by Tim Dedopulos
Image streaming is a wonderfully effective technique for boosting creativity, improving your visualisation skills, and unlocking the full power of your subconscious mind to find stunning solutions to difficult problems.
To get the best results, you really need a dictaphone or some other sort of voice recorder. If you can’t get hold of anything like that, even on your mobile, then you can make do without it, but your sessions won’t be anywhere near as effective. Get yourself into a location where you’re happy to talk out loud without fear of being overhead (if that bothers you).
Now, start the recorder, close your eyes, and imagine yourself in a room. Any room at all. Whatever comes to mind. Start describing the room you are imagining, out loud, in as much detail as you can muster. Don’t let yourself stop talking for any more than an instant, or the amount of time it takes to draw a quick breath. Speak quickly, faster than you usually would. If you find yourself hesitating or pausing, just say the first thing that comes into your mind, even if it’s total nonsense. Especially if, actually.
When there’s nothing more in the room for you to describe, turn your attention outside the room. Head out of the door, look out of the window, if there are no openings, blow a hole in the wall with dynamite or laser-beams or ninjas. Keep describing everything you imagine. Don’t try to guide the images, and don’t think about what you are saying. Do your best to just connect your mouth to your imagination, and let it run wild.
Move through your imaginary landscape however you see fit. Leap out of windows and fly, if you want to. It’s all in your mind. Just don’t try to censor or predict what you are going to encounter, and keep talking about it. If any other thought occurs to you in the meantime, blurt it out. If the landscape shifts suddenly, roll with it. Your only job is to keep your m
Image streaming is a wonderfully effective technique for boosting creativity, improving your visualisation skills, and unlocking the full power of your subconscious mind to find stunning solutions to difficult problems.
To get the best results, you really need a dictaphone or some other sort of voice recorder. If you can’t get hold of anything like that, even on your mobile, then you can make do without it, but your sessions won’t be anywhere near as effective. Get yourself into a location where you’re happy to talk out loud without fear of being overhead (if that bothers you).
Now, start the recorder, close your eyes, and imagine yourself in a room. Any room at all. Whatever comes to mind. Start describing the room you are imagining, out loud, in as much detail as you can muster. Don’t let yourself stop talking for any more than an instant, or the amount of time it takes to draw a quick breath. Speak quickly, faster than you usually would. If you find yourself hesitating or pausing, just say the first thing that comes into your mind, even if it’s total nonsense. Especially if, actually.
When there’s nothing more in the room for you to describe, turn your attention outside the room. Head out of the door, look out of the window, if there are no openings, blow a hole in the wall with dynamite or laser-beams or ninjas. Keep describing everything you imagine. Don’t try to guide the images, and don’t think about what you are saying. Do your best to just connect your mouth to your imagination, and let it run wild.
Move through your imaginary landscape however you see fit. Leap out of windows and fly, if you want to. It’s all in your mind. Just don’t try to censor or predict what you are going to encounter, and keep talking about it. If any other thought occurs to you in the meantime, blurt it out. If the landscape shifts suddenly, roll with it. Your only job is to keep your m
Cascade by Extranoise
For the first week, just keep the cascade going for five minutes. You’ll find that your mind resists you at first; and you’ll spend a lot of time saying “ummmm uhhhh ummmm” or cursing repeatedly as you try to find words. This to be expected. You will improve. Make a point of listening to the tape you make a couple of hours later.
You may find interesting elements or surprising bits of imagery when you listen back. You’ll have no real clue what you were saying for most of it, so don’t expect to remember them. Make a note of anything that leaps out at you from the ramble for any reason. You may find that these have a bearing on your current life situation, or that draw parallels with problems you are having. By listening back over the stream, you also help reinforce to yourself that what you’re doing is important, and as a bonus, it will help you prevent having big gaps in your speech and lots of umming and ahhing. Jot down anything that seems out of place or grabs your interest, but don’t feel you have to transcribe the entire stream. After the first week, increase to ten minutes, and then again to 15 minutes or more.
Cascading is a wonderful practical tool as well as a great exercise to the creativity. If you have a problem, a difficult situation, a puzzling question or a creative challenge that is giving you some trouble, cascading can solve it for you. Before you start the session, think of a physical object that represents the problem (the link can be as tenuous as you want, so long as you know the object represents the problem!). Just before you close your eyes, say “I am going to come up with great solutions to my problem of <…describe the problem…>.”
Then, when you start cascading, begin by describing the object, followed by a room that you might typically find it in. Pay particular attention to other objects in the room, or the territory outside the door. Recording will prove particularly important here because you won’t remember everything you say – maybe not even half of it – and you may miss vital clues to solving the trouble.
Go back over the tape slowly afterward, and consider how the symbolism of things you mention in the cascade can help answer the question. Your unconscious mind is very creative and eager to help when you pay it attention, and I have never known cascading to fail to come up with innovative options. This is particularly true the further into the cascade you go, so if you can keep it going for 20 or 30 minutes to work on a problem, so much the better.
You may find interesting elements or surprising bits of imagery when you listen back. You’ll have no real clue what you were saying for most of it, so don’t expect to remember them. Make a note of anything that leaps out at you from the ramble for any reason. You may find that these have a bearing on your current life situation, or that draw parallels with problems you are having. By listening back over the stream, you also help reinforce to yourself that what you’re doing is important, and as a bonus, it will help you prevent having big gaps in your speech and lots of umming and ahhing. Jot down anything that seems out of place or grabs your interest, but don’t feel you have to transcribe the entire stream. After the first week, increase to ten minutes, and then again to 15 minutes or more.
Cascading is a wonderful practical tool as well as a great exercise to the creativity. If you have a problem, a difficult situation, a puzzling question or a creative challenge that is giving you some trouble, cascading can solve it for you. Before you start the session, think of a physical object that represents the problem (the link can be as tenuous as you want, so long as you know the object represents the problem!). Just before you close your eyes, say “I am going to come up with great solutions to my problem of <…describe the problem…>.”
Then, when you start cascading, begin by describing the object, followed by a room that you might typically find it in. Pay particular attention to other objects in the room, or the territory outside the door. Recording will prove particularly important here because you won’t remember everything you say – maybe not even half of it – and you may miss vital clues to solving the trouble.
Go back over the tape slowly afterward, and consider how the symbolism of things you mention in the cascade can help answer the question. Your unconscious mind is very creative and eager to help when you pay it attention, and I have never known cascading to fail to come up with innovative options. This is particularly true the further into the cascade you go, so if you can keep it going for 20 or 30 minutes to work on a problem, so much the better.
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