Thread: An easy way to practice and understand visualization

Originally Posted by ZmillA

There are a lot of threads and tutorial pages that talk about visualization and particularly its use when falling asleep. They all say stuff like "use your minds eye" or "focus on something", "dont use your eyes to look at it. That sounds easy, but really is more abstract than what those lines suggest.

To get to the point, maybe an hour ago I stumbled upon a way that made sense to me, and really made this "minds eye" type stuff clear.

All you do is:
-while keeping your eyes open just think about stuff, think about feeling things, and let your head play out the scene

-It kind of helps if your standing up or at least not doing something that is really relaxing

-once you come out of it (maybe seconds later) think if you can remember exactly what you were staring at.

-If you can, you weren't really imagining it in your head, you were using your eyes too much. If you cant, if you think to yourself "hmm I cant really remember what I was looking at, but I do remember my imagined scene and what I was doing/trying to do" If you say that to yourself than you correctly "visualized" .

Now when trying to sleep its a little different since your eyes are closed and all you see is darkness and staticy fuzzing rainbowing color stuff. Your eyes are still "open", they are still taking in visuals but they are just different.

I was thinking about this thread: http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...=45387&page=10

I thinking about practicing "feeling" things in my mind, which is what this technique really focuses on. It really isn't hard once you have the concept of visualization under control.

And finally, you do this ALL THE TIME. Whenever you are just looking off in space and then you "snap" back into focus. Or your reading and you look up and realise you dont remember anything of the last page you just read. Thats all Visualization at work, now that you really now what it is, it should be much easy to harness it for LD goodness (at least it should be for me )


edit: I'm going to sleep now so I wont be able to answer questions until tommorrow, good luck *imagine a thumbs up*

Nice job.
Yes when you stare and daydream your eyes do go blurry and you visualise.
I find I end up looking at a certain point too, like a point on a wall (but it is just the spot I was looking at when I started to visualise, not an actual spot).

Taking it a step further to sleeping or going to sleep:
Close your eyes and you see the blackness of your eyelids, and you can see as a large circle of blackness.
Now it is fairly easy to see an imaginary spot (black spot) in the center. It will always be there if you look for it.
Now that is the stare spot for your visualisation. Try it. Just like daydreaming and looking at one spot.

It even forms a tunnel as you stare at it which you can also turn into a tunnel to visualise going down towards the dream world as you get better at it.
The black spot being the far end of the tunnel. But mainly, you use it as the focal point to visualise.
Just a method I use which works on the same principle as ZmillA's.

That's a really good way to explain it, ZmillA. I've been working on visualization recently and I've just realized that's how you get to your "mind's eye." I haven't though of trying it with my eyes open though... that could help.

Dreamchaser, are you talking about when you look at a speck and literally don't move your eyes at all? Because that looks hella weirder than just a tunnel ha.

This is pretty interesting. But here's my problem.

Whenever I heard about visisation I always thought it meant that when you close your eyes and see darkness that you can pyshically see iamges in front of you. This never worked for me. However, comparing it to a day dream is much better. When I think about a dream scene in bed I sometimes feels as if I don't see it but rather remember that I was seeing it. Does that make sense?

Originally Posted by bcomp

That's a really good way to explain it, ZmillA. I've been working on visualization recently and I've just realized that's how you get to your "mind's eye." I haven't though of trying it with my eyes open though... that could help.

Dreamchaser, are you talking about when you look at a speck and literally don't move your eyes at all? Because that looks hella weirder than just a tunnel ha.

Yeah was just an add i saw myself. I see the center spot of the black circle we see with our eyes closed, and the spot seems like the end of a tunnel.
This is when there are no HI going on ofc.
Just focus on the other info i posted.

Originally Posted by Denny22

This is pretty interesting. But here's my problem.

Whenever I heard about visisation I always thought it meant that when you close your eyes and see darkness that you can pyshically see iamges in front of you. This never worked for me. However, comparing it to a day dream is much better. When I think about a dream scene in bed I sometimes feels as if I don't see it but rather remember that I was seeing it. Does that make sense?

Yeah. That's sort of how it is for me. I'm getting better at actually seeing it while i'm imagining it though... I think that's just something that comes with practice.

Originally Posted by Denny22

This is pretty interesting. But here's my problem.

Whenever I heard about visisation I always thought it meant that when you close your eyes and see darkness that you can pyshically see iamges in front of you. This never worked for me. However, comparing it to a day dream is much better. When I think about a dream scene in bed I sometimes feels as if I don't see it but rather remember that I was seeing it. Does that make sense?

I know what your saying and its the same for me (and im guessing everyone, people just arent being accurate when they talk about it). I cant see things when I close my eyes. and what I mean by that is I cant make a broom form in the darkness of having my eyes closed. I can however picture a broom in my mind. And as for your last sentence, you arent seeing the dream scene (as though you were actually dreaming) but rather sdafljsdfjasfjlasdjfl (that means this is the part that is very hard to explain, the best I can say is that your "seeing" it in your mind, your "minds eye" if you will)

Thank you!

So I'm not doing it wrong afterall.

Denny Crane.

Denny Crane.

Originally Posted by DreamChaser

Nice job.
Yes when you stare and daydream your eyes do go blurry and you visualise.
I find I end up looking at a certain point too, like a point on a wall (but it is just the spot I was looking at when I started to visualise, not an actual spot).

Taking it a step further to sleeping or going to sleep:
Close your eyes and you see the blackness of your eyelids, and you can see as a large circle of blackness.
Now it is fairly easy to see an imaginary spot (black spot) in the center. It will always be there if you look for it.
Now that is the stare spot for your visualisation. Try it. Just like daydreaming and looking at one spot.

It even forms a tunnel as you stare at it which you can also turn into a tunnel to visualise going down towards the dream world as you get better at it.
The black spot being the far end of the tunnel. But mainly, you use it as the focal point to visualise.
Just a method I use which works on the same principle as ZmillA's.

What I like the most about what you wrote?

That you mentioned, there should be a focal point for the visualization. Recently i started to experiment just with focus on one spot. At it seems, that as long as eyes are focused on one place, the imagery starts to form. When eyes are moving, they are sending a signal to braing telling {we are moving... time for external stimuly, please switch of imagination}. And vice versa. When they are still, brain takes over and switches into internal imagination. The same could be applied for sound and tactile stimulation. As soon as there is no interesting stimulation from outside, sensoric organs dont have stimulation which to give to the brain, and it automatically takes over. So if you want to induce auditory imagery, you should focus on white noise or some repetitive undisturbing sound. If you want to have visual imagery you should focus on one spot pretending, external stimulation is not interesting for you. And the same goes for tactile imagery. It is much easier induced, when falling asleep.

So external sensoric deprivation causes increase in internal sensoric activity. But be aware that also blackness itself is some kind of external information if you are searching it for imagery.

Just pretend, you are not interested