5. The Power Of Your Imagination

Prologue

imagine you are in the kitchen. You take a fresh lemon from the fruit bowl. It is cool in your hand. The yellow dimpled skin feels smooth and waxy. It comes to a small green conical point at either end. The lemon is firm and quite heavy for its size as you look at it in the palm of your hand.

You raise the lemon to your nose. It gives off such a characteristic, unmistakable citrus smell doesn't it? You take a sharp knife and cut the lemon in half. The two halves fall apart, the white pulpy outer skin contrasting with the drops of pale lemon coloured juice that gently ooze out. The lemon smell is now slightly stronger.

Now you bite deeply into the lemon and let the juice swirl around your mouth. That sharp sour lemon flavour is unmistakable. Stop a minute! Is your mouth watering? Did your mouth pucker? If it is, you have achieved synaesthesia, because you imagined the feel, sight, smell and taste of the lemon. You have used your imagination well. The implications are fascinating, because of course, nothing actually happened - except in your imagination! Yet your mind communicated directly to your salivary glands and told them to wash away the sour taste.

The words you read were not reality - but they created reality - your flow of saliva. The subconscious mind cannot differentiate between what is real and what it believes is real. Yet it directly controls your actions in a very tangible way.

There's Nothing Good or Bad but Thinking Makes It So (Hamlet)

"Man freezes to death in refrigeration car". The 1964 headline was hardly startling, but the circumstances were. A man had become trapped inside the refrigeration car as the door accidently slammed on him. When he was found, he had all the physical symptons of having frozen to death. Yet the refrigeration unit was switched off and at no time had the temperature been at, or even close, to freezing. He believed he was going to freeze - and his mind had produced the physical effect to create hypothermia and freeze him to death.

A man lay quietly in an Haitian hut, resigned to the inevitability of death. He had seen the voodoo doll in his likeness with pins stuck in it. In reality he was perfectly healthy, but his mind had accepted the inevitable, and he had subconsciously willed himself to die. Only the intervention of a priest, who destroyed the doll in front of him, saved the Haitian's life.

Researcher Dr. Cheureul spoke quietly to his subject, who was holding a pendulum over a straight line on a piece of paper. "Keep it as steady as you can, "he instructed, "although you will find that the pendulum is bound to swing up and down the line because of the earth's gravitational pull".

After a few minutes the pendulum began to swing quietly - although the reason Cheureul gave was absolutely bogus. There was no reason for the pendulum to swing - other than the subconscious suggestion that it would.

The above instances are alI examples of self fulfilling prophesies brought about by suggestion. There are thousands more.

Children invited into the New York University's Department of Psychology were assessed according to the wealth of their parents. They were then asked to estimate the physical size of a group of coins. The poorer children ALL over-estimated the actual size, the richer ones ALL under-estimated the real size.

Dr. Rosenthal, a California psychologist, administered I.Q. tests to a public school class. He totally ignored the results, but nevertheless divided the class into two groups. The first group, he informed the teacher, was considerably brighter than the second. There was, in fact, no difference. The children were never told his conclusions and the teacher was told to treat all the pupils the same.

Eight months later the grades of the two arbitrarily classified groups were compared. The first group had grades 28% better than the second group and their I.Q.'s actually measured higher! Without one word being said, the teacher had managed to communicate, quite unconsciously, a higher expectation of the first group and a lower expectation of the second group. ALL WITHOUT THE SUBJECTS EVEN KNOWING. The teacher had created a better learning environment for the favoured group, and it worked.

Students in a Bulgarian class were asked to memorise a poem. Another identically matched class was also asked to memorise the same poem, but this time they were told the author - who was a famous and respected poet. The second group remembered 60% more than the first group, in the same time period. The authority of the author suggested it was important to learn.

We act not according to what things really are - but according to what we expect them to be: believe them to be: imagine them to be.

"Imagination," said Napoleon, "rules the world".

He should have known, for he actually rehearsed every battle he ever fought weeks before the event in his mind. Going over his own tactics, visualising the enemy defences, their reaction and the terraine.

Napoleon was 150 years ahead of his time.

Jack Niclaus ascribes his success to visualisation. Before every shot, he actually "sees" the club strike the ball, watches the flight of the ball in the air and "sees" where it comes to rest - all before he actually makes the shot. Top tennis pro's do it. "Golf is 90% mental, 10% mechanical. "wrote Alex Morrison the father of modern golf teaching. The same can be said of many other sports and the visualisation technique is now widely known as the "Inner Game of Tennis".

