I’ve noticed over the past few years that I have gone from keeping my eyes closed during visualization to keeping them open. I think throughout the first 2-3 years of medical school I kept them closed, but now 4-5 years later in a specialty fellowship I find myself keeping them open more and more. Some reflection has lead me to think I have been doing this for a while. I’d like to go back to keeping them closed but it seems like as we know habits are hard to break. Part of this is open eye visualization seeming to be rather background dependent (better with a dark screen or surface) versus not really needing anything when keeping them closed.
My two questions are: 1. which do you all prefer and 2. if you are an open eyeballer like myself currently, do you feel you are background dependent?
i think I can “close my eyes” mentally, or my visualization teleports somehow outside, so it’s background independent.
I feel like open-eyed visualization in-the-area (you visualize an object somewhere in front of you) is somehow fundamentally different than when I visualize something “in my mind” in the void, like there is a different physiological mechanism for the visualizations.
When I close my eyes to visualize something, I personally visualize those things “in the void” and I think most people do, meaning, not actually in front of your eyelids, but in some different place. Do you know what I mean?
Thanks all! I think I will try to reset to what I used to do with eyes closed and see how it goes. I never thought of the difference between visualizing something in front of me versus in a void. Maybe part of the issue was me just always trying to picture things in front of myself (eyes open or closed) and not just in my mind when attempting to form images. Though when trying to retrieve leisure memories (idk an old walk in the park or prior location) i think i was doing what was described above as a void.