When You Think About Tomorrow

Think about tomorrow — your morning routine, your workday, a meeting, a conversation, somewhere you expect to be.

Pause for a moment.

What happens first inside you?

Does an image form — a room, a face, a sequence of events?
Or do you first notice something in the body — a tightening, a lightness, a readiness?
Do words begin rehearsing themselves quietly?
Does a mood appear — calm, pressure, anticipation?
Is there simply a sense of leaning forward into something not yet here?

Stay with it for a few seconds.

What is the texture of tomorrow inside you?

When You Think About Yesterday

Now think about yesterday — something specific.
A conversation. A task. A moment in the afternoon.

Notice carefully.

Do you replay it visually, like a short scene?
Or do you simply “know” what happened without seeing it clearly?
Does a bodily feeling return before any image becomes sharp?
Does a tone come back — embarrassment, relief, irritation, warmth?
Is there a shift in posture or breathing as you recall it?

Whatever you noticed — image, sensation, words, mood, or simple knowing — is imagination in activity.

It is already present in the way yesterday returns and in the way tomorrow approaches.

The Language of Visualization

In many contexts — especially in personal development, performance psychology, and meditation — the word “visualize” is used as a general instruction.

We are told to visualize success.
Visualize calm.
Visualize the future we want.

Often, the instruction functions as an invitation to imagine — to engage with an experience internally.

Yet people respond to this invitation in different ways.

Some individuals form clear inner images.
Others notice bodily sensations.
Some hear inner dialogue.
Some experience a shift in mood or orientation without any visual component at all.

There is variation in how inner experience presents itself. This variation is common and does not indicate a deficit.

The capacity for imagination does not depend solely on inner vision.
The channels through which experience organizes internally are multiple.

Visualization as Internal Representation in Imagination

From a psychological and neurocognitive perspective, the brain is constantly organizing experience. It does not simply register the world as it is. Instead, it interprets, anticipates, and shapes what we perceive.

Research in predictive processing and embodied cognition suggests that perception involves an ongoing integration of sensory input, memory, emotional tone, and expectation (Clark, 2016; Barrett, 2017). What we experience is therefore not a direct copy of reality, but a constructed interpretation formed within the nervous system.

This constructive process is active not only when we perceive the present, but also when we imagine. Visualization reflects one way this internal modeling becomes consciously accessible — as mental imagery.

This internal modeling is experienced subjectively as:

• bodily sensations (interoception)

• emotional tone

• inner speech and narrative

• auditory imagery

• motor impulses and simulation

• spatial orientation

• visual imagery

Imagination is therefore the experiential material through which life is lived internally.

It is not separate from perception. It is how perception becomes meaningful.

Aphantasia, Hyperphantasia, and Variation

Differences in visual imagery have long been observed in psychological research. In the late 19th century, Francis Galton documented variability in the vividness of mental images. In 2015, the term aphantasia was introduced to describe the absence or marked reduction of voluntary visual imagery. The term hyperphantasia is now used for unusually vivid imagery.

Some individuals see detailed inner scenes.
Others experience minimal or no visual imagery.

These differences concern the visual channel specifically.

They do not determine whether imagination is present.

Imagination continues to function through affect, anticipation, bodily simulation, narrative, and conceptual organization.

Inner experience varies in vividness and modality.
The organizing function itself remains constant.

It is not possible to be without imagination.
The nervous system continuously models, anticipates, and interprets.

The variation lies in how this modeling is experienced — not in whether it occurs.

Two Directions of Imagination

Sometimes imagination is intentional.
You deliberately picture a future conversation. You rehearse a scene. You try to create an image.

At other times, it arises on its own.
A tightness in the stomach when you think of tomorrow. A sudden warmth when you remember yesterday. A shift in tone before any picture forms.

These movements can be understood as different directions of organization — from deliberate shaping downward, or from bodily and emotional signals upward. Both participate in how experience becomes structured internally.

The Everyday Process – Imagination in Motion

When you notice how tomorrow forms within you, or how yesterday returns, you are observing imagination in motion. It is the ongoing shaping of experience itself.

If imagination is not limited to visualization or a special state, but is something ongoing, then everyone is already working with it — whether they know it or not.

If imagination organizes experience continuously, then learning how to regulate and work with it becomes central. The first step is understanding how imagination interacts with the nervous system. Read the first article in our brief inquiry series: “Somatic Imagination: The Missing Link in Stress Regulation.”