Frequently Asked Questions

Win Wenger, Ph.D., is a pioneer in the fields of creativity and creative method, accelerated learning, brain and mind development, and political economy. He is the founder of Project Renaissance and its premier trainer. For more background, please see About Win Wenger.

“Creative Problem-Solving” (CPS) refers to creatively and ingeniously solving problems of all kinds. The world-wide creativity movement began around 1950, when Alex Osborn overthrew the established belief that one is simply born creative or born uncreative and not subject to change.

The Osborn-Parnes CPS Method, and Synectics, demonstrated that even very “uncreative” people could be retrained to be highly creative and effective problem-solvers. Osborn’s demonstration of “deliberate creativity” has been widely received in results-oriented business and industry and has made wide differences in many individuals’ careers and personal lives.

It has made only spotty progress in schools, government and statescraft. The high point in statescraft thus far was the use of Osborn-Parnes CPS Method to mediate a peaceful outcome to the apartheid crisis in the Union of South Africa. With problems piling up across the world much faster than they are getting solved, we in Project Renaissance feel there to be some urgency to getting more people — and more of the decision-makers — equipped with effective methods for solving problems.

Many proponents of various CPS methods feel theirs is the answer to everyone’s problems. However, among the varieties of problems, some solve more easily by one approach than by another, and true professional consultants or CPS professionals should have many various methods in their toolkit, each as a back-up to the others.

If you have a good method for solving problems, one of its best uses is on — the problem of how to create a better method for solving problems. Pursuing this principle over three decades, Project Renaissance has created literally hundreds of remarkably effective CPS methods and creativity-evoking techniques — which is why Project Renaissance is the source for a majority of the various CPS techniques now in professional use around the world.

“Accelerated Learning” (AL) refers to any method or set of methods which enables one to learn more, faster and deeper and with greater ease. Some forms of AL focus on rapid and long-lasting memorization of content such as foreign languages. That is the main strength of Suggestopedia, developed by Dr. Georgi Lozanov in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Other forms work with preferred cognitive styles or preferred learning styles among learners, matching content to those various styles to facilitate learning. Howard Gardner’s “seven intelligences” is an example of such an approach. Cooperative Team Learning in its various forms also represents an approach which considerably facilitates learning.

All the above are methods for putting information in, and most of them are concerned with how rapidly and for how long one may take ininformation content.

Project Renaissance, in contrast, is focused mainly on understanding rather than memorization. Project Renaissance focuses on transfer of knowledge, understanding and skills from initial learning context to other contexts. Project Renaissance is also concerned mainly with how to retrieve previously learned information and skills and understandings. We’ve found various forms of Socratic Method especially useful at pulling up into useful consciousness such a priori resources. It matters little how you put information in if you have a strong enough system for retrieving it.

Eighty to ninety percent of the brain, by volume, associates by sensory imagery. Less than two percent of the brain associates in words and word concepts, though that is where most of our conscious thinking and perceiving is. Most of our intelligence and nearly all our creativity are found in the unconscious part of our brain which associates in sensory images. Working in the language of that part of our brain wherein resides the vast majority of our intelligence, Image-Streaming accesses resources greater and more extensive than most of us are used to using in Western culture.

The practice of Image-Streaming is to “look inside,” allowing ourselves to become conscious of whatever imagery happens to be playing in “the back of our mind” — or “in the Mind’s Eye,” and to involve all the senses, not just vision.

To be a true Image-Stream, the visual and sensory content must be “spontaneous” — i.e., coming from elsewhere in your brain than where you consciously make your choices and decisions. It must not be a made-up story as in most daydreams; its contents should be free from your conscious direction in the sense that you decide to see a tree and then visualize a tree. Your conscious direction can be engaged in the very general regard that you can think of a question and then let your greater, sensory mind answer that question with unanticipated images. The more surprising those images, the more likely that you have engaged those further, beyond-conscious regions of the brain and mind which you are seeking to consult.

For a true Image-Stream, you also need to be describing those images aloud to a listener while you are experiencing and examining them. A listener will elicit from you the kinds of description which will most strongly, detailedly and effectively develop your conscious perception of your imagery. See Image-Streaming for detailed instructions.

