Harnessing the Power of Visualisation
When we experience reality in our everyday waking life, we do not only experience our surroundings through our vision. When we are walking around encountering different things or scenarios, not only do we see, but we feel, we taste, we smell, we touch, and we hear.
An essential piece to visualisation practices is learning and understanding the ability to create those sensory experiences from within. Through this inner creation of experience, we regulate our internal system and learn how to produce chemicals and hormones on command. This then influences our experience externally in reality.
Many scientific studies have been undertaken that have profound results. It is shown that when subjects in these studies visualise skills through habitual repetition, it provides the same brain functionality as if they were physically practicing those same skills. This is the scientific explanation of manifestation. The key is understanding that following the brain functionality adapting to absorb those skills, you must then take steps or act like it has been done and understand that it will take time for your physical body – including muscle memory, to catch up or align with your brain and nervous system. In other words, if you visualise to a minute detail that you can play piano – including each note and the experience of it through the sensory body (sight, sound, touch, tase and scent), you will learn. The next step would then be to go and play the piano for your muscular system to align with the nervous system.
Do not feel frustrated with yourself when embarking down this path. The Yogi’s and spiritual teachers do not refer to meditation as a “practice” for no reason. Like anything in our reality, you must practice a skill before mastering. A Yogi’s perception is driven by a meditative state. It is a master of the meditative state that then encounters this perception constantly. Every act is then intentional. Every thought process is observed and treated from a place where the emotions do not drive the action in our reality. A difficult thought may influence feelings of dread. A Yogi identifies that and choses to not let that dread influence their next decision in their experience.
My intention through this guide is to teach you, my beloved reader, to be able to experience these visualisations, reality and meditations on your own without guidance.
Let us begin our practice.
Setting Your Intention
Before you begin your practice, begin with an affirmation or intention. What is the result you would like from this practice? Some prompts may be:
· I am happy in my current reality.
· Life provides me with all my desires. I am abundant.
· I am grateful for the life I lead and all that I have received.
It is important to select your intentions from a place of fulfilment. Should you choose intentions and affirmations from a place of lack, that is the psychological reality that you are reinforcing.
It is also important to keep your intentions general and specific to yourself. This promotes open opportunities and removes limitations. When we have specific goals and integrate this into our psychological process, the Yogi’s path is that we may receive them, however, if they are not for our highest good (if they aren’t good for us in the overall scheme of things) we will encounter strain, struggle and hardship (suffering). This is because we are forcing something in our reality that doesn’t feel good. Then it mustn’t be good for our soul. On this same thought process, the intention is to be specific to ourselves as the only thing in this world we have control of is our internal system and reality. We cannot control anything that is outside of us. So, we regulate our internal system and the actions we take from this learned control is what influences the direction of our lives in the external reality.
Not only do we want to set an intention for our psychological and mental process – as the Buddhists refer to it, the Mind. It is important to set an intention that influences the emotions as well. We intend to be calm, blissful, joyous or a high vibrational frequency in general. This is the intention for our physical and spiritual bodies. As they are all connection and interacting with each other constantly.
If you are stressed and do not decide you would no longer like to be stressed and begin a practice with “I am happy” on repeat in your head, it’s probably not going to work. It may work through repetition, however, there’s a quicker way with more ease.
Let’s Start with some Instructions
Personally, I have always struggled with written guided meditations, so I will provide some instructions initially of how I tackle meditation practices.
Read this immersion through in its entirety. If required, read it twice.
As you read the words, begin to relate each sensory prompt with your own experience. Utilise the tool of your memory. If you do not have a memory the same, use a similar one to build the story line of your internal experience.
Calm your mind and nervous system before closing your eyes. I have found that the parasympathetic nervous system or your “fight or flight” response in the modern day is pretty much on constantly. All this means is:
Find a space that is comfortable, safe and you will not be disturbed.
Minimise all distractions in your surroundings (sounds, light, children, etc)
As a beginner, it is recommended that you find a seat. The most essential thing to begin cultivating in your practice is minimising the resistance of your nervous system and its connection to the rest of your body. This is why in meditation practices for beginners you are recommended to sit with your spine erect. Not only is this position fantastic for core strength, but it also promotes a healthy digestive system, this influences a healthy lymphatic system, which cultivates a regulation of your hormone and enzyme release and in turn this regulates your nervous system and breathing and therefore promotes a healthy cardiac system. This is what Yogi’s are referring to when they say yoga or union. It is the onflow of benefits throughout a system or a ripple effect. It is that we are all one because each action is influenced through ripple effects.
Do a small breathing practice. Take three deep breaths. I have provided two options below. The latter is my own Yogi process.
You may inhale on the count to four, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four and repeat.
Inhale as much as you possibly can and feel your lungs fill with rich oxygen vital for your body because you love your body so much and it provides you with the essential vehicle to experience this beautiful world and all it has to offer. Hold the oxygen in, giving your body process time to absorb as much oxygen as possible out of the air you have inhaled, exhale the garbage air out. All the gaseous particles we don’t need for our wonderful meat bag to function. Parallel, imagine that the red blood cells that are freshly fuelled with oxygen “exhale” or spread throughout your body filling up the space in your internal meat bag with the vital nutrients you have just fuelled it with. Hold giving your body time to spread the oxygen and allow the absorption into your muscular system through the capillaries.
This is my process of physically setting intention to calm my system. It is both that I love my physical body, I am fuelling it, and I am focussing on a positive outcome with the release of things that are not fuelling me.
Once complete, you needn’t continue deep breathing.
For myself I enjoy continuing to fuel my body with oxygen as a practice of self-love. But this is not necessary. In fact, in Yoga it is also used as a focus point to maintain a calming focus for your mental chatter. Ujjayi breath or ocean breath promotes calmness through a similar sound to the ocean. Again, the key is to focus all sensory experiences on that breath to gain the full impact.
For a moment, absorb your surroundings. What are the things in the room that you take for granted? Find one thing for each of the senses. This could be a beautiful poster or feeling the texture of the couch you are sitting on. This is beginning your practice of awareness in your surroundings. Becoming one with the experience in your reality no matter where you are. This promotes focus on one thing at a time and minimises the “monkey mind” or “head noise”.
Remember that should you deviate from the guided immersion below or forget what is written, you have two options:
Preferred option: take a deep breath to remind your mind to regulate itself instead of approaching panic or stress and continue the internal visualisation narrative your own way. If it is not a hot air balloon, roll with that. The visual or imaginative journey is not the priority here, it is the regulation of your internal process.
Slowly open your eyes or focus your gaze, read the prompt and continue the journey.
Know that both options are completely reasonable and neither is better than the other. We are cultivating a practice of ease. Or in layman’s terms, it is OK!
For visualisation or immersion practices, I recommend that you have your eyes closed. We will provide other meditation practices and techniques in the future that will provide methods and tools to go into meditation in other ways. However, for now, close your eyes and begin.
