|
 |
Message From: madure |
Total Posts: 261 |
Join Date: 06/06/2006 |
| Rank: Coach |
Post Date: 09/08/2006 19:50:08 |
Points: 1355 |
Location: Sri Lanka |
|
At best visualisation can inspire, create, and help people evolve new ways of thinking. Einstein imagined himself travelling in an elevator following a light beam, so enabling him to see that gravity could bend light and helping him further to develop his theories. Large data sets are now ‘visualised’ using computer software to help people understand them better and schools in the UK have experimented with Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education (CASE) introducing skills to improve science learning.
That’s the power of visualisation. It’s a skill we all have to varying degrees, yet one we seldom use in training. It can unlock hidden resources, create new ones and help take learning back into the workplace. In our everyday lives visualisation can help us to relax, come to terms with problems, find solutions, and develop ways to improve our performance.
More about visualisation
Visualisation is the proactive and controlled use of our brain’s natural bio-chemical mechanisms: our ability to imagine, seeing, hearing and feeling with inner eyes, ears and senses. We can make it work through self-direction, or allow others to guide us. It works with our ability to daydream, to memorise and to remember; to recall, replay and remind us, making the vital connections between our brain/mind and our bodies. The more we do it the better we get at it. Using a mix of imagery inside our own minds, we can make new associations, embed and recall information, practice skills, develop knowledge, come up with new ideas, and better manage thoughts and feelings.
Brain research reports that:
around 90% of the brain's sensory input is visual
it likes differences, diversity, contrasts and novelty
it responds quickest to the suggestion of colour, motion, shape and dimension
it has an innate and hard-wired response to symbols, icons, and simple images.
Visualisation is a natural process. When we day-dream, we have ideas, see colours, hear sounds, experience feelings. Have you ever drifted away to somewhere else during a meeting, maybe to a holiday, seeing yourself there, hearing sounds, feeling relaxed?
Think about the sound of chalk scratching on a board, or maybe the warmth of the sun on your back. Get the picture, or should I say feeling? And you don’t need to be able to see pictures in vivid colour when you imagine them for visualisation. Instead, you might be better at imagining voices, or feeling emotions, creating tastes or sensing physical changes. With the brain/mind and body link so obvious, it pays to be proactive in inducing visualisation.
Why use visualisation?
Recognising the power we have inside our heads, it seems the best place to start in helping someone visualise themselves using a new skill, or recalling information, or trying out a different response in any chosen situation. Visualisation can therefore:
improve the opportunity for later memory recall of the training experience
encourage delegates to think about using the training in a work/life situation
help consolidate learning and allow experimentation in a very personal space
personalise understanding and develop confidence to put learning into practice
develop creative thinking and make debrief more specific and personally relevant.
Many memory techniques such as the ‘Link’ and ‘Story’ techniques and the ‘Peg’ system work by creating linkages, contrasts, and strange associations between words, images, and your inner senses.
How to go about it
Placement and timings
Visualisation can be used as a training tool at any time during a session. Placement of visualisation is dependent on several factors:
the training topic
the sponsor's approval
the training environment
the numbers of delegates
delegate expectations
delegate commitment
your confidence.
With practice you’ll have a better idea as to when and where you can plan to deliver your visualisations. Most need only last a few minutes, maybe three to five minutes to begin with. There is no real limit to the size of audience you can work with. Three to five delegates will be ideal as a start point for you to develop your confidence and skill.
Preparation
Ensure that you have any visualisation you plan to use as a pre-prepared script. Use language and imagery that is sensory, inclusive, and positive in spirit. Develop contrasts, create space and add generalisations so allowing the delegates to project themselves into the script as you read it, creating their own world, one that is real for them. Remember, if you build it they may come, if they build it they are already there!
Health and safety
Always ask delegates if they wish to participate. Some individuals may be less disposed to imagining, others may actually be well practised in it. Culture, domestic background, previous experience, confidence can all affect a delegate’s pre-disposition to participate. For anyone that may wish to opt out, for whatever reason, offer the opportunity to sit in and just listen.
Visualisation doesn’t need people to close their eyes. Some of us can visualise better with our eyes open! But it can help. So suggest that you will ask delegates to close their eyes if they wish. Comfort those delegates that do decide to participate by further suggesting that at anytime they can, if they wish, open their eyes. Let them know that the power of the visualisation will work. Whether or not they are seeing clear pictures, hearing definite sounds, or being consciously aware of thoughts and feelings, their very participation will be beneficial.
Ensure that people are in comfortable positions. Generally sitting in a chair with hands on the lap is ideal. However, lying on the floor comfortably can also be a very safe place, and introduces an interesting dynamic to the session if the training space allows.
Watch for: heads drooping, bodies sliding or leaning forwards
Listen for: shallow breathing, coughing/choking, snoring!
Feel for: concern, suspicion, upset.
If you see, hear or feel any of the above, suggest to delegates that they listen to your voice, gently become aware of their mind and body and make themselves comfortable ready to carry on.
