Covert Training ____________________________________________________
Another way to enhance your mental powers is to paint pictures in your mind or engage in covert training. You don’t have to belong to Shirley McClain’s fan club to do this. It’s not that metaphysical. Actually, what we are talking about here is simply human imagery and/or visualization. In recent years, psychologists have identified human imagery as one of the most promising techniques for enhancing performance. There is a good reason imagery is such a hot item…namely it works like r-e-e-a-l well. In fact, some research indicates that mental imagery is just as effective in facilitating performance as physical practice. Covert training is actually no more than mental training. It’s a method in which no overt response is necessary. With this method, the individual mentally or covertly visualizes as vividly as possible the behavior that he is trying to perfect. For instance, if you were trying to improve your piano playing, typing skills, or maybe even your golf game, you would lie down, close your eyes and induce deep muscle relaxation. Once you are totally relaxed, you would then visualize yourself performing the behavior you are trying to improve. By mentally rehearsing the aforementioned scenario, you are preparing yourself for the real life situation. There are a number of reasons this is effective and we are going to tell you what those reasons are.
The Magic of Mental Imagery Revealed _____________________________________________________________________________________________________
A couple of decades ago Dr. Brian Fisher and a few of his buddies at Michigan State University were sitting in the lab drinking coffee and playing Old Maids, when all of a sudden Brian got this incredibly neat idea. His idea was to investigate what went on in the brain when it was having an experience. Everyone thought it was a great idea except for Harry Swartz, who was reportedly holding the Old Maid. While Swartz was complaining, the people in the lab got a number of subjects together and hooked them up to an electroencephalograph (EEG) so that they could record their brain waves. While the subjects sat in the lab all wired up, the experimenter introduced them to various experiences: a gunshot, a woman’s scream and a dog running across the room. After each experience, they checked the reading on the EEG to see how the brain responded. After a number of trials, one of the researchers got a “brainy” idea. He theorized that the brain responded to physical events in the same manner that it responded to conceptualized events. For instance, when the subject watched the dog walk across the room, light from the dog was converted to electricity at the subject’s retina, passed over his optic nerve and then, stimulated his brain. Consequently, the subject saw the dog. The dog was envisioned in the subject’s brain even though a dog outside his body caused it. Of course, the question asked by the researchers was, “How would the brain respond if the subject just visualized the dog walking across the room?” They decided to find out. The subjects were then blindfolded and asked to visualize the dog, the gunshot and the woman screaming. When the brain waves recorded for the imagined experience were compared with the brain waves recorded for the real experience, they found them to be absolutely identical. What did this mean? Simply put, the brain and/or nervous system cannot distinguish between an experience that is real and one that is imagined. It only follows then, that an imaginary experience is just as much a conditioner of attitudes, habits and responses as a real experience. Consequently, if an individual closes his eyes and vividly visualizes himself performing a particular behavior, his brain will actually process that information in the exact same manner that it would if he had performed that behavior in real life. Hey, that’s not all. It gets better! A researcher at the University of Texas named Sherman Smith