VISUALIZATION TRAINING MEGA GUIDE
This will be a very long post. If the idea of overcoming aphantasia or increasing your mind's eye interests you at all, I'm confident it will be worth the read.
**Disclaimers**
Some points I want to summarize before we jump in:
I do not think that everyone with aphantasia needs to change their experience, nor do I see it as a "disability", per se. In fact, I think there's great value in different type of thinkers in this world, so I hope not all aphantasics would want to change.
Though, for those who desire to change their experience, I'd like them to know that there seem to be options.
I also wish to remain sensitive to those that are quite frustrated and feeling cheated, I've been having conversations non-stop with those who share your feelings over the past 4 years, and will continue to do so. Aphantasia is a very real cognitive experience, and anyone who says otherwise at this point is simply ignorant of the strides in this field since 2010.
I will be as honest as I can through this post, and not overly hype anything up. It's good to be skeptical, but please consider that I've been doing this for 4 years at this point and I'm not going anywhere. If I were out here trying to deceive people I likely wouldn't have lasted this long.
I do charge for programs that require my personal time, and this is not a secret by any means. If you have a problem with someone charging for their time, energy, and effort, we won't get along and that's fine.
Pretty much every time I've posted about my work to groups in the past, I would be met with accusatory commentators, saying that I was a "snake-oil salesman" or something similar, even though they knew nothing of my programs, techniques, or successes with students. And, admittedly, I let these comments get to me. It's fine to be skeptical, but comments made from being ignorant are not welcomed. I'm more than happy to have civil discussion, though, even if you fundamentally disagree with me.
Plus, if I really just wanted to make money, I sure as hell would not have been doing this for the past 4 years, especially since 2020 when I went full-time in all this. I don't particularly enjoy not being able to buy food / pay bills some months, while still working my butt off. It's all been my choice though, to sink more time into this rather than spend that time elsewhere.
Historically, I've kept my specific techniques and exercises behind a paywall, but this changes now. I've had a core value of mine come to my full attention recently that our world needs more transparency and open-sourced information. I'm done with the traditional online coaching method where a coach is supposed to talk about "the what, not the how" to make sure to funnel people into paying programs, essentially luring people to pay you because they don't have the full picture and need it from a program.
So this post will contain most, if not all, of the major points of consideration that I've stumbled upon while working with people in increasing their visualization over the past 4 years. I believe that if I help enough people get what they want and help them make progress, it will come back around to me somehow.
I do not have a degree (as of yet, though I am considering it) in neuroscience or anything like that. I've always been a self-learner / researcher, though I stumbled into all this, and the main thing that qualifies me to have a voice in this field / topic are the successes I've seen with people.
I've also been collaborating with Neuroscientists from the UK, adding what I can to certain studies we've been pioneering in these areas. So, that's quite a humbling honor, and may add to the validity of my claims for some.
If you're going to attempt to begin practicing for yourself, I'd ask you to keep track of your VVIQ results so that we can gather some more objective measurements of progress being made (something my program has sorely lacked for the most part... until recently, that is).
Also, I'd ask you to be vocal online about any progress made, too, since the more others see your progress, the more that might give them hope that they may be able to change their experience.
In this post, you'll see me use the term "breakthrough" throughout, I'd like to define this term as it pertains to my work so you know exactly what I mean by it.
Breakthrough: any time an individual becomes aware of a new type of thought process that is outside of their norm (in this case, specifically visual thought).
This doesn't mean that everyone who started at aphantasia was able to fully "cure" their experience of aphantasia. But the majority were able to see progress, at least to some small measure. Others did in fact change their norm overall, but I'll get to that in the "results" section of this post.
For those who would say "changing aphantasia is impossible", I challenge you to find any evidence outside of your own opinion / experience that back up that claim. The progress we've seen in the field of neuroplasticity over the past 20 years especially should be enough reason to believe it at least would be possible for the brain to change itself, thus changing your conscious experience.
