Deep in the Cerebral Hemispheres

When athletes visualize an action they stimulate the motor cortex and basal ganglia located deep in the cerebral hemispheres of the brain. The basal ganglia are responsible for motor control, procedural learning, habits and emotional processing. Visualization helps improve co-ordination, physical skill and confidence. Used by coaches and elite athletes including Michael Jordan, Serena Williams and Muhammad Ali, it has been proven repeatedly to be a powerful and effective mind/body tool. Visualization is also used to great effect in psychotherapy. Sometimes called guided imagery, it is used to reduce pain, lower blood pressure, process emotions and change behaviours. Visualization is the key to the mind made manifest. What is imagined is made real.

I recently undertook a guided visualization at the conclusion of a workshop on the father, as part of the curatorial project ARRAS in Michael Curran’s home in South London.  The workshop was led by the curator and gestalt therapist Ben Cook. Like all psychotherapeutic group work I have attended, disclosures in the session are strictly confidential. What I can relay here is solely my own experience and I relay this in the strictest confidence to you, yes you, my trusted reader. What I learned in the workshop is that regardless of the kind of relationship one has with their father; distant or close, happy or disturbed, understanding or alienated, it is a singularly powerful relationship.

After an intensive session of disclosure, object relations, narration and exchange, Ben concluded the workshop with a guided visualization. We were asked to close our eyes and imagine that you are standing in a field with your father. There is a path that you take together that leads up a hill. You pass through a mist as you climb higher. The mist clears as you reach the top. You stop at the top to take in the view, and your father speaks to you. You then go down the hill and return to the field. My visualization began with my father in the field. Much to my horror he stood naked covered in hair. He was an ape. I followed him up a path. As we walked he transformed before my eyes from ape through proto human through Australopithecus through early homo through homo erectus through Neanderthal to homo sapien. I was awestruck as I watched the transformations. We passed through the mist and now my father stood before me. He was perfectly healthy, no cancer, no disease, no old age, no death. He was calm and radiant and he said, “believe in yourself” and then, “I can help you”. I was uplifted by his presence. It was deeply powerful. I felt his actual presence standing before me, alive. I led us back down the path and returned to the field.

This visualization has given me strength that I did not know I had. I have silent conversations with my father. When I see something beautiful or hear something funny or read something interesting, I actually feel I am sharing it with him – that he lives through me. And there is something greater than this – the realization that we are our ancestors. Our ancestors live through us. That the feeling that we are being watched over could well be our imagination, but that our imagination is the cradle of reality.