It's Not Just About the Ribbons by Jane Savoie

Author:Jane Savoie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Trafalgar Square Books
Published: 2003-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Make your images more effective by filling in the details.

With that much detail, you’re off to a good start. To really get some “bang for your buck,” however, make the image even more vivid by involving as many of your five senses as possible.

Involve Your Senses

Neuroscientists at the University of California have used a radioactive imaging technique, called Petscan, to look at brain activity during problem solving activities. Their research shows that when the five senses—sight, touch, hearing, smell, and taste—are used during visualization, the wiring of the brain actually becomes denser; specifically, brain cells develop thicker stems (axons), and the connections between the cells become more complex (synapses). When you use all of your senses you essentially increase the density of the wiring in your brain, and your mental programming becomes much more powerful.1

I’d like you to try a simple exercise so you can see the value in adding your five senses to your imaging. Imagine that you’re holding a lemon. Look at the lemon. Feel the size and shape of it as well as the texture of the rind as you turn it over in your hand a few times. Now, take this imaginary lemon and place it down on a table. Pick up a knife and cut it in half. Listen to the sound of the knife piercing the rind and slicing through the juicy pulp. Bring half of the lemon up to your nose and smell that lemony, fresh fragrance. Squeeze the lemon and hear it “squoosh” as you feel the juice trickle down between your fingers and down your arm. Then bring that half of the lemon back up to your mouth and take a nice, big bite. Crruuuunnnnchhhhhh!

Do you feel anything inside your mouth? Are you salivating? Do your lips pucker? If you let yourself experience the imaginary lemon with all five senses, you’re bound to notice some sort of physiological reaction. Don’t you find it amazing that you can create a very real reaction inside your mouth to something that exists only in your imagination?

Now that you’ve experienced how powerful it is to involve your five senses in your mental pictures, let’s continue with our image of the trot extension. But this time, involve your senses.

See your horse’s neck in front of you. Notice how his ears move back and forth as he listens attentively to you.

Feel the width of your horse’s body underneath you and a firm, but elastic rein contact.

Smell the fly spray, the dressing you’ve used on your tack, the flowers in bloom, the clean air on a crisp spring day.

Taste the salt from your sweat.

Hear the regularity of the footfalls at the trot. One-two-one-two.

See yourself riding in collected trot through the second corner of the short side of the ring and giving a half-halt to coil the spring of the hind legs. You don’t even need to close your legs to ask for the extension as you come out of the corner. There is so much compressed power within your horse’s body, all you have to do is soften your hands a bit and he surges forward.

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