Make sure the room temperature is comfortable as most visualisation work occurs with people sitting still. Have water available as it’s a good thing for delegates to sip after the visualisation. Background noise is less of a problem, but avoid undertaking a visualisation if there’s a planned fire alarm! The best way to check if people are comfortable, as well as if there are any planned drills or other activities that will cause distraction, is to ask!
Scenarios and suggestions
Visualisations can be used in almost any training situation. They can be developed to help with reflection, to show how skills can be used practically in future situations, to challenge old behaviours and have people imagine new ones, even to improve memory, recall and learning abilities over time. They have been used to give confidence, work through problems, see things from different perspectives, listen to an inner voice that may have the answer to worries and concerns.
Here is an example of a visualisation script for ending a training session, which you can adapt and develop.
Sample script : Time to change and apply your learning
This visualisation is skills specific. Delegates work with the training theme and are transported through time and space, with or without an assistant, in a time machine! They visualise making changes and applying new skills and knowledge in a way that would otherwise be impossible without the use of their imagination and your guided visualisation. It should take between five and ten minutes and can be used to consolidate learning from a session or at the end of an event.
‘Please close your eyes… if some of you choose not to do so, this will still work for you. Imagine now you are in a time machine… hear the sounds around you… see the controls… maybe vintage… retro… modern… feel them… it’s fantastic. This machine can take you anywhere… across space… across time… you see and hear images of yourself and other people on a monitor… you see the world and other places, some known, some unknown, all in a new light… all in new ways you understand better… all in new ways that will help you continue to learn about yourself… the skills you can develop… the changes you can make, right here, right now.
Taking the new skill you have learnt today, the new ideas, the new knowledge… set a course back in time to a place where you once didn’t know you had this skill, this ability, this knowing… set the controls… go back there now… you’re there… wait a moment… check everything is safe…. it’s fine… now walk out of the machine, see yourself, and hear yourself… sense the surroundings. How different do you appear, what are you thinking, who else might be there… what are you doing? … watch, listen, and feel, for old behaviours, behaviours you know you can change. When you’re ready, come away… get back into your time machine and journey back to today…. watch on the screen as you travel and change through time, sense the speed at which changes can be made.
Park up for a while… maybe on the edge of the universe… with the stars… high above earth… or sit between the seconds… watch as you take on the new learning you have gained today… recall something positive from your experiences today… in this session… see how you worked, listen to your communications with others, conversations, the senses of achievement, people learning… you learning.
Now get ready for the voyage of a lifetime… a journey into the future… choosing a time and place where you can apply your new skill, your new learning… set the controls… check that all is safe… and go…. moving towards another time… getting there…watch again on the monitors as things change around you… you might even see, hear and feel this skill being used already several times before you get to your destination… you’re nearly there… settle down your time craft… and prepare to leave the machine to experience, to visualise how you are behaving now. You walk out… in front of you is a new you… you watch yourself with others… you’re impressed… you see yourself and them behaving differently… and as you experience this you know all the changes you need to make in your mind, to your thinking, to your attitude, to your behaviour, to make this real, to make the learning work for you.
And now come back to this moment… feel the learning working… it’s in you, part of you, there for you… become aware of your breathing… sense the room around you… feel yourself sitting on the chair, safe and sound… feeling calm and confident. When you are ready… in your own time… open your eyes.’
After a visualisation such as this it is a good idea to let delegates come around slowly, to move gently and to have a drink of water.
Discuss thoughts and feelings. Gain commitment from each individual to practice the new skill again and again in their minds eye so that they can better apply it when they come to use it again. Suggest the time machine might be useful in working through other learning in the future.
Developing your own visualisations
And now imagine yourself… successfully designing, developing, and delivering your own visualisations… reading them out in a calm, measured way… enjoying the challenge of using them, changing them, making them better, making changes that improve your delivery… changes that improve your delegates’ learning…
When developing your own visualisations:
Keep them simple using contexts and ideas people are familiar with, for example, the workplace, TV.Create differences and contrasts that can stimulate interest and memory recall eg. seeing the workplace painted differently, or the TV show stop, start, change colour.
Use language that is visual, auditory and kinaesthetic (tactile and emotional), maybe add smell and taste.
Speak in a voice that is clear, measured, calm and relaxed.
Use a speed of around 60 to 70 words a minute with definite pauses for breath.
Pause regularly to let the minds create thoughts, images, sounds etc.
It is the delegates’ minds that are doing the work - you are just facilitating.
Write your scripts down, type them up, practice them and deliver them with confidence… can you imagine doing that!
Final thoughts… and words of wisdom!
Using the scripts presented here, practise using your visualisation delivery skills on friendly victims, maybe even the family. Have them report back their experiences. Research additional resources, of which there will be many on the web and adapt and change them to suit your training needs.
Adapted from CIPD Resources authored by Keith Tanner
Prof . Lakshman Madurasinghe
|
|
|
|
|
