Sense-Imagery Exercises
To help you figure out what senses you most rely on, you may try the following sense-imagery exercises. These exercises do not require privacy. In fact, you can try them with a friend or a small group. After you are done, you can compare the differences in your responses among yourselves.
As you identify your mental makeup, take note of the positive images you can produce. These images can be an aid in deepening your self-hypnotic trances. The more you allow yourself to experience the positive feelings that they generate, the deeper you will go into trance.
Your Sense of Vision
Vision is the most commonly used sense for communication because most people are highly visual. Would you like to find out if you are, too? When you are ready, find a comfortable place, take a deep breath, exhale, and focus on your third eye. Then, consider the following questions.
Can you imagine picture images in your mind? If so, are they in color, black-and-white, or somewhere in between? Are they clear, bright, and in focus, or are they unclear and out of focus? Can you change the picture, such as seeing it in a different time, either in the past or in the future? Do you see it as a movie or as a still photograph?
Can you rewind a moving picture in your mind and watch it again, or stop it and focus on a single frame? Can you move the picture, bring it closer, push it farther away, or change the angle? Can you view it from above or from a lower position?
There are two types of visual images: experienced and dissociated. “To dissociate” means to be apart from the picture without feeling any emotions in connection with it. Some of you can dissociate from an image in your mind, and some of you cannot. It is good for you to know your image ability as you work on psychic development.
Can you see yourself in the picture? Can you see the picture without seeing yourself? Can you see yourself at a different age, either younger or older? Can you see colors around people in your imagination? Can you see energy forms or other elements in your mind?
Your Sense of Hearing
Next, you can examine your sense of hearing. Can you imagine sounds in your head? If so, what are they? Can you imagine music or sounds of nature, such as birds singing or the sounds of the ocean? Can you turn the volume up or down in your mind?
Can you hear conversations taking place in your head? Can you hear your own voice? Do these voices talk to you, and are they part of something other than yourself? Can you have a discussion with a voice in your head?
Can you see a picture in your mind and hear the sounds that go with it? Can you put yourself in the picture image and move around and hear sounds or conversations from different locations? Can you watch the image as if it were a movie or a video and still be able to hear the sound? Do you picture guides or other beings who talk to you?
If you have voices in your mind that are persistently negative and create bad thoughts for you, you should seek out a licensed mental health professional in your area for proper guidance.
What You Feel
It is also important to examine your feelings. Can you imagine emotions? Are you able to experience feelings such as happiness, loneliness, or sadness in your mind? Can you intensify and weaken these emotions at will? Can you imagine visual pictures that create emotional feelings in yourself? Can you disconnect your emotions from the images in your mind? Can you step in and out of the scene, feeling and then not feeling the emotions connected to it, as you wish?
Can you feel the emotions of different people in a visual image? Is it easy to be overcome by emotional images in your mind? Do you connect emotions to certain sounds or music? Do you feel emotions in certain places or objects? Can you connect seeing, hearing, and emotional feelings in the same image?
Can you imagine feeling positive, negative, or healing energy in your mind's images? Can you imagine positive energies going through your body? Can you feel energy in terms of certain colors? Can you put yourself inside one of your mental images and imagine feeling temperatures, textures, and the weight of different objects? Could you feel the length of hair or the texture of the clothes being worn?
The sense of feeling is called the kinesthetic sense. You experience your kinesthetic information in two different ways: internally, as an emotional process, and externally, as a tactile or touch experience.
Can you combine emotions and your sense of touch? Can you connect the kinesthetic sense to the visual and hearing senses? Can you dissociate and watch a visual and sound image, and yet feel the emotions and certain touches? Can you step in and out of the image and see, hear, and feel it in your mind?
Your Senses of Smell and Taste
Can you imagine smells in your mind? Can you add smells to a mind's image? Can you put yourself in that picture and move around, and experience different smells? Can you intensify or weaken smells in your mind?
Can you connect smells with emotional feelings, or with sounds, foods, nature, or other mind images? Can you connect smells and tastes? Can you picture foods and connect tastes with them? Can you imagine eating a meal and tasting the different ingredients? Can you feel different emotions connected to different tastes?
Now it's time to put all your senses together. Can you step into an image in your mind, and see, hear, feel, taste, and smell? Can you move about experiencing a wide variety of sensory images? Can you intensify or decrease all of your imagery? Can you step in and out of all of your sensory images?
