Yo-Yo Ma Quotes

Dreaming means 'rehearsing' what you see, playing it over and over in your mind until it becomes as real to you as your life right now.

Visualization - it's been huge for me. Your mind doesn't know the difference between imagination and reality. You can't always practice perfectly - my fingers will play a little bit out of tune, or my dance moves might not be as sharp - but in my mind, I can practice perfectly.

You try to get mental reps through the eyes of others, then it's your job to kind of get your reps through your eyes. So that's kind of what I do.

I try to take as many reps as I can, whether it's on a video game, playing EA 'Madden Football' or in the playbook, just drawing it or just visualizing it in my head.

If you want to play something that you can't, you need to see and hear yourself doing it in your minds eye. It will start to happen

I've studied a technique called the Sanford Miesner technique, that teaches you how to focus. It's mainly about daydreaming. And the technique's really about imaginary circumstances. Using your imagination to sort of daydream about stuff. It makes you emotional in a scene.

Will is nothing more than a particular case of the general doctrine of association of ideas, and therefore a perfectly mechanical thing.

The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.

Space and time, not proteins and neurons, hold the answer to the problem of consciousness. When we consider the nerve impulses entering the brain, we realize that they are not woven together automatically, any more than the information is inside a computer.

The best and fastest way to learn a sport is to watch and imitate a champion.

Writers divide fairly cleanly into those who only work through what they hear and those who are more visual. I am the latter, where I lie down on my office floor and play scenes through my head to - cinematically, several times with different elements - to see what works. I can't write a scene until I can see it.

The cause-effect sequences in our brains are just as determining, just as inescapable, as anywhere else in Nature.

I always won in my imagination. I always hit the game-winning shot, or I hit the free throw. Or if I missed, there was a lane violation, and I was given another one.

When you read a book, the neurons in your brain fire overtime, deciding what the characters are wearing, how they're standing, and what it feels like the first time they kiss. No one shows you. The words make suggestions. Your brain paints the pictures.

If you start with character, you probably will end up with good drawings.

Only in your imagination can you revise.

I can kind of picture what I want to do and my body just does it. You feel your way through a trick. I close my eyes sometimes.

I visualize what I do before I do it. Visualizing makes me better.

I've learned my tricks watching videos on the Internet with friends. I'm always trying to copy what I've seen at home, what I learned from my friends. But you have to repeat it again and again to get it right on the field.

I like doing drills and when coaches take you through drills and stuff, but I don't like counting shots and things like that. I just shoot until I feel good.

I'm a big believer in the power of visualizations. And so are neuroscientists. Numerous studies have proven how merely imagining positive circumstances sends blood flowing from negative brain regions to positive ones.

I watch something in the gym, try to do it and may not get it. When I go home that night and my wife is talking to me and I'm not answering her, it is because I'm visualizing that thing I'm working on. I'll do that all day long. Before I go to bed I'm still thinking about it, and that happens until I can see myself doing it.

You don't ever want to be a mechanical basketball player, but as far as technique and things, I like to have certain check points in my shot, certain things that I can count on and think about. It kind of helps me to be consistent.

In the brain, you have connections between the neurons called synapses, and they can change. All your knowledge is stored in those synapses.

Sometimes, I believe I actually see the wheels in my brain turning.