How to Visualise Headspace

A headspace ( sometimes called an inner world or a wonderland) is a place that members of a system inhabit. Not every system has an inner world or has an easy time accessing it, but there are ways to create a headspace or help visualise it better if a system wants to have one!

Inner worlds are not just something systems can have, singlets can also have and create headspaces as well! It may seem like a daunting task at first, especially if one isn’t sure how to ‘make’ it and not just think about it. A headspace is just imagination with consistency. When you picture the same space in your mind over and over again it can become permanent, and being able to recall the same buildings or objects will make going to the headspace almost a sort of muscle memory after awhile.

A headspace is pictured in your mind, and not seen with your actual eyes. Something that may affect your experience with using your mind’s eye is your level of phantasia. Visual Phantasia is the measurement of the level of detail you can picture in your mind, it is a sliding scale with two ends. Aphantasia, which is having a low level of detail when picturing things. And Hyperphantasia, which is having a high level of detail when picturing things. We won’t touch on this in detail as much in this guide, but if you are curious about figuring out your phantasia level it may be a good place to start. A classic test is the apple test. An overview of aphantasia and the apple test can be found here.

When you have a different baseline of visualising, this can sometimes be challenging. Many people don’t know everyone visualises to different degrees, so you may find that guides aren’t applicable to you and your abilities. If you can’t picture things at all, it’d be impossible to take advice on ‘closing your eyes and meditating on the image of your ideal headspace.’ So this guide will have experiences that hopefully will paint a more diverse picture of what you can do.

Headspaces are unique to every system, and there are really no rules on what they should look like. Typically they are spaces that are full of comforting or meaningful places for systems, so when thinking about what you want your headspace to look like you can use that as a starting point. Perhaps your system has a connection to the stars, and you want to make your headspace a cozy observatory with blankets and pillows to cuddle in. Or maybe your system is made up of DnD sourced members and would feel at home in a tavern or a large kingdom? Any sort of setting is appropriate if it sounds safe and positive for you!

Headspace with Hyperfantasia

Our system personally experiences hyperphantasia, or the ability to imagine things in your mind’s eye very vividly and clearly. This affects our headspace in a lot of ways, especially picturing inner world areas in great detail with consistensy. We consider our ability to recall headspace like walking through a video game world in first or third person, if you feel that this reflects your level of visualising too this advice may be for you!

Most of our headspace creation depends on our vivid imagination, so we typically only use meditation as a means to create a headspace. It’s about pouring energy into what you want to have appear. It is very much similar to tulpa creation, where you use consistent thoughts and focus to create something from nothing!

The best way for us to visualise new things is to start with a strong base. The new areas in our headspace we often picture as generic and large pieces of natural land. Fields, ponds, forests, etc are always our go to when starting to build a section of our headspace. Later on we fill these with buildings depending on who wants to live there. We have also changed things like the season or weather if the members living in a space prefer it a specific way.

It can be difficult even for us to just suddenly picture a finished building in a space like this, so we like to meditate on what we want the building or home to look like for a few days. During this time, we picture it being worked on. While the building is in a ‘construction phase’ in the headspace, we can decide what the appearance will be like and then focus on that image being built during construction.

If your system doesn’t have many ideas, looking up different houses or architecture styles on the internet is a really great way to get ideas. Working on a headspace shouldn’t just be in your mind’s eye, but something to think about outside of the inner world as well! Having that physical visual in front of you will only help your mind’s eye picture it better.

As an example, a fronting group knew they needed one large house with 3 distinct spaces for the different families living together. So while the base was being built in the headspace, for two or so days they discussed exactly what style they wanted. In the end they decided to go with a Japanese Minka styled exterior with 2 large towers connected in the centre to be the third part of the house. Once they had decided on this, we spent some time meditating in a quiet place and picturing the finishing touches on a minka-style home being built by a team of construction workers.

To finish it off, and make the house feel more ‘permanent’ in the space, we like to do a ribbon cutting ceremony! Where everyone who worked on the building and is moving into it comes together to cut a ribbon on the front door and open it. It helps our brain ease into the idea that “ This is a permanent structure that time went into!” And is an especially effective method for people whose brains can’t get past the logic of a home appearing out of nowhere.

The next step of creating a living space is the inside, so we plan a ‘house tour’ as a form of meditation to figure out what the rooms inside of a place or building are. We try to focus in on individual members entering their new rooms or living spaces, and marvelling at the perfect space for them to feel comfortable. For large spaces like kingdoms or cities, we try to apply video game logic so we don’t have to sit and meditate forever about every individual room in buildings we might never go into. We like to picture the ‘shell’ of a building for large spaces, and only fill the ones that system members would actually visit or live in.

