The Brain Rehearsal Technique (through harnessing the power of intention)

The word “intention” is used in many ways. The dictionary definition that fits most closely says “intention is conception of a thing formed first by the direct application of the mind to the individual object, idea or image. It is a stretching or bending of the mind towards an object.”
There are many people who use the power of intention successfully in their lives; some do this intuitively, whilst others have systematically learnt and repeated the mental skills required. The art of intention can enhance not only our performance in many activities, but can improve our relationships, our work life and even our health.
The most instructive examples of the art of intention come from the world of sport. Athletes of all varieties now routinely perform what is variously termed “mental rehearsals”, “mind practice” or “brain rehearsal”. Focused intention is now deemed essential for star athletes to improve their games. Swimmers, skaters, weightlifters, tennis, basketball and football players all use this brain rehearsal to enhance their levels of performance. Any modern coach of a competitive sport routinely offers training in brain rehearsal, which is considered the decisive element separating the elite athlete from the second division player.
Psychologist Allan Paivio, professor emeritus of the University of Western Ontario, first proposed that the brain uses “dual coding” to process verbal and non verbal information simultaneously. Mental practice or brain rehearsal has been shown to work as well as physical practice for patterns and timing in various activities. Paivio’s model has been widely adapted to help athletes with motivation or in learning or improving a certain set of skills. The techniques involved in brain rehearsal have been exhaustively studied and written about in scientific literature and their credibility was given a further boost in 1990, when the National Academy of Sciences examined all the scientific studies to date on these methods and declared them to be effective.
Brain rehearsal is often incorrectly seen as simple visualisation. In fact visualisation implies that you observe yourself in the situation as if watching a movie of yourself. In this situation you are watching yourself from a dissociated position, as if through another pair of eyes. Brain rehearsal on the other hand creates imagery where everything is vividly imagined from the first person perspective. You see everything from your own eyes. All your senses are used and you are completely “associated” into that imagery.
In the case of sport, the most successful athletes break down the performance into tiny component parts and work on improving specific aspects. They concentrate on the most difficult moments and work out good coping strategies. They see it, hear it, feel it, smell it and taste it. Of all the sensations, the most vital in sports is to be mentally rehearsing the “feel” or the kinaesthetic reaction. Of course the most important part of all in sport is to rehearse the victory, which appears to help secure it. Successful competitors rehearse their own feelings, particularly their elation and emotional response to winning: the reaction of their parents, the prizes or medals, the post-match celebration and the residual rewards. They imagine that the crowd is cheering for their performance alone.
But how can simply thinking about a future performance actually affect the day of the event? Some clues come from intriguing new brain research with electromyography (EMG). EMG offers a real time snapshot of the brains instructions to the body by recording every electrical impulse sent from motor neurons to specific muscles. It has been used to solve the scientific conundrum; can the brain distinguish the difference between a thought and an action? This question was tested by wiring a group of skiers to EMG equipment while they were carrying out brain rehearsals. As the skiers mentally rehearsed the downhill runs, the electrical impulses leading to their muscles were just the same as those they used to make the turns and jumps when they were actually skiing the run. The brain sent the same instructions to the body whether the skiers were simply thinking of a particular movement or actually carrying it out. Thought produced the same mental instructions as action!!
Research with another machine, the electroencephalogram (EEG) has shown that electrical activity produced by the brain is identical, whether we’re thinking about doing something or actually doing it. Based on this research, interesting scientific theories are emerging on how this “brain rehearsal” actually works. One school of thought proposes that brain rehearsal creates the neural patterns necessary for the real thing. Operating as though the brain was simply another muscle, these mental rehearsals train the brain to facilitate the action more easily during the actual event. Any future stimulation along the same pathways is made easier by the effects of the earlier connections. Thus, repetition is hugely important in brain rehearsal, whether it be for physical actions, such as in sport performance, or any other desired outcome that one focuses on. In order to derive maximum benefit, brain rehearsal must vividly replicate the real thing, in real time, at normal speed.
Brain rehearsal can also be effective in treating illness. Patients using this tool have boosted treatment of a variety of acute and chronic conditions by using mental pictures of their bodies fighting the illness. These techniques have also improved surgical outcomes, helped with pain management and minimized the side effects of chemotherapy. And so we see that the power of intention can be used to heal and promote good health, improve performance in many areas of life and can even affect the future.
To be most effective, an intention should be a highly specific aim or goal, which you should visualise in the first person as having already occurred, while you are in a state of concentrated focus and hyper-awareness. When you imagine a future event, hold a mental picture of it as if it was happening right here and now in the present moment. Engage all five senses to visualise it in detail. Make it really come to life. The centrepiece of this mental picture should be the moment that you achieve your goal. Remember to focus exclusively on what you really want. It is all too easy to concentrate on our fears and frustrations in relation to the issue in question, when instead we should be putting all our energies into creating the positive outcome. Focusing on the difficulties or fears will automatically block the power of your intention.