The word autogenic means self-generated — implying (a) something you do yourself, and (b) growth and improvement coming from within. Autogenics is a system of relaxation training, body-oriented self-hypnosis, meditation and self-therapy that you practice on yourself to support the natural healing and development of mind and body. The method was discovered by a former professor of psychiatry while researching hypnosis in Berlin during the early part of the last century. He was interested in inducing visual hallucinations for the purposes of depth psychotherapy. Since then autogenic therapy has been progressively researched and developed scientifically within psychiatry, clinical psychology and psychosomatic medicine as an approach to mind-body healing, often in combination with neurofeedback.
As well as inducing relaxation, autogenic exercises amplify interoceptive awareness (awareness of visceral sensations from the interior of the body). It is probably because of this that the exercises are peculiarly effective for accessing spontaneous visual imagery (visions, pseudo-hallucinations) from the unconscious. This table gives the percentage of people reporting elementary levels and complex levels of visual imagery as they progress through practice of the six relaxation exercises of Standard Autogenic Training:
The link between amplified interoception and vividness of visual imagery is being confirmed by current neuroscientific research — see for example
Zhang et al 2026 How the Body Shapes the Mind’s Eye: Cardiac vagal reactivity predicts visual imagery vividness
It has long been the goal of Indian yoga, and other forms of body-oriented mysticism, to amplify awareness of the felt-sense of the body (the “body energies”) for the purposes of improving spiritual, mental, and physical health. Autogenics is sometimes described as the Western equivalent of yoga — a body-oriented form of meditation. Just as yoga comes in many different varieties, autogenics has several different versions.
Liminal Dreaming
REM Autogenics (dream autogenics) was developed from Standard Autogenics specifically to cultivate the liminal visionary state—an altered state of consciousness in which waking dreams (visions, pseudo-hallucinations) emerge from the deep brain / unconscious. REM Autogenics shares similarities with yoga nidra, the ancient Indian dream yoga.
Most people practice REM autogenics in bed before sleep or upon waking, in a comfortable armchair during the day to enhance a restful siesta or music-listening reverie.
Enhanced Practice with Technology
Let us imagine a small band of ancestors, sitting around a fire in the middle of the night with nothing better to do than getting absorbed in the fluid movement of the flames. Some may have fallen asleep, while others entered an alternative reality in which they would experience strange phenomena. This may well have been our first departure from the concrete physical animal world into the symbolic human mental world … … …
Fire was considered holy and associated with divinity probably because it came from heaven, like lightning falling in a tree, but I prefer to think that the fascination induced by fire is at the root of a collective state of worship that evolved into religions. I fancy that the first Buddhist monastery was born by chance around a prehistoric bonfire, long before Sidartha Gautama was born … …Luis de Rivera, 2017, Autogenics 3.0: The new way to mindfulness and meditation
Our ancestors shifted into visionary states of creativity while fire-gazing. Flickering light has psychedelic effects. The REM autogenic shift into the visionary state can be reinforced by using ganzflicker—the combination of ganzfeld and flickering light. The Strobonaut ganzflicker app for mobile phones is available as a free download from:
When used in a smartphone Virtual Reality headset for meditation and music-listening reverie it has psychedelic effects promoting mental health and creativity by giving greater access to altered states of consciousness and vivid dream-like visual imagery released from the deep brain / unconscious.
Dr Pete Carr
remautogenics@gmail.com
May 2026
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