I am practicing from the past one month, (I started from almost zero), and I can conjure mental pictures in my head, but they lacks clarity to a very great extend. Frequency Can you somehow sense its appearance? Its generally very simple, but if you cant do it for whatever reason, you may try to move a shape in any direction until it is no longer in the field of view. If this exercise works, it would be a major breakthrough. But yeah, going into a dark cave for a period of time was, like, a rite of passage in some cultures and it totally makes sense. In any case, this inability to visualize has recently been dubbed aphantasia by scientists, and has been receiving a lot of press recently. # Your goal is to learn to hold those mental pictures for at least two minutes without losing them or getting tired. If you currently cant visualize your goals with your minds eye, express your goals, your visions in writing. Go ahead and apply gentle but persistent effort. 1) because of my summer job and the lack of energy etc. But no more additions. How would one know if they had a strength or weakness in mental rotation before a mental image could be conjured up., Thanks for your reply though on my last question as I am a troubleshooter by nature and I always am interested in information that could better help with these things. That line is a little bit greenish, I can rotate any direction and move around but thats it. I could not even picture something as simple as a circle. Youre at work taking a sip of coffee? What does it mean that I could do this on the first day??? No one told them how to do it. The more familiar were with its precise appearance, the more details we can recall. Its true. I havent yet had success at creating an image of my choosing (even a very simple one). Do you think that developping my visualization skills i could solve this problems? When you stare at a color for a length of time, you will see the opposite color when you close your eyes. Families can also look forward to the East Villas, double-storey villas facing the Bedok Reservoir and great for your next family gathering, staycation and getaway! Most visitors spending 5-days in Oahu will plan a trip to Pearl Harbor. In your case (and this applies to probably thousands of other successful, happy people, too) writing is a perfectly effective substitute to get clarity, direction and drive in life. It will take you into a very deep relaxation and youll be guided through an exercise to enhance your visual perception and your visual memory. You should do this at least 30 times during one practice session. And then secondly there are the perfect clarity, full color, detail-better-than-real-life visualizations. Mine is extremely bad. Walk around like everythings perfectly normally and like nothing even happened. It was just some random image that would get me off guard. The same can happen with our mental eyes. Hello Marko, thank you for making this forum. If so, then you know mental images. Dear Phoenix, i cant say i see stuff in my mind , but im really sure that when i visualize i dont see my eyelids or blackness . Do you think I should just give up? To point you to some great resources to get the most out of life through writing, check out some of these titles on Amazon or your local book store: Writing Down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within- Janet Conner Many people say that when we are children we can imagine and see things as we want them to be I remember trying to see my future, like all the other girls, but I saw nothing so I believed I will die at a very young age and thats how I explained the impossibility of visualising. Are you riding on a train? The problem was that most images disappeared after a very short time and others I couldnt control. You can use them rather as a stencil for actual mental image to fade into. The key is deep relaxation when you see that movement (swirlings/cascading) so thats why 15-25 minutes is what I need using meditation to enter in that state of deep relaxing. The head didn't set my salary, his boss did, but the negotiations were still with the head of the department, they just had some wait time in between when my request was run up the line, and the response was run back down to me. Try changing the number or font on the phone screen, color of the flame, lighter design, etc. Hi Marko, thanks for the exercises. So good luck to everyone (including me). Ive been doing the candle and shapes exercises for 12 days now. About the meditation I see flashes everyday (short clips up to 2s). I want to share my experience here. I did the exercises for a while and nothing. I went out to drive for 30 minutes around my city. Justa dream. How long have you been dong this and how much time did you invest per day? With this scenario I might find myself having to drop the road I was looking for in favor of paying attention to safety issues and then once I miss the road perhaps some of those other things I had to pay attention to right before my turn came will not be an issue and so now I can backtrack and make that turn without the stop light, and lane change for example eliminating the amount of things needing to be manually processed at the same time. I see occasional fuzzy images of people, buildings and vehicles. Thank you for sharing your experience, Caroline! I also practice a lot on stationary objects. So, thank you and God Bless. I also see short video clips (.5 to 2 seconds), especially just before going to sleep. In the beginning you might get tired from trying too hard. It will take practice not to fall asleep while doing this, but well worth it. Ive been doing this for a week or so and Im finding all my after images to be all negative colour. We want to emulate that by frequently stimulating that muscle, titillating it to grow. The afterimage is always in reversed and simplified colors(somewhat like Negative in photography). Please keep in mind youll needpatience. Im getting just enough out of it to keep me from giving up. Did you know that you can get better at visualising with self-hypnosis? You can push this really far and spend a lot of time on this. I thought it had to do with my using my eyes against the backs of my eyelids instead of my minds eye. Hello this is more of a comment then a question today. I wonder if anyone else is experiencing severe distractions while trying to visualize I try to picture myself a certain way, and within a few seconds I find myself thinking about something completely different. Thats a fantastic side effect; when you train your imagination, your dream gains in clarity too. However, after all these years, I am still here, incapable of see anything whatsoever. 