Visualization

Did you ever wonder what it really means to be able to visualize? Do you actually see a mental picture or image when your eyes are closed? Or, do you just think about it and imagine that you are looking at a picture? The two ways of visualizing are receptive or active. When we are receptive, we just relax and allow the image to come to mind without really looking at the details. In the active process we consciously choose and create what we are thinking about.

What if you were trying to visualize an event or experience? Is visualization different? In dynamic visualization, you mentally playback an action you have performed rather than a static or stationery picture you are imagining looking at. Dynamic visualization is often used in mental practice in sports performance. You watch yourself much as you would watch a movie re-run. In this type of imaging the learner not only visualizes the action, but steps into the visualization as an actor. You see, feel, smell, and hear as if you were actually experiencing the activity. It’s a fully loaded sensory experience.

Imagination

Imagination is that ability to create an idea or mental picture in your mind. In visualization you use your imagination to create a clear image of something you wish to manifest. Then you continue to focus on or visualize the idea or picture regularly, giving it positive energy until you actually achieve what you have been visualizing. NLP practitioners use imagination in hypnotic states with their clients to help them make changes and create what they want in life.

Learning Difficulties

Do you ever have a client that just can’t seem to visualize? The block as we know arises from a fear like being afraid of what might happen when we really look inside and acknowledge our feelings and emotions and expose them to others. Our feelings can cause us to feel trapped. It’s funny that when we really look at the source of our fear it loses its power, doesn’t it?

When helping someone who is having difficulty visualizing, think of them as a child learning a skill for the first time. Learning theorists understand that learning how to visualize moves from the concrete to the abstract. The leaning process for visualization mirrors and matches a series of steps that start on a concrete level and move to the abstract. The following example outlines the steps you can use to teach the skill of visualization when someone is experiencing difficulty.

Give your client an actual lemon and ask:

• Can you look at the lemon, pick it up, and explore it with your hands by touching it?

• Can you draw a picture of the lemon while looking at it?

• Can you describe the lemon to another person who does not know what it is and see if they can guess what you are describing?

• Can you reach into a paper bag filled with other fruit and recognize the lemon by selecting it out of the paper bag?

• Can you look closely at the lemon and then draw it without looking at it?

• Can you look closely at the lemon and then close your eyes and imagine a picture of it in your mind?

• Can you describe the lemon you imagine and include all sensory qualities like size, shape, color, and texture?

• Can you close your eyes and to do something with the imaginary lemon using your hands? For example, can you pick up the imaginary lemon and take a big bite out of it? What does it taste like? Can you think what does it smell like? What does the lemon feel like?

• Can you open your eyes and notice the amount of saliva in their mouth? It increased, didn’t it? Was the lemon really there? No, there wasn’t, but you salivated like there was one. You created an image in your mind and your unconscious mind responded as if that imaginary lemon was real.

• Can you imagine making yourself a great big glass of lemonade from the lemon? Now take a refreshing swallow and savor the lemony taste.

The purpose of the exercise is to show that whatever the mind sees, the body tends to do. This is why hypnosis works so well because it creates thoughts in the mind that are so realistic, the body reacts physiologically. This exercise helps to explain to your clients how hypnosis works.

The Kinesthetic Connection

Visualizing and imagining an action is easier after kinesthetic connections have been established. Have you ever felt Indecisiveness and hesitant when first attempting an unfamiliar activity? We learn to transfer information about our environment through kinesthetic-visual matches. For example, ask your client to hold their arms out straight in front of you and then:

• Turn your palms out so that the backs of your hands are facing each other.
• Now cross your arms and place the palms together.
• Interlock your fingers.
• Bend your wrists to your navel.
• Rotate your interlocked hands to chest height.
• Point to one of their fingers.
• As you do so, ask them to lift any designated finger.
• Repeat on several fingers.

