Many mind enhancement techniques include some sort of visualization, but because of the use of the word visualization, we often forget to incorporate more than just our visual sense when we practice these techniques. Even though it is called visualization, it should involve all of your physical senses.
Most people find it difficult at first to involve all five physical senses in their practice. The technique described in this article is something that helped me considerably and might help you to learn how to easily and comfortably involve all your senses in a visualization session.
Instead of trying to cover all the senses at once, try working on each sense individually, one at a time.
Every day for a week or two, spend ten to fifteen minutes solely on working to develop your sense of smell. I'm not implying you should physically pick things up and smell them. Instead, use your mind to create that sense of smell, just as you would do during a full visualization session. Smell the scent of freshly baked cookies. Smell the scent of salty ocean air. Smell the scent of newly mown grass or the scent of the forest after a heavy rain.
Don't just think about what it smells like; imagine it so intently you actually begin to smell it. Don't worry about the other senses at this point. Focus solely on mastering the recreation of different scents.
Once you have worked with your sense of smell and are able to quickly and easily imagine a desired scent, work on your auditory sense. For the following week or two, work only on recreating various sounds during your session.
Again, don't try to physically make the sound. Just imagine it in full detail until you hear it. Immerse yourself in your sense of sound. Play with it. Imagine the sound of musical instruments. Imagine the sounds different everyday objects make -- a closing door, a car driving past, or the leaves of a tree rustling in the wind. Remember to focus solely on your sense of sound. Don't see the tree rustling in the wind; just hear it. Imagine the sound of rain or thunder, wind or ocean waves. Eventually, you'll begin to hear the sound and feel the physical effects of the sound vibrations.
When working with the sense of touch, it helps to involve things that trigger specific sensations, such as heat or cold, hard or soft, liquid or solid. Imagine textures -- rough, smooth, grainy, furry. Sometimes it also helps to move your hands as you imagine holding or touching a specific object. If necessary, before performing this exercise, walk through the rooms of your home and physically touch objects, picking them up and feeling not just their surface but their weight, their temperature, and their shape. Get used to how things feel, not how they look. Afterward, sit quietly and recreate those same sensations of touch with your mind alone. Don't see the object, feel it.
Don't forget to imagine the sensation of touching things that are easy to touch but difficult to hold in your hands. Imagine the sensation of moving your fingers through water or running your hands through sand.
When working with taste, try tasting foods you love but also foods you hate. Imagine sweet tastes. Imagine bitter tastes. Imagine salty or spicy tastes. Imagine tasting an entire meal, course by course. Notice the difficulty in working with your sense of taste without also involving your sense of smell. Sometimes it is difficult to work with only one sense without allowing the others to contribute their own details. When working with taste, the sense of touch wants to play a role via the texture of the food, and the sense of hearing tries to jump into the game as well. Believe it or not, snack manufacturers recognize this food-taste-sound connection so well they take extra steps during the production process to make potato chips crunchier in order to enhance the sound effect. As difficult as it is to separate taste from these other senses, try your best to focus solely on that sense until you are able to imagine taste without smell or sound.
I always recommend saving the sense of sight for last because most of us naturally visualize by using the imagery associated with sight. Begin by visualizing simple objects, such as shapes in solid colors. Imagine a red sphere or a blue square, and work until you can hold that image steady in your mind. This practice will also help to improve your mental focus. Once you can hold a simple image steady in your mind, work with more complex images until you can see an entire scene.
As an exercise, try to recreate in your mind a detailed image of your bedroom or another room within your home, and then visit that room physically and look for things you missed. When you work with sight, be sure to include motion and depth in your images. See things as lifelike three-dimensional environments rather than as flat "photos". But, even when creating three-dimensional moving images, be sure to focus solely on your sense of sight without also incorporating sound, smell, or your other senses.
This exercise produces more results if you tackle each sense separately before working with them together. Work through each of the senses this way until you've handled smell, hearing, taste, touch and sight, then try handling them two at a time for a few weeks, then three at a time, then four, and finally all five. When combining only two senses, such as sound and sight, you can imagine the sight and sound of a waterfall, the sight and sound of a car, etc. Add the third sense of smell or touch and smell the fresh air or feel the breeze on your skin. Some of the senses make for interesting combinations. For example, try combining taste and hearing without involving sight, smell or touch.
Because I am a very visually oriented person, I've found my mind automatically wants to include imagery along with any of the other senses. When I try to imagine the smell of a certain flower, my mind sends up a visual image of the flower to go along with the scent. It's difficult to stop this from happening. Something that helped me to overcome this problem was to imagine myself sitting in a complete void of total blackness while working on the sense of smell, hearing, taste or touch. Once you involve sight, obviously the blackness is replaced by whatever imagery you are visualizing.
Work hard to fully immerse yourself in the practice. Rather than creating a static and lifeless visual image in the mind, you should attempt to create a fully three-dimensional environment that incorporates aspects related to all the senses. Keep in mind this practice takes patience. Most people want to rush through the exercises -- an approach that does more to hinder you than help you (as is the case with trying to rush through almost any form of mind enhancement technique). Patience and persistence is very important. If you practice the exercise daily and devote a week to each of the five senses, then an additional two to three weeks to combining a few senses at a time, it only adds up to only two months, which is a very short amount of time in the scope of things.
This preparation allows you to much more easily visualize things to the fullest extent, but there are other benefits as well. The effects of practicing this technique carry over into everyday life. As you practice, you most likely will find your sensory awareness expands and your physical senses become much more acute.
