Think before you act. First, think how you’re going to do it right. Then think how good that’ll make you feel. Do it right. Then congratulate yourself and feel good all over!

Next time, remember how good it felt to do it right.

That’s Sports Psychology. Practice your Good Health Skills the same way!

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Mental Imagery in Athletics

Mental Imagery means using all senses including vision, touch, hearing, smell and taste. Sometimes imagery is called visualization, but imagery means any sense that can be attached to an experience. It’s just that it takes a lot of practice to bring all senses together in an image.

Coaches use imagery to train their athletes. Train them to imagine perfect execution. The idea is that the sense of success improves their confidence. If real-time performance is not perfect, rehearsing it over and over flawlessly, without mistakes restores self-esteem. That’s positive mental imagery.

Jack Nicklaus is famous for his mental imagery. He is quoted as saying, “I never  hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head. It’s like a color movie. First I ‘see’ the ball where I want it to finish, nice and high and sitting up high on the bright green grass. Then the scene quickly changes and I ‘see’ the ball going there: its path, trajectory and shape, even its behavior on landing. I never missed a putt in my mind.”

He also has said, “People only do their best at things they truly enjoy.”

Positive mental imagery includes pleasure and satisfaction. A good coach knows this. Athletes need more than complaints about poor performance. Good coaches make their athletes feel really good when they do especially well.

Expert athletes also know how to enjoy pleasure and self-satisfaction with good performance. They know during effort in their sport how they’re doing, how to keep getting better and how to enjoy good results.

Positive Mental Imagery

Mental imagery as a motivational amplifier has been used in treatment. A system called Behavioral Activation aims to help patients with Depression.

Use of Audio and Photo recordings of scenarios has been reported in Cambridge, UK. A controlled trial using semi-structured interviews and Beck Depression Inventory-II enrolled 150 men and women who met DSM-IV criteria for a current major depressive episode.

Effects of treatment with positive imagery on Behavioral Activation scores are shown in the Figure.

A positive imagery intervention consisted of 12 sessions of training in 4 weeks. Participants in the positive training group were instructed to imagine themselves actively involved in 12 scenarios. In 6 of 12 sessions, participants were presented with audio descriptions that started ambiguously but ultimately ended positively. The other 6 sessions included ambiguous photos with a caption that resolved the ambiguity in a positive way.

Participants in the treatment group were instructed to generate a mental image combining the picture and words.

Participants in the control group were presented with scenarios in which half were resolved positively and half were resolved negatively. The psychological training involved education to focus on words and meaning.

As shown in the Figure, Behavioral Activation improved over time in both groups. However, initial improvement was greater in the positive imagery group.

Reports of everyday scenarios also have been used to promote completion of ordinary activities. A controlled trial was reported from Cambridge, UK with 72 men and women who did not have mental disease or emotional disorders.

Effects of treatment with motivational imagery are shown in the Figure. All 72 subjects completed questionnaires about pastimes, food and drink, social activities and sensory experiences. They all provided examples of what they found rewarding with ratings of desire, motivation, effort and pleasure for the examples they described. They also listed routine activities they had been putting off doing but would be satisfying and rewarding to complete.

The treatment group of 24 men and women were instructed to provide ratings immediately after imagery simulation of activities they scheduled for the next week. The other 48 participants did not perform imagery simulation. They were divided into a group who were reminded during the week and a group who had no imagery and no reminder.

As shown in the Figure, the number of activities that were described and defined as not rewarding but were then completed was greatest in the group who performed motivational imagery.

Also, the Motivational Imagery group reported greater motivation as well as greater pleasure and reward for completing the planned activities.

Neurocognitive Processing

Neural function of the brain controls all involuntary bodily functions such as circulation, breathing, digestion and metabolism. It receives impulses from the periphery, collects and integrates signals and distributes instructions to effector mechanisms all without any conscious perception.

About 11 million bits per second are received. Just the retinas of the eyes, all by themselves, send 10 million bits per second of information to the brain. The bits received are distributed, processed and transmitted to action or memory.

A total of a billion-billion operations per second is estimated to be the brain computing power. Information processing includes sorting, storing, interpreting, comparing and responding. With repetition, processing includes selecting ideal combinations of inputs, outputs and results. All stored in memory of unlimited capacity and accessed endlessly.

