"Mental gymnastics"

   Through imagination, mental visualisation and sensation, you can use the fantastic resources of your brain to prepare your body for exercise and develop its beauty, strength, mobility and suppleness.

   You only have to imagine, to see your body moving in your mind’s eye for your brain to immediately transmit precise orders to the rest of your musculature to prepare the movements and ensure the necessary co-ordination.

   The positions and movements imagined, and then felt, produce measurable physiological effects. Your body actually benefits from a large part of the exercise that you are visualising.

   Did you know that a few minutes’ visualization each day enables people who are unable to move to maintain their physical energy? People suffering from rheumatism and accident victims can restore the mobility of their joints by repeatedly visualising the free movement of these joints. Remarkable results are obtained in competition sport using this type of mental training.

   The fact that you imagine yourself BEAUTIFUL, STRONG, MOBILE and SUPPLE develops these qualities by creating "mental images" that are crucial to their acquisition. In other words, the considerable power of the imagination "prepares the ground": by visualizing yourself with these qualities, you literally begin to create what you want to become through thought.

   To do this, you must:

-   close your eyes,

-   breathe deeply,

-   relax,

-   imagine or visualize yourself in a situation of your own choosing, in as much detail as possible (surrounding countryside, temperature, light, sounds, texture of the ground, movements and displacement of your body, etc.)

   Do this effortlessly, in a relaxed state, allowing the images to appear "of their own accord" behind your closed eyelids as spontaneously as possible. The more you practice this exercise, treating it a as a game, the easier it becomes. By repeating it you will feel yourself "entering the image" more easily and you will actually feel the environment and movements you are imagining within your own body.

IMPORTANT: During periods of visualisation allow yourself to breathe freely and don’t stop yourself stretching, yawning or making any body movements that occur naturally.

   Take every available opportunity to practise these "mental gymnastics"; I assure you that you will find them extraordinarily beneficial.