Power of Visualization for Yoga

Are you struggling to consistently find the energy to get up and do your yoga practice?

You know you want to do it. You don’t need convincing that it’s a good thing to do, but your body just isn’t responding. You get a big “Nope” from it, “I ain’t doing that”. This seems widely unfair! I want to get in shape, I want to build my balance and flexibility. I’ve talked about two things in the last blog post that can help, but I want to talk about another one here. It’s visualization. Visualization is a powerful tool we have at our disposal to prime our brains for things it might otherwise not want to do.

It’s the process of visualizing, in your mind's eye, an activity you want to do. You go through, as if it’s a movie, and watch yourself doing it in your head. Watch yourself get out of your chair (or where-ever you are), walk over to where you’ll do your yoga. Then go through the yoga you want to do, imagine yourself bending down, stretching, moving into downward dog. You can make it really vivid, feel the mat your on, the sounds you hear, the stretch you feel in your body. You can also just watch it like a movie. Experiment with what works for you.

Congratulations, you used visualization to activate the same neurons that fire when you do yoga in real life [1]. Olympic Gymnast’s use this technique to practice a complicated move before trying it out [1] and virtuoso guitar players practice & compose songs in their heads using it[2]. By activating those neurons, you’ve created a pathway in your brain that is easier to navigate. Your brain is primed to carry out that same action with the least resistance.

You can also use this technique if you go to a yoga class somewhere other then your home. Imagine, walking out of your house, getting in the car, turning the car on, driving to the class, getting out, going in, saying hello to other people, and then doing the routine. The more in-depth you can get, the better the technique will work, creating a neural pathway ready for you to use.

Conclusion

Next time you have trouble getting moving, imagine yourself doing it beforehand. Walkthrough the steps of doing it. This makes your brain much more accepting of doing the thing, then it would otherwise.

If you would like more help to consistently do your yoga practice, you can download the MyYoga App. It was designed to make it as easy as possible for you to do yoga anywhere, anytime.