Can Visualization Ability Augment Benefits Received from Meditation?
Research Mentor(s)
Barbara Lehman
Description
Meditation offers a multitude of benefits to those who practice it, promoting health and wellbeing through a carefully cultivated relationship with one’s own mind. Visualization requires a similar kind of mastery and connection with one’s mind to deliberately conjure and hold images in the mind’s eye. Therapists sometimes utilize this ability to lead a client through visualization experiences designed to facilitate adaptive coping for various conditions, including chronic pain. Interestingly, guided imagery and meditation provide similar benefits, and share a common mechanism: a kind of connection, or control over the mind. Individuals with high visualization ability epitomize the ability to control the mind, able to see and manipulate mental images in their mind’s eye with clarity. If this type of mental control facilitates the benefits received through imagery and meditation, then those with higher visualization ability are likely better equipped to obtain these benefits. To find out if this is true, we will measure participants’ visualization ability, then measure pain tolerance both before and after a 15-minute intervention recording of either a meditation, a visualization, a meditation with visualization, or light music. If our theory is correct, we should see high visualizers receiving greater increases to pain tolerance after intervention.
Document Type
Event
Start Date
May 2022
End Date
May 2022
Location
SMATE Library (Bellingham, Wash.)
Department
Experimental Psychology
Genre/Form
student projects; posters
Type
Image
Rights
Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this document for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission.
Language
English
Format
application/pdf
Can Visualization Ability Augment Benefits Received from Meditation?
SMATE Library (Bellingham, Wash.)
Meditation offers a multitude of benefits to those who practice it, promoting health and wellbeing through a carefully cultivated relationship with one’s own mind. Visualization requires a similar kind of mastery and connection with one’s mind to deliberately conjure and hold images in the mind’s eye. Therapists sometimes utilize this ability to lead a client through visualization experiences designed to facilitate adaptive coping for various conditions, including chronic pain. Interestingly, guided imagery and meditation provide similar benefits, and share a common mechanism: a kind of connection, or control over the mind. Individuals with high visualization ability epitomize the ability to control the mind, able to see and manipulate mental images in their mind’s eye with clarity. If this type of mental control facilitates the benefits received through imagery and meditation, then those with higher visualization ability are likely better equipped to obtain these benefits. To find out if this is true, we will measure participants’ visualization ability, then measure pain tolerance both before and after a 15-minute intervention recording of either a meditation, a visualization, a meditation with visualization, or light music. If our theory is correct, we should see high visualizers receiving greater increases to pain tolerance after intervention.