Remember our visual interpretations are based on prior matching of kinesthetic experiences. With vision, the ultimate reference is kinethesis. Visual and auditory information is received and gradually associated with motor-kinesthetic information. Each begins to take on meaning through matching kinesthetic perceptions. Consistency is necessary for the matching to occur. As the visual data becomes coordinated with the kinesthetic, it gradually begins to predominate in relation to the ultimate reference, the originally established kinesthetic frame of reference.

Steps to Successful Visualization

• Relax.

  It’s important to relax the mind and body first. Relaxation is the state of calmness and effortless motion. Your muscles feel loose, with no tension in the body, and your mind is as still as a pond on a windless, sunny day. To create the sensations of peaceful physical and mental state, you must become as calm and serene as the surface of the pond. The relaxed slow alpha level brain wave pattern is key to success and creating real changes rather than the busy waking consciousness of the beta level thinking, worrying, planning, and trying to manipulate things and people.

• Visualize with vividness.
  

  Imagine as vividly as if what you want is happening right now. Make your mental picture in full living color. Turn your still picture into a motion picture and make a mental movie. Create a mental movie, complete with color, sound, and feeling, in the fullest expression of your ability to imagine.

• Visualize effortlessly.
  

  You don’t have to use effort to visualize. Trying to force a visual image can cause the process to fail. Gradually work towards making your visualizations effortless. Just relax, form a clear picture, and patiently wait for your visualization to appear before you. Visualization is like concentration: it is an attracting of something to you, rather than a forced focus. The harder you try, the more difficult it becomes. This is why visualization is always most successful when you mind and body are relaxed.

• Visualize every day.
  

  If you can get in the habit of visualizing for ten or fifteen minute periods every morning just as you awake, each evening as you fall asleep because at those times the mind and body are already deeply relaxed and receptive. It’s best to sit up so that your spine is straight and balanced to let the energy flow, making it easier to get a deep alpha wave pattern and experience amazing results. A short period of meditation and creative visualization done at mid-day will also relax and renew you, and cause your day to flow more smoothly.

• Visualize with verbalize confidence.
  

  Keep the idea or image still in your mind, and mentally make some very positive affirmative statements to yourself aloud or silently. These positive statements are called affirmations. Below is a checklist to remove blocks and build positive affirmations:

•          Speak silently

•          Speak aloud

•          Speak in writing

•          Use positive words

•          Attach positive feeling to your thoughts

•          State your thought in the present tense

•          Keep it short, simple, and specific

•          Practice just before sleep, just after awakening, and mid-day.

Elements of Success

Three elements to success are desire, belief, and acceptance. These equal your intention. When you have total intention, you deeply desire it, completely believe you can do it and, are totally willing to accept it. Once we accept goodness, we can share it. When give our energy away, more can flow to us.

• Desire

  The desire should be a burning one, full of intensity and emotion. The stronger the desire, the closer you will come to achieving it. You must have a true desire to have or create that which you have chosen to visualize. By desire I don’t mean addictive, grasping desire, but a clear, strong feeling of purpose. Ask yourself, “Do I, truly, in my heart, desire this goal to be realized?”

• Belief
  

  Believe that you achieve whatever it is you want the very moment you imagine it. Image and action become one. Just like desire, the stronger the belief, the closer you are to achievement. Accept your thoughts and welcome them into your experience. The more you believe in what you want and the possibility of attaining it, the more certain will be to have it so. Ask yourself, “Do I believe that what I want can exist?” and “Do I believe that it’s possible for me to realize and attain it?”

• Acceptance
  

  What we think about the most, believe in most strongly, expect on the deepest levels, and imagine most vividly will be what we attain. You must be willing to accept and have that which you are seeking. Sometimes we really don’t actually want to attain success and are more comfortable with the process of pursuing it. Ask yourself, “Am I really willing to have this completely?”

  Closing Comments

  Remember to begin with your relaxation exercises, followed by positive suggestions and vivid visualizations. If you don’t feel like your images are vivid enough, replay the mental movie again. Pay particular attention to your desired outcome until you can see yourself succeeding. The clearer and more detailed the pictures you have in you mind, the better you will perform.

  “Good luck, much success, and all the best of business to all of you.” Dr. Carol

   

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