You close your eyes. A soothing voice asks you to see a beautiful beach in vivid detail.
You are instructed to notice the turquoise water, the white sand, the blue sky and perhaps a tastefully positioned palm tree swaying in the breeze.
You see absolutely nothing remotely beach-like.
Now, instead of engaging with the rest of the session, you begin conducting an internal performance review.
Am I doing this properly? Is the picture supposed to appear behind my eyelids? Should it look like a photograph? Why can’t I see the palm tree? Does everyone else have an internal cinema while I have been issued a blank wall?
By the time you return your attention to the recording, the voice is counting from ten to one and you have missed the past three minutes.
If that sounds familiar, here is the most important point in this article: you do not need to produce vivid mental pictures in order to practise self-hypnosis or experience hetero-hypnosis.
Visual imagery can be useful. For some people, it is absorbing, emotionally evocative and wonderfully effective. However, it is one possible way of engaging with a suggestion — not the defining ingredient of hypnosis. If you are unable to visualise during hypnosis, produce only vague images or believe you may have aphantasia, you still have many other ways to direct attention, use imagination and respond to suggestions.
In this article today, I’m explaining how to practise self-hypnosis without visualisation, why imagination is much broader than mental pictures and how to translate visually worded instructions into something your mind can actually use.
Hypnosis has a visual-language problem
Hypnosis has accumulated a rather predictable collection of images: beaches, gardens, staircases, healing lights, coloured balloons, cinema screens, control rooms, symbolic doors and more staircases. If the first staircase fails, there is usually another one waiting in a different script.
There is nothing inherently wrong with these devices. A staircase can provide a simple structure for counting, anticipation and progressive involvement. A future-self image may help somebody rehearse constructive behaviour. A symbolic object can give form to an abstract problem. A relaxing scene may focus attention and evoke useful associations.
The problem begins when a strategy is mistaken for a requirement.
Traditional scripts and recordings often use visual verbs as if everyone naturally experiences imagination in the same way:
- See the scene clearly.
- Picture yourself succeeding.
- Watch the tension drain away.
- Notice the colour becoming brighter.
- Visualise your ideal future.
Self-hypnotists, respondents working with a clinician or audio listeners who do not generate clear pictures may then conclude that they are failing. Worse, they may devote so much attention to trying to manufacture an image that they disengage from the actual purpose of the suggestion.
The language has become the test. It should have been an invitation.
Visual scenes, colours, symbols and imagined movies are optional hypnotic strategies. They may help to focus attention, organise an experience, increase expectancy or rehearse a response. None of those functions requires a high-definition internal picture.
Imagination is not another word for visualisation
People often use imagination and visual imagery as though they mean precisely the same thing. They do not.
Visual imagery refers to an experience with a picture-like or visual quality in the absence of the corresponding external scene. Imagination is a much broader capacity. You can imagine:
- The sound of a familiar voice.
- The rhythm of a piece of music.
- The pressure of your feet against the ground.
- The movement involved in swinging a golf club.
- The emotional quality of determination.
- The meaning of freedom.
- The steps required to complete a difficult task.
- What another person might think or do.
- A future possibility without seeing it.
Mental imagery itself can involve more than vision. Researchers study auditory, tactile, kinaesthetic, olfactory, gustatory and interoceptive imagery as well as visual imagery. These experiences also differ across individuals. A person who reports little visual imagery may have strong spatial thinking, a vivid inner voice, a good sense of imagined movement or no conspicuous sensory imagery at all.
People can also represent information propositionally or conceptually. You can know that your kitchen has a window beside the sink without summoning an internal photograph of it. You can remember that a conversation felt warm and encouraging without replaying the other person’s face. You can anticipate behaving calmly in a meeting by thinking through your choices, words and actions rather than watching an imaginary film.
That is still imagination. It is the ability to represent what is not currently present, not an obligation to see it.
Vividness and usefulness are also different. A faint impression that directs behaviour may be more useful than a spectacular image that changes nothing. In self-hypnosis, the sensible question is not, “How impressive was my internal picture?” It is, “Did this way of representing the suggestion help me engage and respond?”
Aphantasia and the spectrum of mental imagery
Visual imagery varies considerably. At one end, some people report exceptionally vivid imagery—sometimes called hyperphantasia. At the other, people report absent or markedly reduced voluntary visual imagery, commonly described as aphantasia (Zeman et al., 2015, 2020, 2024).
