It can seem counterintuitive to combine visualisation and meditation.

After all, meditation is all about letting thoughts come and go rather than consciously directing them toward a particular result, right?

Visualisation in Meditation

When you visualise, you focus on something specific — an event, person, or goal you want to achieve — and hold it in your mind, imagining your outcome becoming reality.

Visualisation is a mindfulness technique on its own, but you can also use it to enhance regular meditation. Adding visualisation into your meditation mix allows you to better direct your relaxed mind toward specific outcomes you’d like to see.

It’s also linked to many potential health benefits, including:

increased athletic performance
relief of anxiety and depression symptoms
improved relaxation
greater compassion for yourself and others
pain relief
improved ability to cope with stress
improved sleep
greater emotional and physical wellness
increased self-confidence

Interested in adding visualisation to your meditation or mindfulness practice?
Here are some techniques to get you started.

Intentions

People often have goals or intentions in their life or work that they want to achieve. We can use visualisation as a powerful tool to imagine the process or achieving the intention, but also in getting a feeling of what you would feel like when you have achieved that intention. This can help us to commit and be consistent with our actions towards our goals, possibly meaning we achieve them easier or quicker. The power of the mind is absolutely amazing!

You will often see sports competitors eg. ski racer, racing car drivers acting out the race beforehand. They are visualising the corners, straights and what actions they need to take for success and seeing themselves crossing the finish line. This can also be applied to everyday life with great effect.

Loving Kindness

The loving kindness meditation is a very powerful but lovely meditation where we focus on first sending love to ourselves, then to someone we know possibly in need, to a stranger and then around the world to all beings.

This meditation has been vastly studied in research. Traditionally created from a Buddhist practice but anyone can enjoy this meditation. Dr David Hamilton suggests that the loving kindness meditation possibly has similar effects as loving strokes from a mother in that it could switch off genes that produce stress hormones.

People often say they feel a warmth come over them during this meditation and feel a sense of peace.

Happiness & Happy Place

We can use a guided meditation to visualise ourselves being happy and absorbing the energy that generates. Quite often people reach out because they are feeling stressed, tired, worried. If we use the words “may I be able” and imagine a space where we have felt happy in the past, this can help people to feel lighter, calmer and less stressed.

Most of us have places and memories of places and experiences where we have felt happy and joyful. We can use visualisation to bring those memories and feelings to mind so that we can immerse ourselves and take ourselves back to that moment. This is a really lovely type of visual meditation which people often enjoy doing.

All Being Well

Most of us have memories of places and experiences where we have felt happy and joyful.
We can use visualisation to bring those memories and feelings to mind so that we can immerse ourselves and take ourselves back to that moment. This is a really lovely type of visual meditation which people often enjoy doing.

Colour Breathing

This visualisation technique can help with stress relief and general mood improvement.

To start, think of something you want to bring into yourself. This could be a specific emotion or just positive vibes. Now, assign this feeling a color. There’s no right or wrong answer here, but consider choosing a color you like or find soothing.You can use color breathing as part of any meditation, but you can also take a few moments for color breathing even when you don’t have time for a full meditation.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

This visualisation exercise can help ease stiff or tight muscles, which you might experience with anxiety and stress. Relaxing your muscles can relieve physical and emotional tension, improving your mood and helping you get better sleep.

Progressive muscle relaxation can help you increase your awareness of physical pain and stiffness in your body. If you notice a tense area, you can briefly use this technique to visualize the muscle relaxing and the tension leaving your body. As this tension eases, so might any associated feelings of stress.

Places to Visualise

Beach – Allow yourself to imagine a beach, either from a happy memory or getting a sense from a picture or film you might have seen. Many people find this relaxing and calming, it is almost like they are able to transport themselves there.

Waves – Most people really enjoy this type of meditation as you can use the imagery of the waves on a beach to synch your breathing to. They find it soothing and relaxing.

Hot Air Balloon – Now I am aware that some people have a phobia of hot air balloons. This meditation can be really powerful because we aren’t imagining ourselves in the basket of the balloon but placing all your worries and stresses into the basket of the balloon and letting the balloon drift over the horizon, taking all your stresses and worries with it.

When we check in after this meditation, it is often interesting as some people worry the basket isn’t big enough for all their worries, and some people find it difficult to let the balloon go.

Garden – Most people find sitting in a garden restful and calming. Imagining yourself or getting a sense of being in a peaceful garden with the sun beaming on you, the stillness and nature around you can be very calming. What isn’t to love?! As long as you don’t get lost in the tasks that need doing in your garden…

Lake – There is something so soothing, calming and grounding sitting by a lake and enjoying the moment.

Mountains – For some, being in the mountains is very relaxing and calming. Perhaps it’s because we feel so small compared to the grandeur of the scenery that surrounds us?

The Bottom Line

Adding visualisation exercises to your mindfulness practice can help you drive your brain where you want it to go, whether that’s a peaceful stream through a forest or a belief that you can (and will) achieve specific goals

It doesn’t come easily to everyone, and it might feel a little awkward at first. But with a bit of consistent practice, it’ll start to feel more natural.

1/10 people struggle to visualise, this has been proven medically. If this is you, try focusing on the senses – what you can see, hear, smell, taste and touch within the image you are bringing to mind.

Sources: https://www.healthline.com/health/visualization-meditation#takeaway

Visualisations in Meditation