How Visualization Can Transform Your Life

In my psychotherapy private practice in New York City I help clients to use their imagination and visualizations to achieve transformation in their life (see my article: Using Your Imagination).

Visualization and Transformation

What is Visualization?

Visualization is the process of creating vivid mental images or representations. 

Visualization can be used to understand complex information. It can also be used to mentally rehearse desired outcomes for personal growth, therapy or performance (see my article: Using the Mind-Body Connection to Create a Vision of What You Want).

Visualization uses the imagination to form pictures in your mind. This often involves using all your senses to simulate experiences and goals. This can improve focus, motivation and the development of new skills.

How is Visualization Used in Psychotherapy and Personal Development?

Here are some examples of how visualization can be used in psychotherapy and personal development:

• Mental Rehearsal: Imagining yourself performing a task. This builds neural pathways which makes it easier to do in real life.

• Goal Setting: Creating a clear mental picture of a desired future outcome to direct your unconscious mind and increase your motivation (see my article: Making the Unconscious Conscious).

• Sensory Engagement: Using sight, sound, touch and smell to enhance the power of your imagery and make it more realistic.

What Are the Key Aspects of Visualization?

• Mental Imagery: Visualization involves seeing in your mind's eye without actual visual input.

Visualization and Transformation

• Brain Activation: Visualization activates similar brain areas as actual seeing and doing, which makes it a powerful training tool.

• Technique: Visualization can involve the process (the steps it takes to achieve your goal) or the outcome you desire (the end result).

How I Learned to Use Visualization

When I first tried using visualization as part of a women's personal development group more than 25 years go, I had a hard time accessing visual images.  The other women around me were getting vivid imagery when they closed their eyes to visualize and I was getting nothing.

Then I discovered the book, Creative Visualization, by Shakti Gawain, and I began to practice regularly on my own in addition to group practice. And, with a lot of practice, I began to visualize simple things and, over time, my visualizations became more complex and vivid.

At the time, I had an administrative job near the East River in Manhattan and I would walk over to the river on my lunch hour and practice projecting images with my eyes open onto the flowing river.  This took time to develop, but it was fun and very satisfying to be able to imagine and see these images in the water.

Sometimes when my women's group got together, we would practice visualizations together as a way to develop intuition. Each women would take turns imaging an image and, over time, many of us could sense what the visualizer was imagining.  This made us realize that intuition, like visualization, can be developed with practice.

What Are Some Helpful Visualization Tools?

When I was learning to visualize, I didn't have access to the wonderful tools that exist now to help with visualizations.

Here are some tools you might find helpful:

• Vision Boards (also called Visualization Boards): Vision boards are visual representations of your goals, intentions and desires. Vision boards are usually poster size boards. They are often made up of collage images that serve to motivate and inspire you towards your goals and desires. You can make your vision board as simple or elaborate as you want.

Visualization and Transformation

• Visualization Music: Visualization music is designed to facilitate visualization and meditative processes.  The purpose of this music is to help you focus on your visualizations. You can find visualization music online.

• Guided Imagery: You can practice your visualizations using guided imagery recordings or books.  A book I found helpful many years ago, which is still in print, is Mother Wit by Diane Mariechild.

• Visualizations of Your Future Self: The concept of a future self is used in hypnotherapy, EMDR Therapy, Somatic Experiencing, Parts Work Therapy (IFS and Ego States Therapy), AEDP and in other types of Experiential therapies. Your future self is how you want to be in the future as someone who has accomplished your goals, intentions and desires (see my article: Experiencing Your Future Self: The Self You Want to Become).

Conclusion

There are many ways to use visualizations to achieve your desires.

Visualization and Transformation

As I mentioned earlier, initially, I had a problem seeing anything at all when I closed my eyes more than 25 years ago, but with practice and persistence, I learned to create vivid images.

Using visualizations for transformation can be a fun and powerful way to transform your life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Parts Work (IFS and Ego States Therapy), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Using the Mind-Body Connection to Create a Vision of What You Want

We've all heard about how important it is to set goals in order to have the life that you want.  But for many people goal setting remains a mystery.  They're not sure where to start.  So, in this article, I'm focusing on the first stage of goal setting, which is creating a vision of what you want.

