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Creative Visualization- The Forgotten Art You Should Teach Your Child
- 3m guru
- Oct 8, 2022
- 0 comment(s)
Have you ever thought why your dreams sometimes manifest into reality?
We don’t dream only while sleeping. We also dream with our eyes wide open. It is called day dreaming.
When day dreaming is done consciously with focus and concentration, it is creative visualization.
When creative visualization is practiced consistently, it opens whole new dimensions of our minds and enhances human potential.
Creative visualization is one of the powerful techniques that children can practice to develop success tools like creativity, intuition and help them achieve their goals
Lets see how in this article…
What is creative visualization?
Creative visualization is a great personal development tool that allows you to visualize your future in a certain way. It is the act of virtually creating all the thoughts, images, sounds and feelings of a dream future in your mind.
Creative visualization is a good example of how to use your imagination to help you create whatever you want to happen in your life. The technique has been around for a long time, has been well-researched, and its usefulness has been demonstrated.
Why should you visualize?
What restricts growth? NO VISUALIZATION — It is the prime reason why hard work often does not bear fruit.
You know that you have a great idea. But, are your thoughts in sync with the desired outcome? Or on the contrary, is your mind clouded with negative emotions like fear, anxiety etc.
Mostly, our mind contemplates on what if scenarios like, “what if this fails?”, “what if I fall ill on that important day?”, “what if I lose this job?” etc. When we keep pondering over and over these negative outcomes, we drain our creative energy and fail to manifest positive outcomes.
Creative visualization helps to channelize all our creative energy on our goal, ignoring the negative suggestions of our mind. It helps us to intuit and find the right actions and solutions that take us to our goals.
How to visualize?
Most often, when you wish to achieve something, say buying a new house or becoming the CEO of your company, you imagine the picture of yourself relaxing in the living room or chairing a board meeting in your head office.
You should imagine that you are already in your desired future state. When you imagine or visualize the future or the end result, these mental images inspire you to take action and motivates you to crush your goals.
How visualization really works?
The mind is made up of two parts — conscious and subconscious parts.
The subconscious mind is like clay, it cannot think of its own. You can mould it whatever way you want; it doesn’t know good or evil, profit or loss, courage or fear. It will take things the way you perceive them to be.
On the other side, your conscious mind feeds the subconscious mind with thoughts, emotions and desires. Whatever you’re feeding to your subconscious mind, it starts taking the thoughts seriously and sets about ways to bring it into existence.
What is the mechanism behind it?
Even Science backs up the power of visualization with a logical explanation. It says that our brain cells perceive mental images as a real-life action. Upon visualization, the brain generates commands to make these cells act. This neural activity directs the brain to act in accordance with our desired outcome.
Creative visualization is no less than an art. It would give you the best rewards only if your intention is right and the action is strong.
Children & Visualization…Why, When and How…
Children generally have vibrant and colorful imagination skills which make visualization and story telling come naturally to them.
However once they enter school, the current education system does not encourage individual learning styles as they have specific learning methods and no room for visualization.
The young buds are stuffed with so called basics such as reading, writing and math, that cognitive skills like visualization and imagination are never encouraged nor even discussed.
To make things worse, most of the teachers are also not aware of the fact that, a fun quotient can be included in academics through the cognitive space using visualizations and imagery.
As we all know visualization refers to our ability to create pictures in our heads based on what we read or hear. But in practice it involves more than just imagery as more senses are utilized like touch, sound and taste to make it more productive and powerful.
In the end of this article we will show you a simple 5 step visualization process for children to practice.
How does visualization help children?
It enhances learning and improves reading, writing, memory, emotional quotient and more. The key, however is to train students to practice visualization and create mental imagery while focusing on learning basic academics.
How does visualization help children in academics?
# We often say that, we learn from experience and in the same way our brain can recollect information easily which has already been visualized. More often, our brain believes that visualizations are real. For ex. imagine the sight, smell and touch of slicing a lemon in quarters and then taking a big bite, our mouth starts watering because the body reacts to the visualization.
# As per the popular saying “A picture says a thousand words”, visualizing a scene from history lesson, a chemical process in science or a complex graph from maths can help students remember and recall a lot of information, almost everything most of the time.
# Visualization enhances attention because it keeps the audience focused on the subject matter. For example, when students visualize the content of a lesson or a passage, they create a “movie in their head” and the visuals maintain their concentration and interest.
# Visualization aids in memory. Learning through visuals and stories helps both the learning and the retrieval process, as it is multi-sensory.
How to help children excel in visualization?
We need to expose children to the concept of visualization early and teach the skill. Students should be encouraged to take a holistic approach to develop their capacity to visualize. They must be taught to focus on the details of the visuals like colour, size, shape, smell, touch, taste, background, movement etc. Teaching visualization can improve academic achievement for students any age.
The five step creative visualization process for children
The concept of visualization follows no hard and fast rule as different people apply different techniques. It’s more like trial and error, you might have to try doing it in a way that benefits you the most. When you engage yourself in the process of creative visualization these are the five basic steps.
1. Relax: Find an uninterrupted place with no external noises and distractions. Sit comfortably, close your eyes slowly, and start taking deep breaths. Be mindful of the time you decide to visualize. Early mornings and late nights are the most appropriate times but you have to try it out by yourself to see what works the best for you.
2. Imagine: Start imagining whatever you wish to achieve in an ideal way in a quiet environment. If you want to lose some weight, think how you would look like after losing weight. Visualize every little detail. Imagine how the dress would fit, how great you would feel, and people showering you with compliments and let the magic begin.
3. Picture the scene as someone else: There lies a great power in visualizing your future to propel your growth. You can amplify the impact if you picture the scene as a third person. Remember how watching a scene in a movie gives you a fresh perspective. Likewise visualizing your goal as someone else would leave you with some insightful information and realization.
4. Stay: The whole purpose of doing this technique is to be present in the moment, gather your energies, and put them into implementation to elevate your level of consciousness and growth. To make it work for you, stay for as long as possible in the moment of visualizing your future.
5. Wrapping up: As important it is to start a process right, wrapping up holds equal significance as well. After you have visualized your future, smoothly make the transit to the real world. Open your eyes slowly and prepare your mind to utilize the accumulated force in the best manner for the pursuit of a better future.
Always remember that visualization won’t guarantee success unless not backed by strong action and regularity. But if you are leveraging the power of your subconscious and conscious mind alongside the right intent, nothing can stop you from touching the sky. Creative visualization is a golden tool to achieve your goals and make your dreams come true!
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