One of our key tools in developing better movement habits is our imagination.
Research from the fields of both rehabilitation and high- performance athletics has proven that the ability to imagine movement is one of life’s great helpers.
When you imagine, lights turn on throughout your brain, creating billions of new neurological connections, helping you to grow a new brain. This ability to form new connections through imagination allows you to move beyond your limitations and rigid old habits creating new possibilities and realities that were not possible for you before.
Imagination is an integral part of any process of change be it making plans for a trip or planning a meal. It is invaluable for creating anything new.
Thanks to our imagination we have the ability to upgrade the quality of our brains’ functioning, creating new pathways and inventing new and refined ways of moving, thinking and feeling.
To demonstrate this you can lie on a mat and do an exercise that is limited to one side of your body. Then imagine the same exercise on the opposite side of your body. Most people will find it more difficult to imagine than to actually do it. After a few moments, compare how the two sides of your body feel, based on freedom of movement, strength, precision and the ease with which you move about. Many people will find that the outcome for the side they have imagined moving in the exercise, often feels and moves better than the side they actually exercised.
Why is it more difficult to imagine doing a movement than to actually do it?
If I ask you to reach your arm forward you will probably do it in a split second. Chances are you have done this movement thousands of times before. You will do it automatically probably without giving it a second thought.
All the messages to and from your brain that guide the trajectory of this movement are grooved, because they are following patterns that you created a long time ago and have followed for many years, perhaps for most of your life.
What happens when you are called upon to imagine that movement ( and I mean imagine it in minute detail, to make it real) is that you no longer automatically follow all those messages to and from your brain. You no longer depend on the old groove to guide you but instead give your brain the opportunity to work at a much higher level to create new and different ways of doing, new grooves and solutions, upgrading the patterns to reach that arm in the future.
We are all born with a built- in capacity to imagine. In our childhood we use imagination spontaneously. Then along comes adulthood and we tend to inhibit our imagination.
That doesn’t mean it is gone but if we are going to improve the our movement skills we need to reawaken our imagination.
It’s helpful to remember that imagination is a skill and like any other skill it requires intentional use and practice if we want to get good at it and reap its maximum benefits. Give it a go.
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