The word voluntary matters. Some people with aphantasia report visual dreams, brief involuntary images or imagery around sleep despite being unable to deliberately picture an object when asked. There is also evidence that aphantasia is heterogeneous: for some people it is predominantly visual, while others report reduced imagery across several senses (Dawes et al., 2020).
Aphantasia should not automatically be treated as a disorder, deficit or problem requiring correction. Many people only discover the difference in adulthood and function perfectly well using other cognitive strategies. Research has found differences on some imagery-dependent tasks, but it has also shown preserved performance in a range of visual, spatial and memory tasks. People may reach similar answers using different routes (Bainbridge et al., 2021; Keogh & Pearson, 2018; Pounder et al., 2022).
It is equally important not to diagnose yourself from one disappointing beach exercise. Difficulty visualising may reflect unclear instructions, divided attention, fatigue, anxiety about performing, unrealistic expectations or simply the fact that the chosen scene has little personal meaning. Aphantasia is not established because one palm tree refused to materialise on command.
If the inability to visualise is new—particularly after a neurological event, injury or other health change—that is different from lifelong aphantasia and warrants discussion with an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
What does self-hypnosis actually require?
There is no single universally accepted theory of hypnosis, and we should be suspicious of anyone pretending that a century (at least!) of debate has been tidily settled by their preferred diagram. However, contemporary accounts (including my own research informed protocol that we use for our self-hypnosis research) repeatedly emphasise processes such as focused attention, expectation, motivation, interpretation, imaginative involvement, response to suggestion and the experience of actions or changes occurring with some degree of automaticity.
… and by the way… if you want to learn my official, structured approach to self-hypnosis and have hypnotic experiences that feel automatic, visit this page of my college website and download the self-hypnosis roadmap that gives instructions on how to do that: Learn Self-Hypnosis Here.
My own published papers have argued for restoring the self to our understanding of hypnosis. In self-hypnosis particularly, the individual is not a passive container awaiting installation of better thoughts. The person generates, interprets, rehearses and responds to suggestions. Our systematic review and meta-analysis found that self-hypnosis was most effective when taught as an independent, self-directed skill and practised on multiple occasions, rather than reduced to passive listening alone (Eason & Parris, 2019, 2024).
Useful self-hypnosis commonly involves:
- Directing and redirecting attention.
- Forming relevant expectations without demanding a guaranteed result.
- Understanding what a suggestion is inviting you to experience or do.
- Using imagination in its broadest sense.
- Finding a cognitive or behavioural strategy that fits the suggestion.
- Allowing small responses to develop without continually testing them.
- Remaining motivated and willing to experiment.
- Rehearsing the skill and adapting it through feedback.
Visual imagery can support several of these processes. It can capture attention, make an anticipated response more concrete and add emotional significance. Yet supporting a process is not the same as constituting that process.
There is some evidence linking hypnotisability with aspects of imagery and imaginative suggestibility, and imagery demands may affect particular suggestions (Braffman & Kirsch, 1999; Carli et al., 2007). We should therefore avoid the opposite overstatement: imagery differences could matter for how a person responds to some hypnotic tasks.
However, poor visual imagery is not equivalent to an inability to attend, expect, understand, imagine conceptually, rehearse movement, experience bodily change or respond to verbal suggestion. Direct research specifically examining hypnosis in people with well-characterised aphantasia remains limited. The most credible position is neither “visualisation is essential” nor “aphantasia can never influence hypnosis.” It is this: do not infer a global hypnotic incapacity from one imagery channel. Adapt the strategy and examine the response.
Nine alternatives to visualisation in self-hypnosis
1. Use verbal suggestion
Some people think most naturally in words. Use concise internal instructions that specify a process or action:
I can slow my breathing gently.
Each time my attention wanders, I return it to the task.
I can feel anxious and still speak clearly.
Phrases work best when they are meaningful, credible and connected to something you can do or notice. Empty declarations—“I am infinitely confident in every possible situation”—may generate internal argument rather than useful expectancy. Aim for constructive direction, not compulsory enthusiasm.
2. Use somatic attention
Attend to present bodily experience: contact with the chair, movement of the ribs, pressure through the feet, temperature in the hands, muscular effort or the rhythm of breathing.
Then introduce suggestions for an observable shift. You might invite the jaw to release a little, the out-breath to lengthen or the hands to become warmer. You do not need to see tension leaving. You can notice changes in effort, pressure, movement or comfort.