Even to those who have a great level of detail in their mind’s eye, it can be hard to sit and meditate for a number of different reasons. We try to get comfortable, but not too comfortable so we don’t fall asleep. The biggest thing that helps though, is building a playlist of songs as a sort of soundtrack for our headspace while we visualise! Having thematically fitting music can certainly help fuel your imagination while you build your headspace. Even just looking up instrumental playlists on spotify like “Sci-fi space music” or “Gothic classical instrumental” can help find multiple songs of the same sort of vibes so you don’t have to spend a long time making your own.

Headspace with Aphantasia

What if you have aphantasia or have an inability to picture things in your mind’s eye? It’s likely that the idea of meditation is both unappealing, and extremely unhelpful. If pictures aren’t something you can create with consistency in your mind, there are creative ways of building headspace that have nothing to do with meditating and picturing things!

If you can’t use your mind’s eye to see pictures, it is entirely possible to have a vivid and active headspace if you practise ‘visualising’ in words instead. Chapter books don’t usually contain visuals, yet books can be very moving and detailed. Trying to imagine your headspace and what’s going on inside as reading text may be a good way to try ‘seeing’ your headspace. It doesn’t have to be like reading a book, trying to think of it like a text-based adventure game, or even receiving updates via an application like Discord in your mind are also ways you can apply this!

If it is hard to even ‘picture words’ so to speak, you could possibly type them up in a google doc, into a personal discord server, or even write them down on paper! It gives you an anchor to tie it to the outerworld, as if you were writing or even roleplaying.

Many people rely on sight or visualisation for headspaces, but there are other senses one can use to interact with your inner world. Instead of relying on your mind’s eye, it is possible to interact with the headspace using your mind’s ear. Picturing the chatter between system members, especially if they make an effort to explain their physical actions outloud. Such as saying if they are getting up to get a drink of water as they do so! It is also possible to picture other sounds, such as chairs being pulled out or in, instruments playing or singing, even the sound of wind blowing through trees.

There are also many aphantasia having systems who use touch in their inner world instead of their eyes. Holding a system member’s hands or feeling the grass they are sitting in can be just as fulfilling as ‘seeing’ those things oftentimes. If it is a bit difficult to feel something on its own, using an object in the outerworld as a means to emulate what's going on in the inner world can help make it feel more solid. For example, if you are getting a hug in the headspace and want to feel it a bit more vividly, try hugging a pillow or a stuffed animal in the outerworld!

Headspace with Mixed Phantasia

Since phantasia is a sliding scale, you may have certain strengths or weaknesses when it comes to picturing in your mind’s eye. There are ways to play off of these strengths even if you can’t picture something as vividly as someone with hyperphantasia!

Much like using picrews or art to help visualise a member’s appearance, creating an idea of your headspace using an outerworld means may help you picture them better in your inner world! Sandbox games like Minecraft can help you build what you would want to fill your headspace up with. Having a 3d space to explore will make imagining it in the inner world easier! It may be useful to use the fact it is an explorable game to your advantage too, if you need help visualising the headspace as something is being done, you can walk through the parts of your build home in the game to try and tie an outerworld visual to the inner world actions.

If you don’t own a game like Minecraft because it costs money, here are a list of free games or programs you can use instead:

If you don’t or can’t use a tool or game to create a physical idea for a headspace, basing a headspace off of an environment from media you like can go a long way! You can build your headspace to be exactly like a space from your favourite game, movie, show, etc! That way you already have a space you love, and it already has been built so no thought has to go into what it looks like.

You can also apply this to pictures you find on places like Pinterest or Google. If you find a room or house in artwork or in real life photography that you want to represent your headspace, not having to stress about coming up with what it looks like may make it easier for you to accomplish! Then overtime if things need improvement or remodelling, you already have a strong base that you can change in your mind’s eye naturally over time.

If you are more of a hands-on learner, you can make a room layout with graph paper and printer paper! If you use the graph paper to be the square footage of a room, and use the printer paper to cut out ‘furniture’ you can rearrange it over the top of the graph paper to decide where you’d best like things before visualising them. In the event you have blank paper and not graph paper and can’t / don’t wish to buy some, you can also just use a ruler or a straight edge of something to draw a grid onto another sheet of paper.

These are just some suggestions for people of various levels of phantasia, but is certainly not an exhaustive list. There are as many ways to build a headspace are there are to have one, the possibilities are infinite. The main thing that is consistent with building one is utilising your imagination to create a consistent picture of what your headspace will be like. The more you imagine the same thing over again, the more staying power it has.