About 60 bits per second is the limit the conscious mind can process. If we can keep our conscious mind focused, it can handle about 2 or 3 cognitive tasks at a time.

We run our lives with subliminal action. Events occur, effects evaluated, decisions made and responses executed before we are even aware of them. The task under conscious neurocognitive function is to alter or redirect subliminal function.

Complex Neurocognitive Systems

Our brain has about 85 billion neurons that make trillions of connections with other neurons. This complex operates all thought, emotion, action and behavior including health practice.

Brain development starts with inheritance at birth and proceeds rapidly during infancy and adolescence. It results from interaction of genetic, epigenetic, cellular, metabolic, hormonal, nutritional, physical and environmental elements.

New neural networks are developed along the way and expanded or pruned and abandoned. At any one time, neural networks started at one time under some influence are interacting with other neural networks started at different times under different influences.

Dynamic analysis of cognitive function describes complex performance arising from sensitivity to small changes in nonlinear systems. As a result, change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input. Because each subliminal interactive system is influenced differently, health practice can change suddenly with little warning.

Perspective On Reversing Or Preventing Type 2 Diabetes

Anyone who argues that Insulin Resistance or Type 2 Diabetes is not costly and disabling is carrying misinformation for reasons hidden in subliminal regions of the mind. Of course, it is possible that submitting reports to improve Health Practices is perceived as too demanding of time or effort to cooperate.

Everybody with Insulin Resistance or Type 2 Diabetes should have the chance to consider adopting a corrective action plan. Even those who state they just don’t want the inconvenience of improving Health Practices should reconsider their motivation every month or so. Dynamical Revision of Health Practices may have occurred.

Conscious Cognitive Function

Executive cognitive function readily engages subliminal action. This can be combined with sensations, impressions and emotions in performing some novel experience. The results of the experience, directed by executive cognitive function are evaluated and committed to subliminal memory as desirable and pleasant or noxious and painful.

The subliminal transformation of an automatic routine in memory into a desirable experience is accomplished by daily repetition as either a real or rehearsed event. Daily repetition eventually builds subliminal memory into an automatic routine that happens without specific executive cognitive direction.

Even automatic has to be monitored forever. To be effective in improving health, the assignment of a novel good health practice to subliminal memory is always subject to further change or reversion to original dynamics.

Positive Mental Imagery And Pleasure

Mental Imagery is recalling what happened, when and how it felt. Positive Mental Imagery is recalling something which turned out favorably. Positive Mental Imagery and Pleasure is recalling something positive which also gave an involuntary flush of good feeling.

Start with mental imagery that simulates real life experience. This action requires an ability to imagine something. If you’re not sure what you can do you should start by recalling one or several events or situations of your life in the last day or two.

Write them down and describe them in words. What they were, what happened and what you think about them. Pick out the favorable features and what makes a good outcome. Look for what gives you a good feeling and what that good feeling is. Write that all down and what you will do next time.

Practice feeling good. Do something you enjoy. Something that’s a physical workout or something really relaxing. Read something you like. Watch a video that really captures your attention. Relax and soak yourself in the bathtub. Then write down what happened and how that makes you feel good. Figure out what could make you feel even better!

Eventually mental imagery will be able to capture everything. Without writing anything down. But always concentrate on what you enjoy and makes you feel good. That’s Positive Mental Imagery With Pleasure.

Next, select health practices that can be imagined going well. Concentrate on physical activity, nutrition, sleep and routine daily tasks where improvement is possible. Generate good feelings about success in good health practice. Practice combining good feelings with imagined successful health practice.

Imagine Good Health Practice over and over again. Subliminal experience of imagery is given the same salience as real life situations and events. Rehearsing good health practice with pleasure counts as much in subliminal memory as real life experience. Your subliminal memory doesn’t discriminate. Success with pleasure is what dominates no matter what the sequence.

Dynamical cognitive control keeps improving with positive mental imagery. Improving motor skills requires real life experience but subliminal memory of motivation, performance and pleasure is consistent. You’re much better off relying on Positive Imagery And Pleasure to guide subliminal direction of action than Real Life performance with Feelings of Failure.

If you fail, forget it. Replace that negative memory by rehearsing how you’ll do well next time.

We are pleased to share our blog articles with you, and we are always interested to hear from our readers. Our website address is: www.herdhealthcare.com

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