And beyond that, there are a growing number of people who claim they have made progress. So instead of implying that they're all lying, I'd encourage you to look into these things fully before completely forming your opinion. Ask questions, be curious, and don't be one of the ones who decided something was impossible while the rest of the world moves on.
There's no way I could possible guarantee that practicing would get anyone progress, though, with a breakthrough rate of 93% of the people I've worked with 1:1, I'd say it's probably you could do it.
I'm also not saying in this post that I know everything there is to know about the mind's eye, aphantasia, and all of the possible nuances, but I am communicating the through-lines from the past 4 years of working intimately with all of this, hundreds of conversations, and dozens of students.
One of the reasons I assumed other people would be able to make progress was because I had seen progress already for myself. I was always a visual thinker, but years ago I inadvertently worked my way into a fairly consistent hyperphantasia-like experience. In 2010, I was also successful in generating "projected" imagery, which I didn't have access to prior (I'll get to differentiating that type of visualization within this post).
If you're in support of this post, please comment! If you're not, please comment! Everyone should be free to share their perspective here. I just ask that you keep things respectable. I don't respond / try to engage with personal attacks, especially when the person is blatantly in the dark when it comes to my work and the idea of others making progress, so let's not go there.
If you're in support or optimistic / excited, and yet nervous to say so because people can be rude and give you backlash, I'd encourage you to go for it anyways. If someone chooses to be rude and overtly negative, it speaks more about them than any discussion points that are at hand.
Final thought... Just because you do or do not wish to change your current experience, does not mean that others are required to have your same desire. Let those who don't want a change be where they're at, and let those who do explore the possibilities of doing so.
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I have a confession to make. I've been acting timidly when it comes to the work I've been doing for the past 4 years. This cowardly stance has dictated a lot of my decisions when it came to what to share, how much to share, and who I share with. Yet, the more I've grown personally, the more I have realized how much I value open and transparent information. Indeed, I think transparency is something our world desperately needs more of. And how can I ask that of the world, when I have not done that in my own life / endeavors? So, I'm making a change, starting now.
In this post you will find extreme detail around the work I've been doing helping people to either overcome their aphantasia or increase what visualization capacity they already have. A forewarning: There is no magic pill here, and I don't consider aphantasia something that can be "cured" at this time, but it does seem with proper training one can make progress in visual thought, to varying degrees.
THE REALITY IS THIS: I'VE SEEN MANY PEOPLE MAKE PROGRESS IN THEIR CAPACITY TO FORM MENTAL IMAGES.
And I won't continue to dodge around the fact that I've seen person after person make progress for themselves, which is largely due to the (embarrassing) reality that I haven't wanted to offend anyone. Offended or not, here I come.
Also, I'm not holding information back here, and I'll be putting everything in this post that I would consider necessary for one to make progress for themselves. I'll also be detailing the effectiveness of training the mind's eye, at least as it seems to stand as of now. My program has not been perfect (I'll be including some of the pitfalls and mistakes I've made) but I have seen many successes. So, here we go.
Context & Backstory
The year is 2018, and I stumble across the term "aphantasia" for the first time. I had known that people had this experience since 2011, when a roommate of mine shocked us at the house saying he couldn't visualize anything, and despite looking for info on this phenomenon, I couldn't find anything on it. Until that day in 2018.
The first resource I ran across was a video by the YouTube channel BrainCraft (https://youtu.be/KuWSh4n5AiI), and I thought "Oh finally! That experience has an official name." (since finding out my roommate had this experience, I also learned my cousin did, as well. Indeed, she didn't even dream visually). In the video, Vanessa also covered some of the initial fMRI data which demonstrated different brain activity between aphantasics and visualizers. And I thought to myself "well, if the brain is doing that, maybe something like this would work..." And I proceeded to jot down a bunch of ideas on what might cause someone's brain to begin processing thought using the visual centers rather than a spread of areas, as an aphantasic's brain does. The fMRI data also showed that, potentially, an aphantasic brain is relying heavily on a center that is known for linguistic recall (which could explain why many aphantasics describe their experience of thought as "words / descriptive lis