Using the Mind-Body Connection to Create a Vision of What You Want

Goal Setting:  Creating a Vision of What You Want

In order to set goals for yourself, you need to know what you want.  Although this sounds logical, for many people, this is a big stumbling block because they don't know what they want.

In many ways, the initial stage of goal setting, creating a vision, can be the most fun stage.  

By relaxing and using your imagination, you can begin to create a vision for yourself that will help you to realize what you want.

Achieving Your Goals: Using the Mind-Body Connection to Create a Vision of What You Want

During the early 1980s, I read a book by Shakti Gawain called Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in Life.

In this book, Ms. Gawain outlines how you can use, among other things, mental imagery to free up your imagination so you can create visualizations as the starting point of your goal setting process.  I would recommend this book as a start if you're having a problem at the initial stage of goal setting.

I recommend, at this stage, that people just allow themselves the freedom to visualize whatever their imagination comes up with without censoring themselves.

Allow yourself to dream and play with ideas.  Later on, you can get more specific.  But at this stage it's important to allow yourself to "play" with the images that come up without judging them.

Goal Setting:  Concretizing the Images and Using Your Vision as a Road Map to Achieve Your Goals

The next stage would be to write down the images or ideas that come to you.

It's important to capture your images and ideas and to concretize them in some way.  Whether this means writing down a list or, if you want to take more time and be creative, drawing or making collages that are symbolic of what you want.

Achieving Your Goals: Creating a Road Map

Symbols can be powerful representations that help to stimulate your imagination even more and also help you to develop other ideas.

Whichever way you choose to concretize what comes up in your imagination, capturing it in a concrete way, on the most basic level, helps you to remember it rather than allowing it to slip away like a puff of smoke.  It also helps to reinforce whatever comes up and helps you to create a road map to follow to achieve your goals.

Goal Setting: Clinical Hypnosis and Somatic Experiencing

For many people, who try to use their imagination to create a vision of what they want, nothing comes. No matter how hard they try, their minds remain blank and all they see when they close their eyes is, well, nothing.

Initially, when I first tried to do visualizations many years ago, I also got nothing.  I had friends who had wonderful, very detailed technicolor visualizations.  I was happy for them, but I also wished that I could do more than draw a blank when I closed my eyes.

Over time, I practiced visualizing and I got much better at it (see my article:  Wellness: Learning to Visualize in Meditation for helpful tips on improving your visualization skills).

For people who really feel stuck, clinical hypnosis (also known as hypnotherapy), as conducted by a licensed mental health professional who is a hypnotherapist, can help you to relax and open up to that creative part of yourself that you might not have even realized was part of you.

People have many preconceived ideas about clinical hypnosis, based on seeing stage hypnosis by a lay hypnotist, which is a distortion of what clinical hypnosis really is.

Using the Mind-Body Connection to Create a Vision of What You Want

Somatic Experiencing is a mind-body oriented therapy that can allow you, among other things, to tap into your creative imagination (see my article:  Mind-Body Psychotherapy: The Body Offers a Window Into the Unconscious Mind to understand Somatic Experiencing).

When clinical hypnosis and Somatic Experiencing are used together, they can become powerful tools for transformation.

Working with a licensed therapist who is trained in hypnotherapy and Somatic Experiencing can help to free your imagination so that you can create a vision of your goals so you can realize your goals.

Getting Help in Therapy
Since I began using Somatic Experiencing and clinical hypnosis with my clients in my psychotherapy private practice several years ago, I have found, in many cases, that these mind-body oriented techniques are often more powerful than regular talk therapy for people who feel stuck.

Rather than struggling on your own, you can overcome whatever is blocking you from creating what you want in your life by working with a therapist who is trained in clinical hypnosis and Somatic Experiencing.

About Me
I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

I have helped many people to create and achieve their goals so they can live a more fulfilling life.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Hypnosis and Creative Visualization for Stress Management

As long as we're alive we will experience stress. We cannot eliminate stress from our lives, nor would we want to. A healthy level of stress gets us through the day and helps us to achieve our goals. 

Hypnosis and Creative Visualization for Stress Management

What causes problems for people is not stress itself. Rather, it's our negative reactions to stress, our distress, that often cause emotional and physical problems. 

A combination of clinical hypnosis and creative visualization often help to allow us to relax and calm our minds and bodies. As part of my work with psychotherapy clients, I usually teach them to use creative visualization and self hypnosis to feel more relaxed and refreshed.