Inner Sports

Tim Gallwey in his best selling book "The Inner Game of Tennis", showed how visualisation can be much more effective than verbal instruction. As a tennis Pro, he became aware that each pupil's mind seemed to contain two entities. A Self 1 who observed and commented on the play, and a Self 2 who actually did the playing.

Before a shot Self 1 would issue alI sorts of commands such as "keep your eyes on the ball", "bend your knees", "follow through".

Then, after the shot, would come a verbal analysis - usually critical. When asked why they did this, most players would respond, "I am just talking to myself".

Gallwey rationalised that "I" and "myself" had to be two separate entities, otherwise no conversation would take place. He developed the theory that Self 2 would be better taught by nonverbal means, and that the "relationship" between Self 1 and Self 2 must be improved to optimise performance. Indeed he observed that an athlete's peak performance usually occurred when the verbal Self 1 was almost totally set aside. Players on a "hot streak" almost never analysed what they were doing -they were immersed in the physical action and played instinctively and unconsciously. As soon as they tried to exercise conscious control, they lost their fluidity.

Gallwey, therefore, taught his players to engage, or distract, the verbal Self 1 during play, by describing external events. They would say "bounce" when the ball bounced, or "hit" when it struck the racket. They alternatively would be told to say the words of a song. These distractions, left brain activities, allowed the right brain and limbic system to control the physical play and make all the highly complex intuitive calculations that are involved in assessing ball speed, direction and angle of bounce.

The importance of not over-analysing and of not verbalising an essentially non-verbal activity, was further re-inforced when `Inner Skiing' was introduced. Small children, it was noticed, could learn to ski well in a day. Adults learn (or are taught) to depend more and more on verbal analysis and to trust intuition less and less.

The inadequacy of the verbal hemisphere controlling the subtle but essentially physical movements of skiing, is made all too obvious when you observe the jerky movements made by people who are clearly rehearsing their instructors words in their minds. The fluent skier very often cannot even describe how he or she does it - yet obviously knows on a non-verbal level. Consequently increasing emphasis has been put on teaching skiing in nonverbal ways - and the positive results can be dramatic.

The Placebo Effect

It is well known that physicians regularly use placebos - sugar pills or pills with absolutely no real medical power. The patients, however, are told that the pills are powerful medicaments. Countless studies have proved the high effectiveness of these "mind only" medications.

In a 1979 study, patients with severely bleeding ulcers were split into two groups. One was told that they were taking a new drug that would bring immediate relief. The second was told that they were taking an experimental drug, but not much was yet known about its effects. The same drug was administered to both groups. 75% of the first group improved - 25% of the second group. The only difference was the patients' expectations.

At Harvard University Dr. Beecher researched pain in post operative patients. Some were administered morphine and some a placebo. The morphine controlled the pain in 52% of the patients who received it - the placebo controlled the pain in 40% of the patients. In other words the placebo was 75% as effective as the morphine. The brain, expecting the pain relief, actually triggered the production of endorphins, the naturally produced opiate chemicals that block the neurotransmitters which allow the sense of pain to register on the brain.

Mind over matter

Many researchers are now convinced that a good proportion of the benefit derived from real medication is received from the placebo or "halo" effect. Since everyone, including the doctor, knows that extensive testing goes into new drugs, when one is released for use, the doctor expects it to work, the patient expects it to work - and it does work.

A placebo works because the subconscious mind finds ways of bringing about what you imagine, and believe, will happen.
Because of the undoubted power of the mind to produce healing, or indeed sickness in the patient, doctors worldwide are more and more moving towards holistic medicine. Holistic merely means (W) holistic - treating the whole patient - not just his body, but his mind too.
In one of the most dramatic proofs of the power of mental attitude over recovery rates, 152 cancer patients at the Travis Air Force base in California were rated by their doctors, as to whether they had a positive or negative expectation of recovery. Without exception the patients with positive expectations had far more successful remission rates. In fact only 2 out of the negative attitude patients showed any response to treatment at all. So much so that the physician in charge was able to state that ...
"A positive attitude towards treatment was a better predictor of response to treatment than was the severity of the disease. "
The above examples all illustrate the power of the imagination to suggest behaviour and attitude changes. In some instances that power was brought about by auto suggestion - the mind voluntarily created its own reality. In other instances the suggestion was from an external source. Someone had "put the idea in the subjects' head"

Is there a limit to the power of the mind over the body?