90 % days i think i made 0 progress BUT 6 days ago i had one very strong visualisation day and next day was good too but worse. Please share your thoughts and theories below. I understand that when you are able to create images you can play around with memory-palace etc but what about the above? Definitely, its possible. Ive been blindly trying to improve my ability to visualize as a whole, rather than viewing each of its facets as an entirely separate skill. But I stupidly took too much and had a bit trip, so Id say I saw this for <30 minutes before things became too muchI didn't see much colour, only geometrical figures but I could definitely see something when I closed my eyes. But, nothing in these exercises addresses the concurrent situation of nonexistent sensories. But this is more strange: if I move my head around my room, that greenish spot is changeing/shapeing according to the objects I know: room corners, room window, my desk, etc. Thanks again Marko or anyone else who might have tips here. Im an artist and have been creating for quite some time. This week I changed a little bit my afterimage training: candle & random images from google (in the morning on daylight and before sleep on dark 20-30 minutes each). Last question: Do i have to practise all five exercises everyday? Wish me luck. Even if you see blackness, or blurry images, keep describing something. Youre waiting in line? Redesign Ability Take the images you already got and merge, rearrange, redesign them to your liking. Take a blank sheet of paper and draw a simple geometric shape on it, such as a circle. This is what I mean by not controlling images as a child. Practice. What can you do with it? I guess this is how I have trained myself without noticing and this is also something I really enjoy to do. Im doing this about 20-60 minutes/day. For a better visualization experience, try to involve sight, smell, sound, and feel. Practice this daily and your visualization skill will improve bit by bit. # Then close your eyes and repeat the visualization attempt. Another method you can use, which has been introduced as Image Streaming, can also help you a great deal with ability to observe details. Its a mixture of some of the exercises. If you can only see small parts of the image, and that only for a very short time, thats totally normal. About two weeks ago, I realized for the first time in my life that people arent just speaking figuratively when they say, Picture this. After a little bit of research and a lot of reading about aphantasia, I was convinced that there was no way for me to develop this skill. Keep it light and easy. That if you had this disability, you were stuck with it for good. Basically is takeing the shape of any object I know in the room but I have to turn my head in that direction (keeping my eyes closed + my hand to be sure I do not see anything). I feel by writing this down Im able to hold myself accountable. So, because I didnt want to accept my fate, I did a lot of research on Google. I can do this with or without guided meditation. Took a longer than intended break. Address: 156th Street & Waterford Road, Urbandale. This time, definetly my brain remembered the last night training because the image faded in ~2 seconds (first try), not milliseconds like in the beggining. Try adding new images to avoid boredom. The feeling of intense euphoria after seeing cute things is not an isolated incidence. Thank you for your tips! Any other tips? Am on my second day of trying these excersizes the first day i could see absolutely nothing today i can see the shapes contained in a small rectangle in the centre of my closed eyes but very small sized. I never realized there were people who couldn't. In other words, the Mind's Eye utilizes the same neuronal machinery employed for normal seeing. Whats your greatest challenge with visualization? Biggest success this month was seeing a red brick building for a second, seeing it start to fade away and willing it to come back which it did for another second or so. Alhough I never pay attention to the candle itself, only to the flame, in the after image I often see the solid outline of candle and only a tiny glowing yellow part of the flame, which is never the same size or shape as the actual flame. E.g., when you visualize a dice, trace its contours continuously keeping your focus in motion. My mother is very good at visualisation (she once painted a painting in her head) so maybe Ill have this ability too in a while. Before you practice, at the very least, do an instant body scan. Id like to know how long it took them and which exercises worked best for them. Maybe youve ever kept a dream journal. :). Your ability to rotate supports your ability to maintain a static image. If you already can visualize with open eyes, then go ahead and keep practicing with open eyes. You should dedicate some weeks or even months to regular practice before complaining that it doesnt work ;). Get yourself a few colored surfaces. I thought I was falling asleep, but Im not so sure if thats the case or if I just have very little control of my visualization/mind. When I play I try capture the details and the position of each single image. Ive tried Oxiracetam this week (purchased from nootropicsdepot) many people says that it is a good nootropic for the brain but in my case I couldnt concentrate on meditation (my mind was a complete mess on meditation, A LOT of thoughts), I had less flashes than before. Like, I see a white blurry circle not it fades into red and it kind of looks like a flower Be as detailed as possible and keep talking out loud. I tried to picture more complicated shapes but are too blurry and faded to distinguish them. Its never worked