3. Use auditory imagination
Imagine the tone—not necessarily the exact sound—of a reassuring voice. Recall the rhythm of music that energises you. Silently rehearse a sentence you want to say with clarity. Some people experience an almost voice-like inner sound; others simply know the cadence or words. Either can be useful.
4. Use kinaesthetic rehearsal
Rehearse how an action feels from the inside. A runner might anticipate the rhythm of their stride, the positioning of the arms and the steadiness of pace. A speaker might rehearse standing upright, breathing between phrases and looking towards the audience. A person preparing for sleep might sense the actions of settling, releasing unnecessary effort and allowing wakeful problem-solving to stop.
The aim is not to watch yourself from a distance. It is to organise the movements, sensations and decisions involved in performing well.
5. Use autobiographical memory
Recall an occasion when you coped, persisted, concentrated or felt relatively at ease. You do not have to replay the scene visually. Ask:
- What did I know at the time?
- What was I saying to myself?
- How was I breathing or holding myself?
- What did I do next?
- What mattered to me?
Extract the useful pattern and rehearse applying it now.
6. Use conceptual imagination
Work directly with meaning. What would steadiness mean in this situation? What would be different if you treated discomfort as information rather than danger? What are the qualities of patient persistence?
You can hold and explore an idea without giving it a colour, shape or location. Sometimes the conceptual route is more precise because it keeps attention on the principle rather than decorating it.
7. Use emotion-focused rehearsal
Instead of trying to see a confident future self, explore the felt and behavioural qualities of confidence. Perhaps it involves willingness to be seen, a slower speaking pace, reduced apologising, greater tolerance of uncertainty or taking action before you feel completely ready.
Emotions are not merely internal sensations to be summoned. They include appraisals, action tendencies, expressions and behaviour. Rehearse the whole pattern.
8. Use behavioural enactment
Adopt elements of the desired response now. Adjust posture, breathing, gaze and tempo. If you are rehearsing calm assertiveness, sit or stand as you would when expressing it, say a relevant sentence aloud and notice what changes.
This is not “fake it until you make it” in its most glib form. It is embodied practice. Behaviour supplies additional sensory evidence and makes the suggestion an activity rather than a wish.
9. Use open-ended suggestions
Detailed instructions can be helpful, but they can also overprescribe the experience. Try suggestions such as:
Become curious about how your mind and body might create a little more comfort.
Allow some sign of readiness to develop in a way that suits you.
Notice whatever lets you know you are becoming more absorbed.
Open wording gives the individual room to generate a response without having to comply with someone else’s sensory screenplay.
How to translate visual hypnosis instructions
When a hypnotist or a recording says see, you are allowed to translate. You are not violating hypnotic law. There is no imagery police force waiting behind the staircase.
| Visual instruction | Flexible alternative |
|---|---|
| “See yourself feeling confident.” | “Consider how you would think, stand, speak and act with greater confidence.” |
| “Picture a relaxing place.” | “Recall or create any experience associated with comfort or safety.” |
| “See a staircase.” | “Count gradually while noticing a developing sense of involvement.” |
| “Watch the tension leave your body.” | “Notice any shift in pressure, effort, breathing or muscular tone.” |
| “Visualise completing the task.” | “Mentally rehearse the decisions and actions involved in completing it.” |
| “See a bright healing light.” | “Attend to any sensation or idea that represents comfort and support to you.” |
Other useful translations for see include sense, recall, consider, describe, rehearse, anticipate, understand and simply know. Choose the verb that gives you something meaningful to do.
A three-strategy self-hypnosis experiment
This exercise is not a test of hypnotisability and it cannot diagnose aphantasia. It is a small experiment in strategy selection.
Sit comfortably and rest one hand on your thigh or a surface. Spend 20–30 seconds noticing its present temperature without straining to detect anything. Then try one of the following approaches for about a minute.
Strategy one: direct verbal suggestion
Repeat slowly:
My hand can become warmer. With each comfortable breath, I can allow a little more warmth to develop.
Pay attention to the meaning of the words and any response, however small.
Strategy two: sensory memory
Recall the experience of holding a warm mug, placing your hand near a radiator or feeling sunlight on your skin. You need not picture the object or scene. Remember what the warmth felt like—its location, spread, intensity and gradual development.
