Visualization Exercises :: Word Visions
We are a verbal culture. Words are our means of communication with each other and oddly enough animals and plants that don’t even speak the same language, so why not use this tool that has become our primary communication skill to build other skills that we have lost along the way?
By developing verbal descriptive powers, we can easily develop our visualization and sensory skills. Words have the power to paint a picture, to create an image in the mind of the person who hears them and in the mind of the person speaking.
Here’s an example:
It was so hot outside that, even when standing in the shade, simply breathing in the dry air scorched my lungs.
In the second sentence you had a much better understanding of what was meant by “hot”. You know that it is not raining or humid, but dry and that I am talking about the air outside. You know that I was standing in the shade rather than direct sunlight and that even there, the air was unusually hot. You may even have unconsciously inhaled to fill your lungs. Not only did all that happen, but when I wrote the sentence I recalled the feeling of my lungs being hot, I could see the day it happened, the sunlight, the heat of the air on my skin, where I was standing, etc.
Such metaphoric descriptions may call to mind visions of southern belles sitting on verandas sipping Mint Juleps because the section of the country that has developed the use of description into an art form is the South. My grandmother, a proper Southern Lady called Miss Pearl by everyone who knew her, never uttered a simple sentence in her life. Everything was always like something else, people looked like animals or other people she knew, everything smelled or moved or had texture in her world. Because of her descriptive powers, her stories were like time machines. You moved with her back to the "old days", saw the people she did, knew whether it was hot or cold, summer or spring, felt the emotions of the people she described.
Even in her everyday language, she was a metaphor machine. She was often "tired as a bear in January", if she was nervous, she was "skittish as a bird on a gator’s back", when we were plotting a childish prank, we were "angels with the devil in our eyes". If you have never seen a bird settled on an alligator’s back, her simile may not make sense to you, if you have you will know that she was nervous enough to jump at the slightest twitch or sound. Additionally, because I have seen this, the words bring the image of a small white bird with a longish yellow beak precariously perched on the roughened, grayish back of a half-submerged alligator.
Using metaphor, simile and chosen descriptive words in everyday language will help you to paint a picture that will be almost tangible to both yourself and the person to whom you are speaking. It will create mental images and that is all visualization really is.
Quick Tips
Don’t use common, over-used descriptors. The air on that hot, summer day didn’t just burn my lungs, it virtually scorched them.
Use metaphors and similes from your personal experience. They will call to mind the images, emotions, smells, etc that occurred during that experience. At the same time, if you are speaking to someone else, don’t be so personal that it prohibits them from getting a mental picture.
Use words that describe more than one sense. The more sensory the image, the more realistic it will be.
When using word power for yourself, the image should not stop with the picture created by words. Instead, once the mental image has taken hold, recall other elements of the experience. Taking the scorching air example again, I could extend my memory and image to what I was wearing, the texture of the ground beneath my feet, the smell of the trees, and on and on.
Listen! Words are not only spoken, but heard as well. Listen when other’s speak, they may be painting you a picture that will capture your imagination.
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Article originally printed in
Quarters Pagan Journal.