once. I really wanted this to work and kept an open mind throughout, even towards the end when it was becoming very clear that it was not working for me. Perhaps the prehensile toes on the feet can do it? The only way you can get better (both in clarity and stability) is to practice a lot. Meditation 2 hours (not planned that much, but was good to stay there, doing nothing). Im certain, if you stay with it, youll find you can recreate images in their true colors. Now, when you have mastered thi On a related subject, last night I had lucid dream with a tactile component. My problem is much deeper than i thought. Mine is more of a question then a comment. Obviously, its not my article, that was supposed to be many. I was so excited to discover I was visualizing correctly I didnt bother to proofread before posting. Why do you want to learn it? Be very specific. If I think of a triangle I dont see anything, but I can choose to feel myself tracing the 3 sides of the triangle over and over again if I choose. I appreciate what youre trying to do here, but it is very ignorant of the condition of aphantasia. Just started the visualization technique. Please dont give up man, I will not stop, i want get better so so much, but its may be impossible. First of all, Im a very optimistic person and still hold out hope of learning to visualize. Try visualiying the scenes of the guided meditations. I havent felt anything special to say that visualisation works BUT it gets a solid score because I get deeply relaxed every single time. clarity of shape and color, vividness Yes, it may take you several months to get better, but then, this is extraordinarily valuable skill youll be able to benefit from all your life. Heres a short list what you can do with the power of visualization: In a nutshell, you can apply visualization all areas of your life. I couldnt even get after images when I started, now I can. Brandon, You dont need to see any outlines. (better 30min) every single day. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Now lets learn to dissolve them, that means make visualized shapes vanish at will. The more info and detail you stored away the more you can recollect. 1. A part of me made the recent mistake of seeking advices from all over the place. -> I want to learn it because I want to create stories. For me, its a big improvement already. 1) often i have troubles talking about my experiences, stories i have lived, things i have seen, because i have problems at recalling them. But I know from many women in my manifesting community that they have a problem with this. Now I think probably this would have been the beginnings of some dream (i.e. Is there anyway I could contact you to ask you a few questions? When you look into a light source then close your eyes, youll see a bright duplicate (usually fades quickly), no matter how good your visualization skills are. I am a total Aphantasiant and have never experienced my mind sensor of any sort. Most people would have given up already. When I came back home, imediately Ive tested myself looking at the triangle on paper for ~5 seconds and I closed my eyes. Barrett Boesen Park. Thanks for responding, I plan to dedicate some time to each exercise and will be sure to report back if I have any progress. Well, I have no idea how an hallucination looks like either. long), youll be transported into a state of deep relaxation. Can I follow you? I used to be able to visualize very bright, vivid images, but one day after having a panic attack (a result of a stressful 12-year career in corporate America, a breakup, etc), I suddenly started see black whenever I closed my eyes. Now, you can refine your practice and put more focus on the faculty you want to strengthen in this case your ability to reproduce imagery in clarity. No joke! One has more melonan than another. This is all without even closing my eyes. Really frustrating.. So after you have reached a primitive stage of conjuring pictures in your mind, what are the steps/exercises to improve clarity of the pictures ? I have a excellent memory system in which I can memorize things very well. Thanks for these great exercises, Marko! Hi Marko, thank you for the effort you put in to compile all of this information together. The afterimage effect is closer to seeing than my visualization. A minute later I know I saw another image it wasnt anything I was trying to conjur up and again when I was trying to freeze frame that image it was gone. Learning to walk seems like an apt analogy. #4 is also good. Make sure to keep the muscles that control your eyes, your eyelids, and all surrounding facial muscles entirely relaxed at all times. So I was wondering would trying to visualize problems and solve them using visualization be worth using as a technique to practice or do you think it best to just stick with the known ones that work that you listed. [2] X R You dont have to reply, I can only imagine how busy you are. Download the YouTube to MP3 converter here. 2. Think about it as taking a snapshot. Its difficult to put in words but I dont want to feel that Ive wasted my time. For privacy reasons, I wont be able to post anything from any emails here on my blog. Take a deep breath and release any muscular tension. Only about 10% can really see images like a movie; for others, it is often more like thoughts. However, when I turned away this once and opened my eyes and stared at a white wall in my room, I felt like I saw a shadow resembling the flame of the candle, but with no colours. I greatly appreciate you leaving such an honest comment. I thought I was alone in my struggle. For me it helps if I suggest to myself the color I want to see. Perhaps, every night, when you go to bed, rehearse your daily wins by reviving them in your mind adding the successfeeling to it. Dear Kimberley, For us, for some reason, we didnt visualise naturally. 1. Barrett Boesen Natural Playscape for any child who loves to get dirty and make mud pies. Try to not laugh! With my using my eyes against the backs of my minds eye, express your goals, your dream in! Problem was that most images disappeared after a very short time, totally... 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