Imagination · “Feel It Real”
Goal Visualization at Alpha
While relaxed in the light ‘alpha’ state, vividly and repeatedly picture the goal already achieved — seen, felt and enjoyed as present reality — to impress it on the subconscious.
Goal visualization at alpha in 5 lines: Relax head-to-toe; count 10→1 to your level. Pick one goal and picture it already achieved, present tense, with full feeling and senses. Live inside the scene; dwell a few minutes; optionally add a short suggestion. Count 1→5 out. Repeat daily — then take action.
What it is
The imagery half of Sutphen’s mind-programming approach: once you are relaxed in the light “alpha level,” you vividly picture the goal already accomplished — not striving toward it, but living in the finished result, seeing it, feeling it, enjoying it as present fact.
Where his self-programming method feeds in worded suggestions, this feeds in a scene. Sutphen held that the relaxed mind takes a clearly imagined, emotionally felt picture as an instruction, and that daily repetition impresses it on the subconscious.
It sits squarely in the visualization/mental-rehearsal family alongside Silva’s Mental Screen and creative visualization, run from the same relaxed base state.
The Method
- Enter the alpha level. Relax the body head-to-toe; count down (e.g. 10→1) to deepen — the same induction as the self-programming method.
- Choose one specific goal and decide what the achieved result looks like (the moment of success, not the struggle).
- Build the scene vividly. Picture it in the present, as already done — add sight, sound, and especially the feeling of having it. Sutphen stressed that emotion and sensory richness are what make the image “take.”
- Put yourself in it. Experience the scene from inside (living it), letting the satisfaction of accomplishment be real and felt.
- Hold and repeat. Dwell in the image for a few minutes; you may pair it with a short positive suggestion (“This, or something better, now is mine”). Repeat the same scene across daily sessions so it accumulates.
- Count up to return (1→5), feeling alert and refreshed — then take real-world action toward the goal. (The “picture it as already achieved, with feeling, from the alpha state, repeated daily” structure is Sutphen’s. The claim that the picture itself causes outer events is his metaphysical interpretation — see §4.)
Source & Lineage
Dick Sutphen (1937–2020), New Age hypnotist, seminar trainer and producer of the first commercial hypnosis tapes (1976), taught relaxed goal-imagery as a core part of his self-hypnosis and mind-programming work, e.g. in Self-Hypnosis: Earned Self-Mastery.
The relaxed-state visualization idea descends from the New Thought “mental picture” tradition (Behrend, Collier, Murphy) and runs parallel to Silva’s mental-screen work.
Common refinements
Imagining the wanting, not the having. Picture the goal achieved, present tense — not yourself yearning for it.
- Pure outcome fantasy. To avoid the motivation-sapping trap, contrast the imagined result with the present reality and the next concrete step (mental-contrasting / “footwork”).
- Flat, emotionless pictures. Without felt satisfaction the image does little; load it with sensory and emotional detail.
- Switching goals nightly. Repeat one scene over many sessions so it conditions.