A new online course!

Imagine That: The Science, Power, and Magic of Your Imagination

Wednesday, September 16 • 10am – 12pm PDT
Registration will open in mid-August.

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Your imagination is more than you think...

It’s not a place you visit once in a while. It’s a capacity you carry with you, waiting to be trained, trusted, and enlisted in good work.

Your imagination is a foundational part of what makes you human. It’s a skill, a tool, and a working cognitive system, as trainable and consequential as memory or attention, and one of the most under-recognized levers for change we have. It’s also a territory of being that plays by different rules than ordinary awareness, and links us to an infinite field of consciousness that holds information and energy that can’t be accessed in any other way.

In this highly interactive workshop, Dr. Cassandra Vieten draws on her new book, Imagine That, and years of research at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination to guide you through the emerging science of imagination: what it actually is, the three core domains it operates through (cognitive-narrative, sensory-motor, and social-emotional), and how it shapes your body, perception, and behavior in ways you rarely notice.

Course Overview

Wednesday, September 16 • 10am – 12pm PDT

You’ll learn about the neurodiversity of imagination and learn ways to explore what kind of imaginer you are. From there, we’ll turn to imagination’s power with real-time practices with the VISTA toolkit (Visualizing, Ideating, Sensing, Transforming, Applying). We’ll close by venturing into the magic of imagination and its relationship to consciousness, spirituality, shamanic traditions, psychedelic-assisted healing, and virtual reality and how deliberately unlocking your imagination can re-enchant your life. Expect experiential exercises, small-group work, and tools you can start using immediately.

Key Takeaways

Understand the science

Explore what imagination is, how it differs from memory and perception, and how it shapes the body and behavior through its three core domains: cognitive-narrative, sensory-motor, and social-emotional.

Discover your imagination profile

Locate yourself on the neurodiversity spectrum of imagining and identify your personal strengths as an imaginer.

Practice the VISTA toolkit

Leave with hands-on experience in Visualizing, Ideating, Sensing, Transforming, and Applying, and a clear sense of how to use each for health, relationships, and creative problem-solving.

Apply imagination to your future

Learn practical approaches for using imagination to support mental and physical health and to actively chart a course toward your future self., and our collective futures.

Explore imagination’s deeper dimensions

Connect the dots between imagination, consciousness, shamanism, psychedelic-assisted healing, and VR, and leave with a felt sense of how reclaiming imagination can re-enchant everyday life.

Course Developer

Cassandra Vieten is Clinical Professor and Director of the Center for Mindfulness at the Centers for Integrative Health in the Department of Family Medicine at UC San Diego. She is also Director of Research at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination and Clinical Psychology Director at the Psychedelics and Health Research Initiative at UCSD. She is Senior Advisor of the John W. Brick Mental Health Foundation where she served as Executive Director from 2019-2023, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, where she served as President from 2013-2019. Her research has focused on spirituality and health, transformative experiences and practices, the development of mindfulness-based interventions for emotional well-being, and development of media technologies to inspire awe. She is author of the forthcoming book Imagine That: Transform How You Think, Feel, and Live with the Science of Imagination (Simon and Schuster, August 2026)

Are You Ready to Explore Your Imagination?

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You May Also Be Interested In the Book

The course pairs perfectly with Cassandra’s book Imagine That: Transform How You Think, Feel, and Live with the Science of Imagination. Backed by science, Cassandra reveals her original research behind the science of imagination as the key to human flourishing and progress, showing you how to harness it to transform your life.

The Imagine That: The Science, Power, and Magic of Your Imagination course allows Cassandra to dive even more deeply into some of the elements contained in the book, through robust lectures and course-specific experiential practices.

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