Visualization

Many esoteric practices call for visualization. This in simply put trying to perceive something in your mind's eye. These can be simple or complex things, they can be intentionally crafted or perceived from subconscious or external sources. For some people this is tremendously easy, and for others it is immensely difficult. Despite referring to the visual faculty, this process can also include smell, touch and even taste.

The ability to visualize can be practiced. Here's some exercises to get you started:
1) Look at your hands. Close your eyes. Try to recall your hands the best you can. Try this with various positions and gestures.
2) Close your eyes. Try to recall details of the room you are in the best you can.
3) Rub your hands together vigorously until the warm up. Close your eyes. Visualize your hands, and visualize the warm sensations as blueish-whitish energy enveloping your hands.
4) Visualize different simple geometric shapes. Try moving and rotating them and changing their colors.
5) Try to visualize memories from your life and note the kind of emotions they rouse in you.
6) Try to visualize something that rouses emotions in your. Does it work better than trying to visualize things that don't stir emotions in you?

Note: trying to visualize spirits, including your favorite Touhou character, puts you at risk and possibility of reaching out to them with all the consequences that flow out from there.

If you have very severe issues with visualization you can try several workarounds. The first one is to try to intently focus on one detail at a time and then let it come together on it's own. For example, when visualizing your hands, you can try to recall your fingers, their position, the grooves of your palm, the color of your skin and so on. Even fleeting and vague stuff is a starting point.

The second workaround is using other sense. For example, if you were trying to imagine a tree, you could try first imagining how different parts of it would feel, smell and sound. Sometimes the visual comes by itself after that. There is evidence to suggest that a kind of a visualization process is going on in all of us, and for some reason some people have harder time accessing it and reach it more easily through ”mind's touch” and other such extended senses.

You may also find visualizations adjacent to things you are doing – such as ”breathing in vibrant chi” or ”draw energy via roots in the ground” more productive than trying to visualize things in isolation.