Seeing Helps to Make It So
Certain mental skills seem to go untouched for awhile. One of them being imagery. I love imagery because it fulfills so many purposes but for me it’s usually one of the last skills I teach someone (if I do) because it utilizes the ability to really be able to focus. I have to work with clients around their focus (first) so that if/when I am going to use imagery with them they are able to feel successful using it.
Recently though I’ve had several clients who already use imagery so one of my tasks with them has been to work with them around the imagery they are currently using: deepening awareness, define it, refine it, shape it and put it together in a way that is utilized to really help facilitate what they need.
Imagery part I
Imagery is a form a stimulation that is similar to real sensory experiences except the experiences happen in the mind. Through imagery you can recreate previous positive experiences. Recreating past positive experiences involves recalling from memory pieces of information stored from your experiences and using them to shape further meaningful experiences. Your mind remembers these events and recreates pictures and feelings of them for you to use for future events.
Through imagery you can also create events that have not yet occurred. For example, my beginning tennis player who has not yet had many real experiences with the sport can begin creating initial positive experiences of her own by observing others. She has began to view other tennis players practicing and competing and is beginning to create positive experiences around how she wants to play that will help her shape her future playing behaviors. Imagery will help reinforce those behaviors.
If you have ever watched a great tennis player and mentally rehearse those moments or you’ve watched someone you thought was a great server and tried to mimic that person’s serve or you’ve watched a professional tennis player on television and tried to copy their tennis stroke, all of this is your minds way of remembering events and creating pictures and feelings of them; imagery.
Imagery should include as many senses as possible
Think back to your favorite movie. If you were watching the movie but had no sound, what would your experience be like? What if you had sound but no picture? Now imagine you were watching and listening to your favorite movie and you could taste, smell and feel everything going on in that movie. How would that change your experience? Lastly, you have probably attached various emotional states to your favorite movie: sadness, laughter, anger, etc. Because we use so many of our senses when we watch a movie, it feels like real life and that is why we watch it. Imagery is much the same way.
Psychoneuromuscular theory
I like to use theory here because I think it really helps build a positive case for why imagery is successful.
When an athlete practices using imagery, the athlete imagines movements without performing them, although the brain interprets this as if the athlete were performing them, which provides similar impulses in the brain and in the muscles. Small impulses fire from your brain to your muscles with the exactness that you are imagining.
Research on imagery
Imagery combined with physical practice is better than either alone because imagery can build the ‘muscles’ around what you don’t know, it reinforces what you are doing physically and when you can’t feel what is happening when your performance is ‘off’ imagery can help make corrections.
Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge.
Imagery part II
On Wednesday I will talk more about how to build a piece of imagery, when to use imagery and the benefits of imagery using my beginning tennis client as the basis.
Happy Monday!
Dr. Michelle
Photo credit: dailyrelaxing.com
