Our brain responds powerfully not only to action, but also to observation and imagination.
In 1992, Italian neuroscientists discovered mirror neurons. These special neurons fire in the exact same way whether we perform an action or watch someone else perform the same action.
The neurons do not know the difference between having an experience, watching the experience, or imagining the experience.
Mirror neurons allow babies to develop the ability to imitate another person’s actions, establish a sense of empathy, and begin to understand another person’s emotions. Because of mirror neurons, children imitate language and social behaviors.
If you are watching someone laugh, you may laugh because the neurons send signals to the body to facilitate the joy they believe they are experiencing. This also happens when we watch movies, we become emotionally involved as if we are the ones going through the emotions.
Scientists scanned the brain of an individual reaching for a glass of water, and certain parts of the brain lit up. Then they scanned the brain of someone watching the person reach for the water, and the same parts of the brain lit up. Finally, they scanned the brain of a person who was not reaching or watching, but only imagining themselves reaching for the water, and the same parts of the brain lit up.
This scientific information helps us understand that when we deliberately choose to see ourselves as healed in our mind’s eye, the body begins to respond to the signals those mirror neurons are sending out.
The body thinks it is healed and begins producing the chemicals needed to facilitate the healing it “sees” in the imagination.
Our deliberate imaginations, or “mind movies,” work on our body in amazing ways. Our body understands images. Imagination is the way we directly connect with our body. If I cut a lemon in my imagination and smell it, my body starts salivating. This means I can move anything in my body if I have the precise images. When you choose the right images, the body performs.
When we read about Holocaust survivors, we learn about people who survived by imagination alone. They imagined they had a feast to eat when they were starving; they imagined they wore royal clothes when they were cold and had only rags. They carried their imagination consciously to completion and allowed their bodies to self‑regulate. They not only survived but thrived in harsh conditions and lived to tell their stories.
We can give information to our body by doing an action, by watching it, or by imagining it. When you split the word “information” into “in‑form‑ation,” you see that you give information to the body in form or image, and it understands.
Today, in this busy modern world where the mind is overwhelmed, you can take a conscious moment, go within, and invest your attention and intention in creating your new life with the powerful tool of imagination you were born with. Our mirror neurons do not know whether the mind movie we imagine is a real experience or not. They simply send signals to the body to feel it as real and create an internal environment regardless of what is happening on the outside.
Blessings!
Premlatha Rajkumar
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