Besides its entertainment value, besides aesthetics (much of the contents of this sensory imagery are most extraordinarily beautiful), and besides its practical value in answering questions, solving problems and bringing key insights into focus in education, there is some indication that Image-Streaming also integrates the brain and results in permanent gains in both meaningful intelligence and “I.Q.”

Formal studies are very much sought to more definitively determine this issue. Also needed are some high-speed, high-resolution scans of the brain during Image-Streaming, which could tell us very much about information-processing in the human brain.

With present methods of Image-Streaming, and with numerous back-up procedures to make sure that everyone is able to consciously perceive their own ongoing imagery, better than 99% of those who follow the printed instructions, or who are trained, succeed in Image-Streaming. This near-universality can be expected, given that sensory imagery association comprises the majority of the brains of every living human being. It speaks to a major practical and personal development tool’s being within the ready grasp of us all.

Don’t assume that the images will be as vivid as those experienced while dreaming. The image faculties that you use in daydreaming or simply imagining, for example, what your house looks like, are all you need to practice Image-Streaming. Your visualization abilities will get much sharper with practice. There are over 20 Back-Up Procedures to get your imagery started.

It’s usually best to describe what you sense, as you sense it. Explain or elaborate after the Image Stream is done. In problem-solving, sometimes an obvious point hits in the middle, and since the purpose was the insight, go ahead and voice it. But it’s almost always better to stay in the experience until it resolves itself, because engaging the left brain removes you from the right-brain sensory associations that hold what you seek.

First, especially when starting, use a live partner if possible. A live receiver at close range coaxes your creative process far better than a tape recorder, which only documents. Second, set and follow a firm schedule. Your inner consciousness will prepare for the next session as it prepares you for your next regular meal, or daily exercise. Third, expect each session uniquely to show you very special things once you settle into the process. Expect to go even further into the effects than before. Keep expecting each new session to be special — and it will be.

Having the listener, live or potential, changes what you say and how you say it — and changes how you hear what you are saying. It is the circuit, between what you describe and the feedback from your describing, that shapes and develops your experience of your own subtler perceptions. For more on drawing out deeper awarenesses, please see Feeding the Loop and The Socratic Continuum.

1)  You might make a game or exercise of describing other things around you when you are not Image-Streaming. One person I know got past his hurdle by describing into a tape recorder what he was seeing as he drove down the street or highway. Get comfortable with describing, then transfer your developed descriptive ability to Image-Streaming.

2)  Try some of the twenty-plus back-up procedures free online.

Among many forms of meditation, Image-Streaming is one, as is intensely listening to music or any other deliberately maintenance of a special mental, physical, emotional or spiritual state. Some may be more useful than others, depending on your moment and purpose.

I recommend this full drill:

1. Do 5-15 minute segments of Noise-Removal Breathing (NRB) until you have accumulated a few hours of combined experience.
2. Noise-removal breathe while putting your full attention on those frightening experiences and images. Allow yourself to feel all your fear. Expose those feelings to the ongoing NRB, allowing them to be “swept up and cleanly away” out of your body in those bright showers of sparks turning into good clean life energy….”
3. If need be, blowtorch-breathe on the worst fear-figures and see what you can burn up with those extra-hot showers of sparks.
4. When the fear is used up, satisfaction-breathe on the range and depth of experiences over which you now have control.
5. Next time a fear-figure shows up, in the freedom of your own mind, NRB “up and away” whatever had made it hurt…. — this almost always turns into a most beautiful and illuminating experience.

So long as you get undirected images and relate them to an audience in sensory detail, you will get intelligence improvement. To get relaxation, I recommend Calm-Breathing Patterns.

It should enhance all skills. You might get a little more by intending your practicing it to generate more math skills for you. You might also try Borrowed Genius and Toolbuilder.

I think the benefits are greater in one’s own primary language. However, doing it in a second language would be a fast track to further developing that language. However, one would have to be reasonably fluent in that second language to be able to truly Image-Stream and articulate the experience. Otherwise one would be in the left brain translating much of the time, with very little access to the sensory and perceptive functions that provide the images.

Description is indeed the key. Interesting as story lines are — and sometimes these also are productive of insights — a key part of growth is to be able to give more attention to your actual perceptions as compared to your expectations and to your perceptual and conceptual shortcuts.

Please examine the major article, Feeding the Loop, then consider: With a real or prospective listener, you speak differently than when no one else is around — and you hear yourself differently as well. Having a listener changes both the output and input sides of the feedback loop whereby our subtlest awarenesses get best developed.

