By Laura

Many of the podcasts, books, audio programs and other aids to spiritual and personal growth call for visualizations or other uses of the imagination. Often, they ask you to imagine you feel a certain way or that you have something you don't. Maybe you have trouble with this, can't quite see or imagine what they're asking of you. Or maybe you just want to practice training your imagination.

Here are 5 exercises designed to train your imagination using all the senses. With practice, your visualizations, meditations and imaginings can become more powerful and real.
You'll probably find these exercises difficult to begin with, but don't worry, they'll get easier as your ability to use your imagination improves.

Visual

Close your eyes and imagine a number from 1-9.
Keep that number and only that number clearly in your imagination for 2 minutes.
Imagine a simple, colored geometric shape. For example, a white circle.
Keep the shape in your imagination for 2 minutes

It is often difficult to visualize simple shapes or numbers. You'll probably find it much easier to imagine your friend's face or a beautiful landscape. Simple images are much harder to hold in the mind for even a short amount of time, that's why they're so useful in training your imagination. Don't be discouraged if you can only visualize a number for a brief instant, or if the image changes or is fuzzy. It will get easier

Tactile

Close your eyes.
Imagine petting a cat. Feel the fur.
Imagine holding an orange. Feel the skin.

At first you may have to visualize the object and then feel the sensation. As you practice, try not to visualize the cat or the orange, and just practice feeling the sensation.

Smell

Close your eyes.
Smell a cedar sauna.
Smell freshly baked cookies.
Smell your favorite herb, like mint or lavender.

Taste

Close your eyes.
Imagine the taste, texture and temperature of:
Tortilla Chips
Chocolate Ice Cream
Steamed Broccoli

Auditory

Close your eyes.
Hear people talking at a party.
A loud fire engine siren.
The sound of rain.

We are bombarded by stimuli in our everyday life, both external and internal. Usually this stimuli is not in our control. If we learn to focus our attention through these simple exercises, we feel less scattered. The sensation we decide to focus our attention on will be at the front of our awareness and other stimuli will disappear. Eventually we will be able to hold our attention on anything we chose. Learning to concentrate in this way produces a healing effect, sometimes gives us great feelings of joy and improves the potency of our imagination and visualization exercises

*Ideas for exercises and some concepts from What We May Be by Piero Ferrucci