Correlation of Imagination, Reading and Hypnosis for

“Rapid Control of Your Life”

i am 

Who is in control of your “mind” anyway?

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed, unfocused and stressed out, which is a major factor in causing a persons critical self-talk, I’m sure you’d want to learn how to take control of your life, and FAST!  Negative self-talk creates all sorts of imaginations; fears, worries, and doubts for starters, which might be sabotaging your ability to be productive, healthy, and reach a much higher level of financial success and fulfillment in life.  So how do you take “Rapid Control of Life” to improve your current condition?

Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life.

The power of imagination works in two ways: leading you to feel pleasure, or avoid pain. Our mind is being programmed by our imagination every second of the day. We’re moving toward or away from something in every action. Procrastination is one example of inaction; imagining that the task is too hard, too boring, you’re too incompetent; you’re going to fail, for example. When you have a thought, it’s tied to your imagination. When it causes you to feel bad, it’s tied to a painful memory or perceived outcome!  Which power is leading your life right now?

Reading an article the other day, I was intrigued as I found a strong correlation between Reading and Hypnosis. And while so many people are skeptical of and slightly alarmed by the word hypnotherapy, I suggest eliminating your definition of the word.  Instead define the process.  Once you understand how hypnosis is a tool to master your psychology, this will enable you to take more control of your life through hypnosis.

According to The New York Times-SundayReview article on “Your Brain on Fiction” by Annie Murphy Paul, scientists have come to realize in the last few years is that narratives activate many other parts of our brains, suggesting why the experience of reading can feel so alive.

Reading words like “lavender,” “cinnamon” and “soap,” for example, elicit a response not only from the language-processing areas of our brains, but also those devoted to dealing with smells.

In a 2006 study published in the journal NeuroImage, researchers in Spain asked participants to read words with strong odor associations, along with neutral words, while their brains were being scanned by a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. When subjects looked at the Spanish words for “perfume” and “coffee,” their primary olfactory cortex lit up; when they saw the words that mean “chair” and “key,” this region remained dark.

The way the brain handles metaphors has also received extensive study; some scientists have contended that figures of speech like “a rough day” are so familiar that they are treated simply as words and no more.

Last month, however, a team of researchers from Emory University reported in Brain & Language that when subjects in their laboratory read a metaphor involving texture, the sensory cortex, responsible for perceiving texture through touch, became active. Metaphors like “The singer had a velvet voice” and “He had leathery hands” roused the sensory cortex, while phrases matched for meaning, like “The singer had a pleasing voice” and “He had strong hands,” did not.

Researchers have discovered that words describing motion also stimulate regions of the brain distinct from language-processing areas. In a study led by the cognitive scientist Véronique Boulenger, of the Laboratory of Language Dynamics in France, the brains of participants were scanned as they read sentences like “John grasped the object” and “Pablo kicked the ball.” The scans revealed activity in the motor cortex, which coordinates the body’s movements. What’s more, this activity was concentrated in one part of the motor cortex when the movement described was arm-related and in another part when the movement concerned the leg.

The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading, imagining, or describing an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated.

Keith Oatley, an emeritus professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto (and a published novelist), has proposed that reading produces a vivid simulation of reality, one that “runs on minds of readers just as computer simulations run on computers.” Fiction — with its redolent details, imaginative metaphors and attentive descriptions of people and their actions — offers an especially rich replica. Indeed, in one respect novels go beyond simulating reality to give readers an experience unavailable off the page: the opportunity to enter fully into other people’s thoughts and feelings.

A study conducted by Michigan State University professor Natalie Phillips, looked at how reading affects the brain.

Phillips had volunteers lie still in a brain scanner and read Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. She sometimes instructed her volunteers to browse, as they might do at a bookstore. Other times, she asked them to delve deep, as a scholar might read a text while conducting a literary analysis. The finding…reading affects the whole brain — global activations across a number of different regions — seems to transform and shift between the pleasure and the close reading.