A second reason is that, for bio-evolutionary reasons, our sensory feedback from external senses is more rapid and immediate than is our sensory feedback from internal senses. Coordinating what we express externally — if we can get the activities of subtler-perceiving, further-perceiving, reaches of the brain expressed externally — forces a more immediate relationship to form between those regions of the brain and our verbally based everyday consciousness. Only 2% of your brain associates in words; most of your brain associates in sensory images. Where, then, is most of your intelligence to be found?

A third reason is expressed in Windtunnel and The Socratic Continuum:   the need to get past the fluff and stock responses we have for everything, to the fresh and subtler awarenesses where the payoffs are to be found.

Seven hours a day for more than one day is not a very good idea unless you are willing to physically exercise strenuously an equal 7 hours/day to keep your system in balance. You should get in as much physical exercise as you spend time Image-Streaming or any other form of deep-state or meditative activity.

Yes. The very fact of putting these deeper realities into words, even concrete words, is an abstracting process. Your mind may be commenting on that, since cartoons are an abstracting process, getting to essential points from what would otherwise be a much more complex and involved picture.

For purposes of improving your contact between inner and outer worlds, I lean toward the many shorter sessions, though one good deep long plunge once in awhile helps keep it interesting and non-routine.

Describe what you get. If the phenomenon persists to the point where you think it’s getting in your way,

1. Ask your own faculties why you keep getting these animals and see what happens. And/or
2. Ask your own faculties what you need to deal with here to bring whatever’s going on to a good completion. And/or
3. Examine the animal, asking what you can notice about him that you haven’t caught before.

Freenote your observations and perceptions on anything and everything. Get in the practice of using it on many different things and in many different contexts, and you’ll find lots more extra awareness enriching everything you experience, not only the things you freenote on.

That effect does tend to fade with practice and will fade faster if you ask questions of your Image-Stream with the intention that your faculties will surprise you with what they show you in ingenious answer. This process will evolve even faster still if you use the High Thinktank procedure.

Practice objectively describing just what you’re seeing, whether with inner imagery or, for awhile, also with outer imagery (“that squarish object I think might be a barn is red— on this side, at least”), practicing describing only your actual sensory impressions and not your surmises. Sometimes that is hard to do, but doing it will make you powerfully more perceptive in all venues!

If it’s very hard to do, just go very fast in your onrushing description so when you turn to your imagination to fill in the picture, you’re going so much faster than you can think of what ought to be there, and for the time being that will be almost as developmental for your brain and perception as true Image-Streaming.

After accumulating some hours of this, though, if it’s still a problem, you might ask your own faculties — via Image-Streaming or via High Thinktank — what’s the best way to get on into the best core of this procedure.

These are very different, therefore complementary, and I recommend doing some of both to get the benefits of both.

I do have some questions regarding both the philosophy underlying eastern meditation’s instruction to discard the imagery as just more of the Maya or illusion to be dispensed with as one pursues some more fundamental reality, and the effects of such a practice, since the best minds of the cultures where such practice predominates have been pulled out of society and out of the contributions they could have been making to their world.

The philosophy — surely there must be some purpose to our being here in this possible illusion, with something to be learned from it, or all this existence has been the most ludicrously colossal waste of time and attention ever literally dreamed up! There must be something to learn from this material world around us and, by extension, also from our imagery which, as we’ve been finding so consistently, does instruct us to such advantage in this world.

I don’t know. I’m very reluctant to set up an external chemical dependency which is difficult to free oneself from afterward. If you use this artifice, it should be combined with an intensive period of brain development and exploratory brain-use, so that those dendrites have something useful to do and reason to remain after the chemical artifice is gone.

Mainly two, though these are far less than can be obtained through the mammalian diving response by actual held-breath underwater swimming. These two are:

1. Baggie breathing — re-breathing your breath in a small bag to conserve CO2. This is the “masking” procedure used by some clinics to repair some of the effects of brain damage, and is also used by LaMaze and other coaches of women headed into labor, as a contingency, should the mother-to-be hyperventilate.
2. Sip breathing — exhale as completely as you can, then hold, until you begin to feel that you have to do something about it. Then take in a small sip of air without letting anything out, and hold again, until you begin to feel that you have to do something about it. Then take in another small sip of air and hold again…. keep going by these delayed small sips of air, without letting anything out, conserving your CO2. You can go about twice as long this way conserving your CO2 as if you were simply holding your breath.When you’ve worked up to full lungs, hold that for as long as you reasonably can, force in a little more and hold that… until you pretty well have to let go, then let go.