Probably not.

Doctors Elmer and Alyce Green are pioneers of biofeedback research at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas.

"Bio-feedback" merely means that the subject of the experiment receives a physical signal - a dial reading, a musical note or the flash of a light - to indicate whether they have succeeded in producing a physical response. Thus patients have been taught to voluntarily slow down their heart rates. As their pulse began to slow in response to mind calming exercises, they were told to expect to hear a deeper and deeper note on their earphones. That signal of success itself enabled them to slow the heart rate further - so the tangible result of their efforts "fed-back" a signal that produced another round of relaxation, and hence another signal of success. So bio-feedback is merely a psychological / physiological technique, known more popularly as "success breeds success", or as we term it - creating a "virtuous circle".

Using this technique the Greens have been able to train a subject to cause extra blood to flow to one earlobe and not the other, thus selectively raising the temperature of that earlobe! They have trained subjects to control almost all the functions previously termed "involuntary" responses - heart rate, muscle tension, even sweat gland activity.

The technique of course, is well known in Eastern cultures and advanced Yogis have been scientifically measured as capable of slowing their breathing rate down from 20 times per minute to as low as 2 per minute.

In a recently published study from the Menninger Clinic the Greens reported experiments where subjects had learned to control, with their minds only, A SINGLE NERVE CELL, a feat equivalent in its accuracy to the current limits of micro surgery.

The same research team were able recently to correlate an increased level of Alpha & Theta brainwaves with a substantial acceleration in the acquisition of new knowledge.

Hypnotism

The power of mind over body is indeed astonishing.

In the Psychology Department of a London experimental hospital a woman had been hypnotised. The hypnotist touched her arm with his fingers and said quietly, "That's a red hot poker" Not only did she flinch with pain, but her lymphatic system caused an immediate red weal to appear on her arm.

In another experiment an all-in heavy-weight wrestler was seated at a table. The red light of the T.V. camera was on and the whole scene was video taped. The hypnotist told the wrestler that the pencil in front of him was stuck to the table and that he would not be able to lift it. The wrestler, who could lift 300 lbs in a straight overhead lift, strained and the muscles of his neck stood out - but he literally could not lift the pencil. The suggestion had caused his muscles to contract, and there was no strength available in his arm.

In a directly opposite experiment the gripping strength of an athlete had been measured on a dynometer and registered as 100 lbs. In test after test this was his maximum. Under hypnosis he was told "You are much stronger than you have ever been. You are surprised at how much stronger you have become".

Again he was tested, and now the needle swung smoothly through the 100 Ibs `barrier' and registered at 125 lbs.
This time the hypnotist had removed the athlete's mental block that his strength was limited to 100 lbs. The hypnosis worked not by adding actual strength, but by removing a self imposed and limiting belief about himself.

Norris McWhirter, editor of the world famous Guinness Book of Records, states that there never was a 4 minute mile 'barrier'. It was all in the minds of the athletes and when it was eventually smashed, scores of athletes quickly followed Roger Bannister's breakthrough. The real limit, says McWhirter would come at around 3.36 when the runners' body would overheat so much that the brain would automatically cut off all forms of physical effort.

In this sense many `cures' under hypnosis are really the effect of 'dehypnotising'. They work by taking away the self suggestion that something cannot be done. When a stammerer is cured, an arithmetical `dunce' multiplies two three figure numbers in his head, it is all because the hypnotist has removed a negative expectation from their mind.

In a long series of experiments Prescott Lecky, an American educational psychologist, who had previously worked as a full time teacher, became convinced that a negative self image was the key reason why individual students learnt slowly. For such students to learn quickly, Lecky theorised would be contrary to their self image. But if you changed the self image, you could change the learning ability.

It worked. A student with an average of 55 misspelt words out of 100 improved to 91 % within six months. A Latin student with 30% grades, achieved 84% after just three positive talks with a sympathetic teacher. A student who had been written off in his end of term report as having "no aptitude for English" won the literary prize the very next term!

None of these students, or the hundreds of others whom Lecky counselled, had any lack of intrinsic ability. What they did lack was positive self image.

They were told by comment or by their early works that they were poor spellers or poor mathematicians; and they came to believe it.

