Does anyone know [if] how I can improve my mental vision (mental imagery)?
I’d really appreciate it, I want to have vivid mental imagery when I’m dreaming and thinking, but I don’t know how to go about improving it.
For example, I’ll create a scene or scenario in my mind, but I can’t quite focus in on it or see it clearly–everything is shadowy or faded (or both)–and, it’s like that with my dreams, too. So, if I could get some suggestions on how to improve my mental imagery that would be great!
My mental imagery from a scale of 1 to 5 is between a 1 and a 2, if I could get up to a 3 or 4 that would be cool (BTW: it could be helpful to know your mental imagery level, so I can know where I stand… ).
There are several things you can do to improve the clarity of your mental imagery, both while awake and while dreaming.
Practice of meditation and visualization, especially daily, will help immensely, and is also highly beneficial for a host of other reasons, most of which are tied to health. Spending even just fifteen minutes a day sitting quietly and picturing something calming or peaceful in your mind with your eyes closed will work wonders for your visualization skills after even just a few weeks. There are, of course, many other forms of meditation; but if you’re looking to improve the quality of your mental imagery, that would probably be the best way to go.
Doing this will also help the clarity of your dreams, too–but there are other things you can do while asleep as well, especially if you achieve lucidity. In fact, using autosuggestion techniques such as MILD that might usually be used to induce LDs work quite well for improving dream clarity, too; using a mneumonic such as “My dreams will be as clear and vivid as possible tonight,” or something similar, can work quite well. If you become lucid, you have an even easier route to increasing both the vividness of your dream “sensory input” and your mental acuity; willing the dream to become clearer, by for instance shouting “Increase lucidity now!” or something similar, is almost sure to increase dream clarity. Touching physical objects and spinning in circles works wonders as well.
I have a similar problem, but I only really noticed it in art lessons, when I was drawing. Straight, geometrical shapes (e.g. buildings) were no problem, but more organic things like trees, people or clouds almost looked like drawn by 5-year-olds. The reason is that I have proplems visually imagining what I want to draw, which isn’t a big deal with simple buildings as they are mostly made up of straight lines.
I still didn’t improve much. However, I thought about the problem and I think you have to work on two ends to improve your visual imagination. So my idea is to train the perception as well. If you don’t pay attention to the shapes and details of things every day, you’ll have trouble imagining them.
Thanks MedO–I tried out your guys’ suggestions today and I’m not sure if I’m imagining it or not, but I can sense a slight improvement–in just one day! Still between a 1 and 2, but I’m closer to a high 2–I’ll post when I reach a level of 3 or more–Thanks again!
For my “mental imagery level” it would be 5. I have absolutely no problems imagining things, feelings, sensations etc, maybe because when I was a child I “lived” in the world of imagination
Well, I never tried meditation, so I don’t know if it actually helps(but I believe so), my only tip is pratice. Just keep praticing, imagining things, take your time, if you have some hours free, just lay down and keep imagining things, not only viasually but use the other senses too, touch things in your imagination, smell them, soon you’ll improve a lot
Lucky Genki–who’s no longer visits…anyway, I get about a 3 to a 4 and I’d say I’m content with that, but for some reason that achievement of a ‘5’ makes me want to try out some of these suggestions…
I know when I was a little kid I had very vivid dreams–like 10 out of 5! But, I guess it diminishes with age…no?
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