Phillips sometimes instructed her volunteers to browse, as they might do at a bookstore. Other times, she asked them to delve deep, as a scholar might read a text while conducting a literary analysis. But in a neuroscientific plot twist, Phillips said preliminary results showed otherwise

Phillips found that close reading activated unexpected areas: parts of the brain that are involved in movement and touch. It was as though readers were physically placing themselves within the story as they analyzed it.

Using the power of imagination, and directing ones thoughts in a definitive direction is exactly what Lori Bestler does as a Strategic Mind Coach. Some people call this guided imagery and others hypnotherapy or self-hypnosis.  Regardless of what you want to call it, the process is the same.  You’re changing the landscape of your mind.  As a coach, she and her clients determine their highest potential goals; reframe their negative self-talk into a much more believable and useful way, and during a session we create a place in the clients mind where they can imagine positive change happening. This allows the old “life scripts” to shift, and enables the new thought processes and beliefs to take root.  It’s transformational and life-changing for so many of clients.

 

How Reading Affects the Mind like Hypnosis

Mary Leonhardt

This is exactly what I saw in 35 years of teaching high school English. When students read books they love, they read in a different way–with much more attention and with a deeper comprehension. Much-loved books pull reading skills out of kids. Assigning students to read complex literature that they are not yet ready for, and so will dislike and be bored by, is a perfect recipe for producing students with only mediocre reading skills.

All of my top readers–ALL of them–were avid readers who had read much popular and formula type fiction when they were younger. It’s why they could finally really understand and enjoy complex literature.

I worry that the new Common Core standards, which correctly note that students need to be able to read complex books, will result, however, in curricula heavy in books children are not yet ready for. You can’t shortcut the acquisition of reading skills by dragging kids through reading they find to be confusing and tedious. We have not just the wisdom of Jane Austen, but of Shakespeare: “Ripeness is all.”

 

Nicole Scotland

I have missed my stop on the train several times due to my being entirely absorbed in the reading material and not hearing the conductor announce the stop! I become so involved in the book that I sometimes become affected by the mood of the protagonist. My husband himself has expressed this concern. If the book I am reading is a love story and the couples involved are bitter towards each other, he says he knows because I snap at him. If it is a mystery until I get to the end of the book and the mystery/case is solved, I become quiet and contemplative because I think up my own possible outcomes (I try to pick up clues and solve the case myself) and I tune everything out. A book/story always seems more real to me than where I am at present.

 

These testimonials are real life examples of how the mind has the power to affect our feelings, behavior and beliefs. It does not matter if you’re watching TV and cry over a sad scene, are reading a romance novel and feeling stimulated, or in a hypnotherapy session imagining yourself as a millionaire, a slim and sassy superstar, or peak performing student, it all works the same way.  It’s a place where you will decide “Yes, this is true” to prompt your actions that will lead you toward achieving your goals and dreams.  

 

Looking to learn how to use the power of imagination to rapidly take control of your life, contact Lori at www.mindscapesunlimited.com.  And please join our email list for Mind Mastery Tips, Tools and Monthly Newsletter.

 

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This article was written by Lori Bestler-Strategic Mind Coach and Award Winning Motivational Speaker with MindScapes Unlimited Mind Coaching Center.

Lori Bestler, know as America’s Positive Thinking and Mind Mastery Expert specializes in working with high level entrepreneurs and business professionals with busy minds who are struggling to take more control of their life, very possibly feeling overwhelmed, unfocused and stressed out. She teaches people the mechanics of the mindset that enables them to overcome barriers in beliefs and behavior to improve health, wealth and well-being. Through her Strategic Mind Coaching program and speaking engagements, Lori has helped thousands of individuals live the life they desire most. Ms. Bestler runs a private practice in Lino Lakes assisting clients in Minneapolis, St. Paul and surrounding Twin Cities Metropolitan Areas. For a no cost consultation contact Lori at www.mindscapesunlimited.com.

 

 

 

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