Enter 'The Zone' Utilizing Peripheral Vision - Part I of II

Open Your Mind To A Whole New World.

Learn how to develop acute peripheral vision, or court vision. Peripheral Vision is another gateway into ‘The Zone.’

Remember when you first began dribbling a basketball? If you had been dribbling in the street and a semi-truck was bearing down on you, you’d never have seen or heard it coming because of your intense focus on that basketball. This is the opposite of peripheral vision. After awhile you learned to only look occasionally at the basketball while dribbling, then eventually not at all. When you’re not looking at the basketball you can be looking else where. But, this is not peripheral vision either; this is just getting used to the feel of how a basketball reacts when you’re dribbling.

Peripheral vision is described by Webster’s as:
“the area of vision just outside your line of sight.” Peripheral vision occurs naturally. However peripheral vision is unintentionally ignored by most of us. In order to develop your peripheral vision to a high degree you must first stop ignoring it. Once you’ve stopped ignoring peripheral vision you can begin enhancing your awareness of everything that’s ‘outside your line of sight’ and learn to appreciate and utilize this great asset, your peripheral vision.

Begin this awareness process right now by looking directly at something, anything (since you’re reading this, you might consider looking at this page). Without moving your eyes (you may blink) become aware of everything else you can see outside your direct line of sight; everything. It’s surprising at first. While looking straight ahead you can clearly see the floor, the walls, and even the ceiling of a room and everything in between because all of it lies within the field of your peripheral vision. If you forget to be aware of your peripheral vision these things obviously don’t disappear, you're just temporarily not conscious of them. When something enters your peripheral vision from the right or left and you notice it, you might say “I saw it out of the corner of my eye.” That’s an apt description.

Peripheral Vision Explained:
Honed peripheral vision is how highly developed speed readers ‘see’ and read entire pages at a time. It appears as if they’re just turning pages but in actuality they are taking mental pictures, as if seeing photographs, or a page of pictures. Speed readers transfer word pictures from book to brain by taking mental images of each page and storing each and every image (on each and every page) in their brain. Once the picture is stored the mind (sub-conscious, un-conscious or the place where one's imagination resides) can then study [read the word pictures] at the speed of thought while the brain is snapping more word pictures or images to be studied. In order to be an effective speed reader, you need a highly developed imagination.

Your imagination can be described as:
your mind exploring something which is outside your line of conscious thought. In the case of speed reading your line of sight [your line of conscious thought] is the middle of the page. Outside of your line of sight [outside your line of conscious thought] but inside your peripheral vision is the rest of the page. Your peripheral vision [your imagination] is taking in all the information on the page.

Your brain is physiologically split; the forebrain, the midbrain, the hindbrain and psychologically split; conscious and subconscious [unconscious]. Your conscious mind thinks, or works, linearly, that is to say - one thought at a time - one thought after another - ad infinitum - at the speed of light. Your unconscious mind or your imagination uses images to think in entire scenarios and even explores multiple scenarios simultaneously - ad infinitum - but at the speed of thought.

A conscious mind and an imagination acting congruently, allow a reader to perform the art of speed reading. A reader trusting in imagination to read enters into ‘the speed reading zone.’ An inventor, like Thomas Edison, trusting in imagination to roam the recesses of his mind enters into ‘the inventor's zone.’ Athletes trusting their imagination to ‘play’ their sport for them also enter into ‘The Zone.’ In ‘The Zone,’ and only in ‘The Zone,’ are you capable of altering space and time. (??Altering space and time??) Stay with me now. First, of course, you must learn to enter your imagination.

An example of imagination at work:
You’re watching television and someone says to you “What did the announcer just say?” You answer, “No clue, I wasn’t paying attention.”
You weren’t paying attention? Oh really? Then what in the world were you doing? You’d been staring right at the television for over half an hour.
I’ll tell you what you were doing.
While your conscious mind was focused on the television your imagination was running rampant exploring who knows what. Unlike night time dreaming (where thoughts follow a semblance of progression, albeit somewhat disjointed at times) when one is daydreaming [imagining] multiple scenarios can be, and usually are, happening simultaneously. In other words your mind, on it’s own – with no intentional direction from you, is creating and studying ‘moving pictures’ [images of it’s own creation, actually your own creation] at the speed of thought.

Speed reading can happen only because imagination operates outside of all time constraints. That sentence bears repeating. Speed reading can happen only because imagination operates outside of all time constraints. In order for me to explain that last sentence let’s return to the television you were watching.
A scene from the program you were watching triggered a memory about an experience you had last year with your best friend. While recalling that entire experience another scene reminded you of a chapter in a research book you recently studied in the library. That recollection reminded you about an overdue book which reminded you about that hairy mole on the librarian’s face. And speaking of moles, your lawn not only needs mowing, it also needs that organic fertilizer you just stumbled upon while surfing the internet. What’s the name of that website? Website... I need to tell my basketball coach to check out www.BasketballShootingCoach.com.

As your imagination was simultaneously recalling the entire experience you had with your best friend, the complete chapter in that research book, the wonderful story line of the overdue book, the many different times you stared at and contemplated the librarians hairy mole, the name of the organic fertilizer and all it’s organic ingredients, the organic fertilizer’s web site, the BasketballShootingCoach.com website, the face of your basketball coach, and the reason you needed to tell him about BasketballShootingCoach.com … only 11 seconds of real time ticked off the clock while you, or your conscious mind, were ‘watching’ television.

No wonder you had ‘no clue’ what the television announcer just said. Literally, you had ‘lost’ your [conscious] mind! Do you see now what I mean when I say your imagination is unencumbered by all constraints of time?

What in the world am I talking about? And what does this have to do with shooting a basketball? Stay with me
The following quotes are all from famous professional athletes: “The pitcher’s fast ball looked like a beach ball coming toward me in slow motion.” - “The basket looked like it was 6 feet across and the other 9 basketball players were all moving in slow motion” - “I knew the race cars in front of me were spinning at 200 mph but because they were all moving in slow motion I could see a clear path for me to drive through opening up in between them.” I can go on and on and on with quotes like these. What was the perception of space and time to these athletes? It certainly did not reflect reality. We’re they operating outside all constraints of space and time? You bettcha! Had they ‘lost’ their [conscious] minds? You bettcha! Were they each ‘In The Zone?’ You b-e-t-t-c-h-a!!!

Right now you should be asking “how do I get ‘In The Zone?”
The answer: e x p a n d your awareness of your field of peripheral vision.

Learn the rest of this process in the second part of this article.