Everything done within reason, nothing to extremes and not when driving. Advantage of this method is that it also exercises and stretches respiratory capacity (though held-breath underwater swimming does even this better). Pack a good many such cycles into just a few successive days, to cumulatively stretch your Carotid arteries and keep them from rebounding back shut.

Note:  When doing the underwater method, remain still. This allows the breathing reflex to kick in and you’ll know when you need to come up for air. Swimming while holding your breath will use up your oxygen very quickly as the muscles need it. You can learn more about this method in the online e-books.

There are tradeoffs. Moving around generates CO2 faster, and experientially may generate more feedback. Japanese inventor Nakamata probably gives himself more time underwater by sitting still. Generally speaking, I don’t see a major advantage either way, because of the tradeoffs. There may be strong advantage one way or another, differing from one individual to another. Use whichever method lets you build the most CO2 effect most comfortably within the safe limits of a supervised pool.

Quick answer: — You don’t use up much of the oxygen in your lungs, just a few percent from each breathful. Holding it in there for the CO2 will still be supplying oxygen to the brain — at almost the same rate for a good while, because of the expansion of the Carotid arteries to compensate.

Three recommendations—

• The two strongest general brain-builders I presently know of are Image-Streaming and
• The program for respiration-span/breathing-span and circulation to the brain in Two Guaranteed Ways to Increase Your Intelligence.
• Learn and practice a few rounds of Borrowed Genius. See if you can capture a feel for the desired proficiency and carry it with you into different working circumstances, and into your test.

Several additional recommendations:

• Clarification and calming — learn and practice the Calm Breathing Patterns. To accumulate even an hour or so of such process (in several shorter chunks of time) should make a considerable difference for you.
• Freenote and/or Windtunnel on some of the concepts of the subject(s) you are studying.
• If there is time, then also do a round or so with Toolbuilder — see if you can “go” to where everyone, even a dunderhead, is so proficient at that subject that over here they’d be considered geniuses at it. Go to and through the point of experience or process that makes that the case there — you may invent a new educational or training method all your own for this subject.
  

So far as we’ve been able to ascertain—

• The benefits from Image-Streaming appear to be permanent.
• Whether 300 IQ or 3000 IQ, our present IQ tests get quite inaccurate the higher the level they are measuring, so we won’t know until better tests are devised.
• The barriers are mostly normative pressures in a context where the vast majority of people are being raised or have been raised in far from optimal intellectual conditions. Expanding on one element of this point:— We grow and learn mainly from feedback on our own activities. It is often inconvenient for parents, siblings, neighbors, classmates, teachers, etc., to provide appropriate feedback on individual children’s interests, initiatives, perspectives and excitements.
  

I agree with you regarding standardized tests. That was not the only area in which the Reinert study fell short; before the study could be continued, the university closed down its entire Department of Physics and Chemistry (for “reasons of economy” — with Reinert’s among the best-attended classes in the whole school), preventing the answering of many questions which could have been asked of the study.

Chuck [Charles Reinert] was a physics professor, with no help from anywhere else in the school, and definitely not the psychology department. He used the Kolb because he happened to have it lying around. In a way I’m glad he did, because that particular outcome raised interesting questions it might not have occurred to me or us to ask otherwise.

A few more comments on Image-Streaming and IQ:

• Not all or even most of the extended results will show up on IQ tests, because most of the tests have too low a ceiling and thus are insensitive to improvements; and because most of what’s happening with Image-Streaming improvements consists of skills other than that of petty puzzle-solving, which is how even the tests that do measure higher discriminate someone with an IQ of 240 from someone with, say, 210. This is to be expected when the test takers so very strongly outstrip the intelligence of the people who designed the tests.
• You will find other gains from Image-Streaming to outweigh those from intelligence.
• Why not go ahead and run your own test? Especially when the procedure is provided in complete detail for free, in Image-Streaming. In a world of hyped claims and many disappointments, you just might find yourself pleasantly surprised.