Maya Raichoora on re-writing your reality with visualisation and how to boost mental fitness at any age – UK Times

Mental fitness might have felt like a fringe concept just a few years ago, but today, almost every athlete I speak with is serious about the practice. Though it’s not just athletes that rely on the techniques. The self-optimisation boom paired with a greater understanding of mental health management and burnout has given rise to a new-found reverence for mental resilience, dexterity and plasticity across the population. CEOs might be using mental fitness techniques, but so are schoolteachers and their pupils.

Behind the concept’s popularity are mental fitness coaches and experts, like Maya Raichoora. Raichoora, author of the book Visualise, travels the world teaching time-honoured visualisation techniques to the top 1 per cent of earners and sporting gold-medal champions, but her book seeks to show everyone the power of a fit and capable mind.

“I want visualisation and mental fitness to be just as common as physical fitness,” she says. “We don’t think twice about working out our bodies, but we leave our minds to chance.”

Raichoora’s relationship with the practice of visualisation – a main tenet of mental fitness training – began during her teenage years. At 17, diagnosed with a chronic condition that left her physically diminished, she began to explore the possibility that her mind could remain strong even when her body felt as though it was failing her.

“My body could be very weak, but I absolutely believed my mind could be resilient,” she recalls. “Visualisation is something that really helped me not only have hope and strengthen my mind, but it also helped me with pain during my illness. It pushed me to learn more about the brain and why it can work to our advantage, rather than what most of us do – which is just leaving it to chance.”

Her recovery, and the resilience she built during that time, became the foundation for the work she now does. “I now treat my mental fitness just like my physical fitness,” she says. “It’s something I train, and it gives me a real advantage in life.”

The training is precise. When Raichoora talks about visualisation, she is not talking about vague affirmations or wishing things into existence. “Visualisation is the intentional creation of images, environments and feelings in your head before they happen.” There are similarities to meditation, but these mindset strategies are more personalised and more practical.

The five forms of visualisation

There are, according to Raichoora, five distinct forms of visualisation. “Outcome is where you see the ideal results of something in advance. This type really helps with motivation, belief and resilience.

“Next is process visualisation, where you mentally rehearse a task, activity or process to make it better, faster or smarter. This could be a golf swing, public speaking, or even a hard conversation with someone.

“Then you’ve got creative, when you make the intangible, tangible. It’s used for pain and managing emotions. Let’s say for example you visualise your anxiety as a red fire, you can then use your mind to pour water on it.

“Negative is when you see the worst case scenario, or things going wrong, but you train your mind to respond to it before it actually happens. Athletes use this all the time to be more prepared and have better performance.

“Last but not least is explorative, which is what Walt Disney and Einstein used. This is where your brain is like a whiteboard and you use it to create, problem solve and make decisions.”

What underpins these methods is neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to change. Raichoora points out that: “the brain struggles to know the difference between what is real and what is imagined. This means if you were to physically do something like play tennis, certain neurons in the brain fire up. However, if you were to just mentally rehearse playing tennis, nearly identical neurons activate – and we can really use this to our advantage.

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What’s happening here is you are taking advantage of neuroplasticity – which is the brain’s ability to change – and you are guiding it. Another part of this is that our brain has something called mirror neurons. This means if you are watching someone do an activity – like the athletes I work with, for example, who I get to re-watch their games or people who are better than them – your brain mirrors what you are watching and helps you to perform better.”

The practice itself is like a rehearsal and requires mental conditioning and cognitive resilience. Raichoora explains that it also requires commitment, much like any other form of training. Very few people are able to play an instrument or do ten pull ups without any prior training and to really be able to take advantage of your own neuroplasticity, there must be some level of consistency. The good news is that a person can apply these tools to almost any scenario.

“If you’re looking to visualise increased confidence for example, ask yourself what does being confident actually look like to you? If you aren’t clear, you’re just daydreaming. Whereas if you know confidence to you looks like saying ‘no’ more, or being braver, for example, it helps you when you’re in the visualisation.

“I would also suggest moving to a quiet place, closing your eyes and start by creating the imagery you are now clear on. Then, like watching a movie, I would advise you to mentally rehearse. Ask questions like how does this confident version of you walk into a room? How do they talk? How do they interact with people? Then keep repeating it, maybe three to five times in one visualisation, because the brain needs repetition,” says Raichoora.

She explains that for a practice like this, repetition matters more than intensity. Mental fitness training requires consistency but it can be quite a gentle practice.

“A little bit of breathwork and a moment of silence is perfect. I would do this perhaps for one minute every day, because doing it only once a week for example is going to be less useful,” she says.

Therapy you can take with you

Raichoora’s own life provides evidence of the effectiveness of this set of tools, tools that she explains aren’t original but that she has shaped for use in a frenetic modern world. She doesn’t attempt to position herself as someone who has mastered visualisation, but someone who has relied on it in practice and seen tangible results.

“I wouldn’t even be sitting here if it wasn’t for the power of visualising,” she says. “I truly know that I have been able to rewire my brain and level up in so many ways because of it. I also used it for building a global company, getting better at public speaking and my confidence has gone from being performative and fake, to actually feeling confident on the inside. It also means that even if I have hard days, I have these tools to rely on and I’m not stuck in that state for long, whereas I used to be.”

She likens the discipline of mental fitness to therapy, not as a replacement but as a complement. “I’ve had therapy,” she says. “And I think visualisation is in the same category as therapy in that it’s a form of processing. It’s a form of self-care. Therapy brings awareness to the stories you’re telling yourself, and visualisation lets you practically rehearse new ones.”

“You have to sometimes ask, what’s the root here? Why am I anxious? What am I resisting? What stories am I carrying? Once you’re aware of the story, you can decide whether to keep it or replace it. That’s where visualisation comes in.”

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In a world where there are several barriers to mental health access, it’s unsurprising that simple visualisation techniques blow up on social media and capture the attention of millions. But Raichoora does argue that a critical lens is important and that mental fitness techniques like visualisation, gratitude and repeating a mantra aren’t a magic bullet.

“What if it doesn’t work? Failure is data. Sometimes your visualisation feels empty, and rather than dismiss it, you lean in: what got blurry? Which image broke down? Then refine, repeat. The brain needs repetition. “Even one minute a day. One minute is enough if it’s every day. Sporadic bursts won’t change the wiring. Daily repetition does.”

The discipline extends beyond confidence or pain management in a single moment – the idea is that these techniques stay with a person for life and allow them to show up and live as the version of themselves they’re most satisfied with. Creating the toolkit that will allow a person to do this on a daily basis is a vocation that Raichoora takes very seriously.

In her work with clients, she teaches people to use process visualisation to prepare for difficult conversations, outcome visualisation to strengthen belief and resilience and creative visualisation to manage emotions. The techniques are practical, immediate, and available to anyone willing to practice them with clarity and consistency.

“There’s a line I really like, which is, ‘worrying is a misuse of the imagination,” she says. “We can train the mind to make imagination a reality and we can also train it to rewrite our stories.”

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