Strategy three: behavioural and bodily involvement
Rub your hands together briefly, then rest the same hand again. Breathe at an easy pace and allow the hand to remain loose and still. Attend closely to residual heat, pulsing, pressure or changes in blood flow while suggesting that the warmth can continue or increase.
At the end, rate any change from 0 (none) to 10 (very noticeable). Also note how absorbing, effortful and natural the strategy felt.
Do not treat one attempt as a verdict. Try the strategies on separate occasions, vary the wording and compare patterns. A response may be subtle. Temperature also changes for ordinary physiological and environmental reasons, so this is not proof of a special state. The point is to discover whether words, sensory recall or embodied attention gives you the most usable route into a suggestion.
Common questions about self-hypnosis without visualisation
What if I see only vague images?
Vague is not failed. A dim, unstable or incomplete image can still organise attention and meaning. You can also combine it with words, feelings and action. Do not spend the session trying to upgrade a pencil sketch into IMAX.
What if I use words instead?
Use them. Verbal thought can support expectation, planning, reappraisal and behavioural rehearsal. Make the language specific enough to guide experience and flexible enough to avoid an internal argument.
Can I still listen to visual hypnosis recordings or respond to visual instructions from a clinician?
Yes, if you find them useful after translation. Convert “picture” into “consider”, “recall”, “sense” or “know”. If a recording repeatedly makes vivid imagery the measure of success and leaves you frustrated, choose one written with more permissive, multisensory language.
Should I tell a hypnotherapist I cannot visualise?
Yes. It is useful information, not an embarrassing confession. Explain what happens when you try, whether the difference is lifelong and which forms of thought or imagination work better. A competent practitioner should welcome that feedback and adapt.
Does poor visualisation mean low hypnotisability?
Not necessarily. Hypnotisability is usually measured through responses to a range of standardised suggestions, not through visual vividness alone. Imagery ability and hypnotic responding may overlap in some respects, but they are not identical. At present, there is insufficient direct research to turn poor visualisation or aphantasia into a reliable prediction of overall hypnotisability.
Can visual imagery be practised?
Some imagery skills may improve with practice, and people can learn better ways to inspect, elaborate or sustain the imagery they already experience. That does not mean everyone can train themselves to produce vivid quasi-perceptual pictures, nor that a person with aphantasia needs to be “fixed”. Practise visual imagery if the exploration interests you—not because hypnosis requires you to pass an internal eye test.
Is aphantasia the same as having no imagination?
No. People with aphantasia can be creative, plan, reason, remember, invent stories and anticipate possibilities. The absence of voluntary visual phenomenology is not the absence of ideas. Some people also have reduced imagery in other senses, but conceptual and linguistic thought still provide rich ways of representing possibilities.
What if imagery exercises make me frustrated?
Stop grading the image. Open your eyes if that helps. Return attention to an external sound or bodily contact, then translate the instruction into a form you can use. Frustration is often produced less by the absence of a picture than by the belief that a picture is compulsory.
What this means for hypnotherapists
This subject has important clinical implications. A practitioner should not take a standardised script, read it at a client and blame “resistance” when the client does not respond as imagined.
Good practice includes:
- Asking how the client experiences memories, ideas and imagined events.
- Listening to the language the client naturally uses.
- Offering visual, verbal, auditory, somatic, kinaesthetic and conceptual options.
- Explaining that the client can translate instructions.
- Inviting feedback during and after exercises.
- Modifying suggestions according to observed responses.
- Teaching clients how to identify and refine their own strategies.
This does not require assigning everybody a fixed “visual”, “auditory” or “kinaesthetic” type. The popular learning-styles claim—that instruction is more effective when matched to a person’s supposed sensory learning style—has not received convincing empirical support (Pashler et al., 2008). Preferences exist, tasks differ and flexibility is useful; rigid typologies are another matter.
A client might prefer verbal rehearsal for assertiveness, somatic attention for pain management and kinaesthetic imagery for sport. Human beings are not obliged to remain in one sensory drawer.
Practitioners therefore need principles, not just scripts. If you understand what a suggestion is designed to accomplish, you can preserve its function while changing its form. “See yourself coping” might become a rehearsal of words and actions. “Watch discomfort fade” might become discrimination between pressure, temperature and muscular effort. “Go to a safe place” might become contact with present cues of support and stability.
