Guided meditations often have someone lead you through a walk in the forest or along the beach or some such, effectively describing an environment for you to visualize with words. They might even add natural sounds to help. But for a lot of people, that sort of thing feels too weird, or otherwise uncomfortable. In the context of practicing visualization, there's really no reason someone has to specifically guide you through it - intentionally, at least.
Guided visualization can be as simple as closing your eyes while watching a Youtube video. Any type of video you're comfortable with really, but in our case, we do best with video game let's plays. As an example, we are intimately familiar with Super Mario 64, and are a big fan of the Game Grumps, and their let's play of it. Crude language warning, if you decide to watch them. Earlier I spent 40 minutes 'watching' the first three episodes, except I had my eyes closed. Just based on the game's sounds, and sometimes the grumps' reactions, I visualized what I thought was going on in my mind the entire time. Sometimes I opened my eyes for a moment just to check what was actually going on, and understandably was off by a bit. But there's nothing wrong with that, all that matters is that you're practicing visualization! You can almost forget you're even doing it for practice and treat it like a game, for fun. You may want to find a less chatty let's player if you have trouble filtering out their conversations though.
Or you know, don't even watch a let's player. I would say the possibilities for this are pretty much endless. For video games, it may help to actually be familiar with the game you're trying to imagine (though I suppose you could also try it blind). But for anything dealing more with "real life", all you need is your imagination. You probably won't be visualizing what's actually going on very accurately, but again, that's not the goal. If you want to be more accurate, open your eyes/check the video every so often. It's not cheating, and if you have particularly poor visualization it might help give you something to work with. In the case of video games it'll probably end up being a necessity to stay in the same place as the video, but that's fine.
Other examples of videos that may "guide your visualization" include sports (play-by-play announcers help a ton), TV shows or cartoons/anime (again being familiar with them can help, or you can go in blind), perhaps how-to style videos where someone details what they're doing every step of the way, and really anything else where either the talking or the environmental sounds provide enough information to form a continuous mental image.
It probably goes without saying that audiobooks (or just generally books being read aloud) are the epitome of guided visualizations that aren't directly telling you to imagine something. I'm not sponsored by Audible though, so I definitely won't tell you to check out that site. But most big Youtubers will, and come with some kind of discount too.
Lastly, I want to note that you don't have to be sitting in front of a screen to listen to a video, nor do your eyes have to be closed. You can download an MP3 of a Youtube video (or just play it) and put it on your ipod/phone and take it with you, perhaps on a walk. You can also practice open-eye visualization by simply not looking at the source of whatever you're listening to, perhaps on a walk. Seems like that would take quite a lot of focus however, so sitting down in front of a screen might be better if you can't get sufficient visuals in whatever activity you do with it. In the end, all that matters is there's a picture in your mind. Accuracy and content are only as important as you want them to be.
Good luck! Aside from wonderlanding, this is the only visualization practice we've ever done. Ours is too poor for more standalone methods, and that's why I thought of this one.
Edited by Reisen Fixed video embed from forum transition
Hi guys, plain text is just me now! We've each got our own accounts: me, Tewi, Flandre, and Lucilyn. We're Luminesce's tulpas.
Here's our "Ask Thread", and here's our Progress Report (You should be able to see all of our accounts on the second page if you want)
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Question
Reisen
Guided meditations often have someone lead you through a walk in the forest or along the beach or some such, effectively describing an environment for you to visualize with words. They might even add natural sounds to help. But for a lot of people, that sort of thing feels too weird, or otherwise uncomfortable. In the context of practicing visualization, there's really no reason someone has to specifically guide you through it - intentionally, at least.
Guided visualization can be as simple as closing your eyes while watching a Youtube video. Any type of video you're comfortable with really, but in our case, we do best with video game let's plays. As an example, we are intimately familiar with Super Mario 64, and are a big fan of the Game Grumps, and their let's play of it. Crude language warning, if you decide to watch them. Earlier I spent 40 minutes 'watching' the first three episodes, except I had my eyes closed. Just based on the game's sounds, and sometimes the grumps' reactions, I visualized what I thought was going on in my mind the entire time. Sometimes I opened my eyes for a moment just to check what was actually going on, and understandably was off by a bit. But there's nothing wrong with that, all that matters is that you're practicing visualization! You can almost forget you're even doing it for practice and treat it like a game, for fun. You may want to find a less chatty let's player if you have trouble filtering out their conversations though.
Or you know, don't even watch a let's player. I would say the possibilities for this are pretty much endless. For video games, it may help to actually be familiar with the game you're trying to imagine (though I suppose you could also try it blind). But for anything dealing more with "real life", all you need is your imagination. You probably won't be visualizing what's actually going on very accurately, but again, that's not the goal. If you want to be more accurate, open your eyes/check the video every so often. It's not cheating, and if you have particularly poor visualization it might help give you something to work with. In the case of video games it'll probably end up being a necessity to stay in the same place as the video, but that's fine.
Other examples of videos that may "guide your visualization" include sports (play-by-play announcers help a ton), TV shows or cartoons/anime (again being familiar with them can help, or you can go in blind), perhaps how-to style videos where someone details what they're doing every step of the way, and really anything else where either the talking or the environmental sounds provide enough information to form a continuous mental image.
It probably goes without saying that audiobooks (or just generally books being read aloud) are the epitome of guided visualizations that aren't directly telling you to imagine something. I'm not sponsored by Audible though, so I definitely won't tell you to check out that site. But most big Youtubers will, and come with some kind of discount too.
Lastly, I want to note that you don't have to be sitting in front of a screen to listen to a video, nor do your eyes have to be closed. You can download an MP3 of a Youtube video (or just play it) and put it on your ipod/phone and take it with you, perhaps on a walk. You can also practice open-eye visualization by simply not looking at the source of whatever you're listening to, perhaps on a walk. Seems like that would take quite a lot of focus however, so sitting down in front of a screen might be better if you can't get sufficient visuals in whatever activity you do with it. In the end, all that matters is there's a picture in your mind. Accuracy and content are only as important as you want them to be.
Good luck! Aside from wonderlanding, this is the only visualization practice we've ever done. Ours is too poor for more standalone methods, and that's why I thought of this one.
Edited by ReisenFixed video embed from forum transition
Hi guys, plain text is just me now! We've each got our own accounts: me, Tewi, Flandre, and Lucilyn. We're Luminesce's tulpas.
Here's our "Ask Thread", and here's our Progress Report (You should be able to see all of our accounts on the second page if you want)
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