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Creative Visualisation and our Imagination
Mar
Un be known to many of us, we all have access to and use to a greater or lesser extent, a very magical superpower we know as the imagination.
Our imaginations have served to invent, create and shape the world in which we live.
Imagination is the mental work place of creative thought that we all inhabit, consciously and unconsciously, to create the content, the look, and the feel of our lives.
A developed and strong imagination strengthens our creative abilities and is a wonderful tool not only for the creation of mental and emotional balance but also for remodeling ourselves and our experience of the world.
“Creative Visualisation” is a powerful and life-changing technique whereby one consciously focuses the imagination on specific outcomes, e.g. increased relaxation, improved soccer game, healing a part of the body.
In this article, I will outline how and why visualization works to improve our lives, the neurological connection and scientific research to legitimately understand it, as well as simple tips to start the process.
HOW DOES CREATIVE VISUALISATION WORK?
It is now understood that we stimulate the same area of the brain when we visualize an action and when we actually perform that same action. For example, when you visualize lifting your left foot, it stimulates the same part of the brain that is activated when you actually lift your left foot.
Conjuring up your most desired state of health, performance, life, into images rich with feeling, tricks your mind into believing this is the reality of the situation.
Dr Mawwell Maltz was one of the first people to understand this groundbreaking truth. As he said, “Your subconscious cannot tell the difference between a real memory and a vividly imagined one.”
Apparently the mind cannot differentiate between a thought, a memory or a physical experience; the brain has the same chemical response to each.
Of course, the effectiveness of this visualization technique depends on the strength of your desire to improve yourself and your ability to visualize.
Practice is everything. In order to create anything in life, you need to focus and repeat. Focus and Repeat. The same principles are used in training the brain as training your body.
The approach is the same as for any new project. Just as you would clear your workspace/place, clear your mental space before creating.
Choose a quiet environment and find a restful state of mind. You can imagine white light or maybe a white room, sweeping away any mental clutter… then slow your breathing to quieten the mind.
Sound recordings are a great way to start inspiring the imagination, especially for children. You can then move on to create your own visualizations, for each day, or for specific situations.
Practice visualization techniques three times a day for one week and observe any changes in your experience.
WHY USE CREATIVE VISUALISATION?
Developing our imagination strengthens our creative abilities and serves as an important tool in the ongoing evolutionary process of reshaping yourself and placement in the world.
It is a well-known fact that many Olympic athletes and successful business people use the tool of Creative Visualisation to improve their performance and increase their opportunity for success.
We can use creative visualization for reducing stress, increasing motivation, and helping shape a sense of purpose and direction in our lives. Visualization is a way of harnessing control in what often feels like uncontrollable situations to create a vision of our better selves.
Psychologist, Dr. Maciolek states that “Visualization is not only used to cope with psychological diagnoses such as anxiety and depression, but it can be used in our everyday lives.” She goes on to explain how we can use visualization to increase the possibility of a successful outcome in areas where we want to be our best. For example visualizing our perfect performance in sport, visualizing confidence in a job interview or exam.
At the same time, our imagination plays an important part in empathy and understanding how others feel .
In the words of JK Rowling… “Imagination…In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”
CREATIVE VISUALISATION “SOUND RECORDINGS” FOR CHILDREN
I remember being told as a child that I had a vivid imagination. For as long as i remember my mind has always been alive with imaginings. My great-grandfather could create a whole story from a leaf, elaborating on every detail to engage and intrigue those listening.
During the past ten years, I have used creative visualizations with young yoga students.
These visualizations have now developed into ” Sound Recordings”, a resource for individual students to use at any point in their day, to find calm, control, and wonder in the potential of who they are. I am confident that these practices will improve their success in all areas of their lives including emotional, mental, and physical development.
My sound recordings are designed to ~
1. Stimulate children’s imaginations
2. Increase their confidence in manipulating their inner experience to develop their “best” selves
3. Teach the ability to reflect and change behavior
4. Activate different parts of the brain e.g. empathy
THE BRAIN SCIENCE AND HISTORY OF “CREATIVE THOUGHT “
“Creative thought” is a way of understanding how our imagination influences our lives.
Creative thought is now understood thru research to be a function of many areas of the brain working together.
Historical research shows that as our brains developed in size and moved away from “compartmentalized thinking “ to more “ integrated thinking”, that is utilizing many parts of the brain at once, there was a clear evolution in technical skills, socialisation, complex language skills, agriculture, and development of more complex and sophisticated systems of interaction.
Think of the brain as a giant information processing unit receiving input from the outside world through our senses, and then cognitively and creatively processing/interpreting this information into the lives we lead.
The way in which we engage our imagination in this interpretation process greatly influences the extent of our problem-solving skills, social skills, and quality of experience.
The ability to visualize different possibilities, the basis of all problem solving, increases the possibility of positive outcomes and solutions in our lives while decreasing our daily stress.
So you can see, this superpower is one we all use to varying degrees, with or without conscious control, to shape our daily lives and support our vision of who we are in the world.
An understanding of brain neuroplasticity reveals that the brain is not fixed but has the capacity to stretch and embrace many ideas. When we are engaging our imaginations we increase the number of connections between brain cells and between different regions of the brain, expanding our sense of self and the world.
THE PROOF IN THE PUDDING – CASE STUDIES
In the 1985 World Conference on Visualisation, registered nurse Carol Fajoni observed that “people who used imagery techniques to heal wounds recovered more quickly than those who did not. In workshops, the same technique has been used by individuals suffering from colds with similar results.”
Doctors are increasingly accepting the ways the mind influences overall health. A new science called psychoneuroimmunology or PNI, the study of how the mind affects health and bodily functions, is gaining credibility in the medical world to scientifically prove how visualising better health can improve the immune system and support the healing process, including cancer.
In Dr. Blaslotto’s study, a group of students was asked to take a series of basketball free throws. The researchers first counted how many shots the students made, and then the students were divided into three groups and asked to perform one of three different things over a period of 30 days:
Group 1 was asked to not do anything with a basketball for 30 days, no practice, no play.
Group 2 was told to practice shooting free throws for 30 minutes every day for 30 days.
Group 3 was told to visualize making free throws and making the shot, every day for 30 days, with no physical practice involved.
At the end of the 30 day period, the students returned and the researchers had them take the same number of free throws.
The results were very interesting and surprising:
Group 1 (hadn’t practiced at all) didn’t improve at all
Group 2 (practiced physically for 30 minutes per day) improved by 24%
Group 3 (had only visualized taking shots), improved by 23%
And now, let’s close our eyes…..