Sensory Visualization Demonstration

Maya guides a sensory exercise (imagining squeezing a lemon) to show how vivid imagery triggers bodily responses.

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What if your brain's biggest limitation isn't its capacity, but your failure to train it? In this episode of Extend, Maya Raichoora joins me to share how visualization techniques helped her reverse debilitating ulcerative colitis.

We explore the neuroscience behind visualization, from rewiring neural pathways to regulating the immune system through thought. We dive into five distinct types of visualization and why mental fitness deserves the same daily dedication as physical fitness.

Maya Raichoora is the UK's leading mental fitness and visualization expert, bestselling author of "Visualize," and a former international badminton player. After being told she'd need lifelong immunosuppressive medication or colon removal surgery for ulcerative colitis at age 17, Maya used visualization and mental training to achieve complete symptom remission. She now coaches elite athletes, C-suite executives, and teaches the science of training the brain.

We Also Discuss:

01:45 - How Visualization Reversed Severe Ulcerative Colitis Without Surgery

03:45 - The "Piranha Technique": Making Pain Playful Through Creative Imagery

11:48 - The Brain-Gut Connection: Why Your Colon Has as Many Neurons as Your Brain

18:06 - How Your Brain Directly Controls Immune Cell Production

21:15 - The Five Types of Visualization

26:07 - Why Your Brain's Stories Become Your Ceiling

29:55 - The Neuroscience of Mental Rehearsal: Why Imagined Reps Equal Real Ones

38:00 - The 90-Second Rule for Releasing Trapped Emotions

55:32 - The Language of Medicine: How "Incurable" Becomes a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

1:04:15 - Mirror Neurons: Why You Become What You Watch

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