Visualization for Success
By Jim Tessman,
Marketing
ChampionsWay Inc.
Visualization is an important part of many martial arts – but
does it really work?
It works better than most people could ever realize. Its power has
been documented for thousands of years, and has been proven in
industries from martial arts to medicine to quantum physics and can
be used to perform a perfect spinning back-kick or to heal cancer.
Done properly, it can increase your speed, strength and stamina, and
it can make you capable of maneuvers that practice alone could never
accomplish. Of course combining it with appropriate physical
training is also important to ensure that your body can keep up with
your mind!
What is Visualization? In the most basic form, it is simply
imagining yourself completing an action or having particular emotion
associated to a given situation. It is the process of mentally
creating an image or intention of what you want to do or feel.
Visualization is used in meditation, katas, affirmations of success
and in many other systems in order to control the physical body with
the mind.
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Visualization is the use of imagery, which is the way the mind
communicates with the body. You can’t talk to your hand and tell it
to heal itself, but if you picture the wound shrinking and healing,
studies have shown that it will heal significantly faster. There is
actually a biological connection between the mind and the body that
you can take advantage of with this process.
Picture your mind as a wild animal. Untamed, it will act on
impulses, run free and can be dangerous to you. Trained, it will be
calm, make your life easier and will make you capable of incredible
things. Your mind can is dangerous when it wanders and focuses on
negative emotions or actions, as those affect your body by releasing
hormones and chemicals because your body thinks the thoughts are
reality. When it’s trained, as many martial artists have discovered,
your mind can make you capable of doing things that others thought
were impossible.
To use visualization to practice a maneuver effectively, you must
first know exactly how the action should be performed, because
visualizing it incorrectly is the same as physically doing it
incorrectly, which sets you back. When you visualize, use deep
breathing and picture yourself performing the action flawlessly.
Imagine how it feels physically and emotionally as well as how it
appears. Visualization is more than a snapshot of what your maneuver
is supposed to look like, it’s an experience.
When done correctly, visualization can be just as effective as
physically executing the maneuver.
One theory is that your mind is afraid of unknowns and considers
them to be “pain”, while it considers “knowns” to be pleasure,
regardless of how unpleasurable they may actually be. This means
that once you have put that maneuver or into the “knowns” category
in your head, your brain will stop fighting against you and will do
everything possible to make it happen. This can work for physical or
emotional challenges.
An emotional challenge may be anxiety before a test, fear of public
speaking or apprehension to commit. Once you can visualize the
association of calmness or excitement to be connected to being
tested or public speaking, you will physically begin to feel
different in that situation. By appropriately using visualization to
associate positive emotions and outcomes with these situations, your
feelings of anxiety, fear or apprehension will fade away.
For powerful visualization, you should use a combination of all of
your senses and feelings as you walk yourself through a mental
scenario. You need to visualize exactly how each move looks and
feels while you play it through in your mind as if it was actually
happening from start to finish. Your brain will believe that
whatever you are imagining is actually taking place as if you were
actually living through that situation.
Visualization has been shown to cure disease, treat stress, boost
self-esteem and to relax the body and mind.
This technique can be used for almost anything, whether it’s to step
into the ring and face an opponent, to speak in front of a crowd or
to use a new software application that you are nervous about trying.
I will walk you through a short visualization for feeling confident
when public speaking, as most of you reading this will be teachers
in one form or another and you probably have students with some
anxiety when they are asked to teach a class or a maneuver. Now,
while this may not apply directly to you, the idea is to be able to
use the steps for visualizing just about anything.
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First, sit
comfortably, close your eyes and begin breathing deeply. Clear your
mind of any other thoughts and focus only on the matter at hand.
Imagine yourself standing in your martial arts class - your
instructor asks you to teach the class to do a spinning back kick.
If you are a person who has anxieties for being in front of groups,
your stomach may have flipped just at the thought of being asked the
question.
What you need to do now is to run yourself through the scenario as
if you were there, but you will replace those feelings of fear
(terror for some), with feelings of excitement or calm. In order to
do that, you must know how it feels physically and emotionally to
feel excitement. Picture that teacher telling you that you just won
the lottery, that you’re the student of the month or picture your
significant other telling you some great news. How does that feel?
Now, you need to associate that emotion with having your instructor
ask you to teach.
Before replacing the emotion, you’ll need to work through the
problem. If your fear is failure, ridicule or simply being in front
of people, you’ll need to visualize teaching the class flawlessly,
having the class extremely supportive and receptive, you’ll have to
see yourself demonstrating the move flawlessly to a class that
learns it quickly. Basically, you need to visualize things working
out without a hitch.
Once you can picture yourself teaching the class flawlessly, you
need to feel the positive emotions of accomplishment and pride. Feel
them in every way possible. You should be able to smell the
classroom, feel the cold mats under your feet and see and hear the
class being impressed at your skills and abilities. Now, once you
can visualize that, insert the positive emotion of winning the
lottery into the visualization when your instructor asks you to
teach.
Just like learning anything worthwhile, this will take practice and
the more time you spend practicing these techniques, the better you
will get and the more parts of your life you will be able to affect
with it. Once you’re good at visualization, there is nothing you
can’t accomplish!
Visualize your class doubling in size within a year… click here to
make that a GUARANTEED reality!
By Jim Tessman,
Marketing
ChampionsWay Inc.
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