Instead of accepting that they had failed a test, or made a mistake, they had come to generalise that one failure into the overall subconscious conclusion that "I am a failure". All too quickly a failure in one or two early arithmetical tests can become internalised into "I am no good at maths".

What is the difference between Suggestion and Hypnotism?

The last few examples have, quite deliberately, been mixed between suggestion (the four minute mile "barrier") and hypnotism (the wrestler who could not lift a pencil).

Where does suggestion end and hypnotism begin or are they quite different?

Suggestion is an integral part of every single piece of day to day communication. If a Nobel prize winner, dressed in a sober suit, announced an amazing new technical breakthrough at a scientific conference, you would be more inclined to believe it than if you were told by a scruffily dressed stranger in a pub. The medium, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, is part of the message.

In all communication, the tone of voice of the speaker, the movement of his hands, his dress, your knowledge of his background, all suggest information to you over and above the content of his message. Sometimes the subconscious or subliminal impressions or suggestions reinforce your understanding and memory of the content upon which your conscious attention is focused. At other times subliminal, or peripheral suggestions contradict the message.

Patricia Durovy of the American Society for Training and Development estimates "90% of all communication is subconscious". It could be an underestimate.

Although suggestion works very powerfully indeed at the subconscious level, the conscious mind generally continues to act as a censor. It will normally reject suggestions that do not accord with our moral values, or with logic, or that threaten our sense of confidence and security.

The key difference between suggestion and hypnotism is that suggestion, can and does, bring the power of the subconscious to bear, but without relinquishing the censor role of the conscious mind. Under hypnotism you are partially relinquishing control of both your conscious and unconscious mind to someone else. Moreover, suggestion can bring about permanent changes in ability and behaviour, whereas, hypnotism is normally intended to focus on a temporary state - though it can, of course, have excellent long term therapeutic results.
Interestingly, hypnotism has great similarities with sleep. Many of the brain-wave patterns are very similar, and both involve reduced conscious control.

Suggestion can have very positive and measurable results. An Oklahoma anaethetist Mrs Jean Mabry regularly waits until her patients are under anaethesia and whispers encouraging and positive instructions to them. Consultant surgeons working in her report markedly improved recovery rates.

Imagination and Suggestion

Although it is easy to use the words imagination and suggestion interchangeably, there is an important distinction between them. Imagination is the ability to visualise to produce a mental impression of sights, sounds, smells, tastes and memories of touch. You can use imagination to create a strong visual link between two ideas you are trying to remember. Used in this way, it is a key to memory.

However, imagination is also needed to create a suggestion, and suggestion can bring about a permanent and far reaching change in your attitudes and capabilities.

Some 20 years ago a research psychologist at the University of Sophia realised, that the power of suggestion could be used to improve teaching methods.

His name was Georgi Lozanov and his work, and the highly successful learning method to which it led, provided the initial impetus for this book.

I first heard of Georgi Lozanov from an exciting book called "Super Learning". The book made the bold claim that Lozanov had evolved a teaching method that would improve learning effectiveness and increase the speed of learning by from 3 to 10 times. A Japanese had learnt English in 10 days. Students at the University of Iowa had learnt a year of Spanish in 3 months. Complete beginners had learned 900 words French in a day. The book was full of claims of better, faster learning.

Inevitably, I was initially sceptical, but I felt, that even if it were developed.

So I flew to New York to meet the two co-authors of `Super Learning', Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder.

They turned out to be journalists of intelligence and integrity. I was convinced they were reporting events exactly as they saw them, but I felt I needed to see Lozanovs' method for myself - and above all to understand why he achieved such astonishing results.

The next chapters describe what we discovered. They give the documentary proof that Lozanov's methods do indeed work.

We have spoken with the Educational Departments of four Governments, leading University psychologists and professional educators, in order to discover why Lozanov methods worked. As we did so, we began to sense that something exciting and important was happening. It was clear that Georgi Lozanov had indeed evolved a "super-learning" method, but that there were also areas in which it could be significantly improved. Moreover, those improvements were being built into a learning method that could be used by anyone, of any age, and in any learning situation. The method evolved by a group of gifted psychologists and teachers, has become known as Accelerated Learning and it has been adapted successfully for home study courses.

The start point is to review the work of the founder of this revolutionary learning movement - Georgi Lozanov.