Hypnosis and Creative Visualization
As I've mentioned in a previous blog post, all hypnosis is really self hypnosis. 

When I say this I mean that, even when a hypnotherapist is guiding you through the hypnotic process, you're own body and mind are doing the hypnotic work--not the hypnotherapist. 

With regular practice, self hypnosis is a skill that most people can develop. Some people go into the hypnotic state more easily than others. But my experience has been that most people can enter the hypnotic state, once they learn how. 

Hypnosis is usually very relaxing and refreshing, There's nothing mysterious or magical about the hypnotic state. In fact, we all enter into various levels of the hypnotic state or trance everyday when we day dream.

Creative visualization is also a skill that most people can learn, even people who insist that they don't see anything when they close their eyes and try to visualize. 

Often, there are misunderstandings about what is meant by visualizing. Some people think that if they're not seeing strong images, they're not visualizing. So, once again, if you're able to have day dreams and night dreams, which most people do, more than likely, you'll be able to develop this skill with practice.

Creative visualization can be used not only to relax. It can be used to help improve your mood, to achieve a goal, to improve your health, and it has many other benefits. For instance, athletes use creative imagery all the time to improve their athletic skills.

An Example of Creative Visualization
As an example, if you've ever watched an Olympic diving competition, you might have noticed that divers usually stand on the edge of the diving board for a few seconds with their eyes closed before they do their dives. 

During that time, they're doing a mental rehearsal of their dives, visualizing and proactively experiencing in their bodies how they want to execute the dive before they actually do it. They've been trained by their coaches that this mental rehearsal substantially improves the possibility of executing a flawless dive. Other professional athletes, including tennis players, baseball players and others also know the value of using creative visualization as part of their training to improve their game.

Combination of Clinical Hypnosis and Creative Visualization Can Be Empowering
The combination of clinical hypnosis and creative visualization can be very empowering. When you're in a hypnotic state, you are engaing a deeper part of yourself, your unconscious mind. Therapeutic work which is done on the unconscious level tends to be more powerful as compared to work done strictly on the conscious or cognitive level where you're only working on the surface.

Visualizing a Relaxing Place
One of the exercises I usually teach clients is using self hypnosis and creative visualization to see and experience themselves in a relaxing place. Once they've learned self hypnosis, they choose a place, either a real place that they know or an imagined place, to experience in the hypnotic state, bringing in as many senses as they can. The sensory experience is key to helping to bring about relaxation. Sensory experiences include noticing what you see, hear, feel, sense, smell, and taste on this imaginary level.



Even if you don't think you don't know how to enter into a self hypnotic state, you can still benefit from taking a few minutes to imagine yourself in a relaxing place. Think of it as entering into a pleasant day dream or reverie and don't get hung up on whether you are or aren't in a hypnotic state. When you choose a relaxing place to day dream about, it should be a place that is unambiguously pleasant. 

So, for instance, if you're thinking about a beach that you love, but you had a big argument with your boyfriend or girlfriend there and that's the image and feeling that predominate for you, don't use that place because it's not going to be relaxing.

Choose a place to practice the relaxing place experience where you can have some quiet time to yourself. Also, make sure that you're in a place where it's safe to close your eyes and relax. So, you would never do this while driving, operating machinery or anywhere where you need to be alert to your surroundings.

When you've found the appropriate time, place to practice, and the image of a relaxing place that's right for you, close your eyes and imagine this place, making your senses as vivid as possible. 

For most people, visualization is their strongest sense. But for some people their imaginary sense of sound, smell, taste or sensation might be more dominant. 

As best as you can, start to notice how relaxing this place is. Often, after just a few minutes, you'll notice that your body starts to relax. This is because of the mind-body connection. Our minds affect our bodies and our bodies affect our minds. So, if you visualize a relaxing place, your mind sends a signal to your body to relax.

For most people who are interested in developing their abilities in self hypnosis and creative visualization, practice and patience are key to improving these skills. Just like any other skill that you develop, it takes time and some effort. But the benefit you derive for managing your reactions to stress can be very rewarding.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist. 

I provide psychotherapy services to individuals and couples, including dynamic talk therapy,clinical hypnosis, EMDR, and Somatic Experiencing. 

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.