eros (connection, flow, relationship), and the animus linked with logos (clarity, order, direction). Together, they create balance — when one dominates unconsciously, it distorts us; when they work together, we feel whole.

The animus, in particular, plays a powerful role in the psyche. When it is wounded or distorted in a woman, it can show up as rigid, domineering, critical — the inner voice that cuts us down or drives us too hard, leaving us harsh, restless, disconnected from tenderness.

When it shows up in men, the distorted animus often looks like intellectual arrogance, dogmatism, or rigid rationality without compassion. It can appear as domination instead of steadiness, control instead of clarity, criticism instead of discernment.

In both women and men, this distortion limits intimacy and growth. It pushes us toward judgment, rigidity, and power struggles instead of toward balance.

But when the animus is healthy, it brings direction, steadiness, discernment. It holds boundaries without aggression, offers structure without suppression, clarity without coldness. It makes space for intimacy without demanding intensity — reminding us that depth and speed are not the same thing. In both women and men, this inner masculine energy becomes a principle of balance, direction, and protection — qualities that let intimacy, creativity, and desire thrive.

The Power of Presence

We don’t just meet the animus inside ourselves. We meet it in others too — in the energy people carry, in the way they speak, in how our bodies respond around them.

When the animus shows up distorted in another person, you can feel it in your body before you can name it. The air tightens. Your chest contracts. You feel talked at rather than spoken with, managed rather than met. Their voice may sound certain, but it carries no curiosity. Their energy presses down instead of making space. This is what domination feels like in the body: unsafe, controlling, silencing.

When the animus is healthy, the opposite happens. The body softens. The shoulders drop. Breath comes easier. You feel room for your emotions without fear they’ll be too much. Their words carry clarity but also compassion. Their presence steadies rather than constrains. They can hold your fire without collapsing, and hold silence without rushing to fill it.

This is the power of presence.

Not something we need to seek only in men, or even only in others. Healthy animus can be mirrored by women, by non-binary people, by therapists, by friends — by anyone embodying steadiness, structure, grounded direction. But when we do meet it outside ourselves, something powerful happens: our bodies remember. That balance is mirrored back to us, reminding us that we have it inside too.

Have you felt this in someone? The moment your body softened simply because theirs was steady?

The House on the Path

Recently on the path, there has been a little house I keep returning to, set just off the road.

Sometimes I imagine myself arriving there with thorny branches still clinging to my clothes, cheeks burning from the rage I’ve carried all week. My ego loud, my inner animus distorted — critical, restless, demanding. Braced for rejection. Looking for a fight. Ready to say what I want to say and turn on my heel, never to set foot in there again.

But inside, there is someone who doesn’t flinch. They don’t silence me. They don’t escalate. They don’t turn away. They simply receive me — steady, grounded, unthreatened by my storm.

The healing here is a reflection of what I already carry. Their steadiness reminds me of my own. Their grounded presence helps me find the part of myself that can hold boundaries without aggression, speak truth without collapse, and walk forward without fear.

The house may be a refuge, but it isn’t a free pass. Every time I enter, it asks something of me — to notice, to practice, to confront the habits that once kept me housed but no longer serve.

Here, even my attachment patterns rise to the surface. I can feel the temptation to turn the inhabitant into a replica of the people I’ve been trying so hard to leave behind. To project the past onto the present, replaying the same dynamics until nothing shifts at all.

If I give in to that projection, nothing changes. I leave the house exactly as I entered — carrying the same story, the same wounds, the same weight.

But if I resist it, the house becomes more than refuge. It becomes mirror. Teacher. A place where my edges are tested, my triggers revealed, my healing made visible.

And when I step back onto the path, I am not the same.

Closing Reflection

Perhaps you already know the place on your own path. A landmark, a figure, a doorway you return to. Sometimes these inner landscapes borrow the shape of the places we’ve walked through in waking life — a temple gate, a rice field path, a family courtyard. Stay with it a little longer next time. Let it show you what steadiness feels like. This is how the path itself teaches us to walk.