Adaptation is not an optional flourish added after learning hypnosis. It is part of competent therapeutic work.
Learning to work with individual minds
Good hypnotherapy is not the recital of standardised scripts. My practitioner diploma teaches students to understand hypnotic principles, respond to individual differences and adapt interventions intelligently. Explore the prospectus to see how the training works: Hypnotherapy Practitioner Diploma at the Anglo European College of Therapeutic Hypnosis.
You do not need to see it to use it
If visual imagery comes easily to you, use it. Enjoy it. Let it become detailed, symbolic, emotional or pleasantly strange.
If it does not, stop treating the blank screen as a personal deficiency.
You do not need to manufacture vivid mental pictures to prove that you are imaginative or hypnotisable. You need a way of representing and responding to suggestions that is meaningful to you.
That may involve words. It may involve remembered sensations, movement, sound, emotion, meaning or behaviour. It may involve a faint visual impression mixed with several other forms of thought. The best strategy is not the one that looks most impressive when described. It is the one that helps you focus, participate, rehearse and respond.
This is one reason I teach self-hypnosis as an active skill. It gives you agency. You can notice what a suggestion is asking, choose a suitable strategy, assess the response and adjust. You are no longer waiting for a recording to do hypnosis to you—and you are no longer disqualified because its beach failed to appear.
To explore this approach in greater depth, read The Science of Self-Hypnosis and explore my structured self-hypnosis teaching. My research with Ben Parris also examines why the role of the self deserves greater emphasis in hypnosis and hypnotherapy.
My hypnosis audio programmes can be used in the same active spirit. When a recording uses visual language, translate it. See can become sense, recall, consider, describe, rehearse or simply know.
(Btw, you can take a look at the full list of Hypnosis Audios I offer here)
Your mind does not have to imitate somebody else’s internal experience. It needs a workable route into yours.
References
Bainbridge, W. A., Pounder, Z., Eardley, A. F., & Baker, C. I. (2021). Quantifying aphantasia through drawing: Those without visual imagery show deficits in object but not spatial memory. Cortex, 135, 159–172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2020.11.014
Braffman, W., & Kirsch, I. (1999). Imaginative suggestibility and hypnotizability: An empirical analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(3), 578–587. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.3.578
Carli, G., Cavallaro, F. I., Rendo, C. A., & Santarcangelo, E. L. (2007). Imagery of different sensory modalities: Hypnotizability and body sway. Experimental Brain Research, 179(2), 147–154. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-006-0776-0
Dawes, A. J., Keogh, R., Andrillon, T., & Pearson, J. (2020). A cognitive profile of multi-sensory imagery, memory and dreaming in aphantasia. Scientific Reports, 10, 10022. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-65705-7
Eason, A. D., & Parris, B. A. (2019). Clinical applications of self-hypnosis: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 6(3), 262–278. https://doi.org/10.1037/cns0000173
Eason, A. D., & Parris, B. A. (2024). The importance of highlighting the role of the self in hypnotherapy and hypnosis. Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice, 54, 101810. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctcp.2023.101810
Keogh, R., & Pearson, J. (2018). The blind mind: No sensory visual imagery in aphantasia. Cortex, 105, 53–60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2017.10.012
Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9(3), 105–119. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01038.x
Pounder, Z., Jacob, J., Evans, S., Loveday, C., Eardley, A. F., & Silvanto, J. (2022). Only minimal differences between individuals with congenital aphantasia and those with typical imagery on neuropsychological tasks that involve imagery. Cortex, 148, 180–192. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2022.01.010
Zeman, A., Dewar, M., & Della Sala, S. (2015). Lives without imagery—Congenital aphantasia. Cortex, 73, 378–380. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2015.05.019
Zeman, A., Milton, F., Della Sala, S., Dewar, M., Frayling, T., Gaddum, J., Hattersley, A., Heuerman-Williamson, B., Jones, K., MacKisack, M., & Winlove, C. (2020). Phantasia—The psychological significance of lifelong visual imagery vividness extremes. Cortex, 130, 426–440. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2020.04.003
Zeman, A., Milton, F., Della Sala, S., Dewar, M., Frayling, T., Gaddum, J., Hattersley, A., Heuerman-Williamson, B., Jones, K., MacKisack, M., & Winlove, C. (2024). Aphantasia and hyperphantasia: Exploring imagery vividness extremes. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 28(5), 467–480. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2024.01.007
