^Thank you for the contribution, but what is meant by visualization prayer?
In medieveal Western devotion, it became common to use the imagination in prayer. When one prayed to Christ, one was encouraged to 'visualize' Him on the Cross, to think about the actual bloody wounds in His hands and feet, the stripes on His back, etc. During the Counter-Reformation, this approach was emphasized even further and systemized by individuals like Ignatius of Loyola whose Spiritual Exercises
are largely a set of scenes that the believer should visualize as thoroughly as possible--to the extent that you can 'smell' the sweat of the crowd and 'hear' the individual epithets as they cry out 'crucify him'. This approach is very distinct from that of the Desert Fathers who emphasize the exact opposite--that one should *not* allow the imagination to run free but should rather attempt to empty the mind of anything and everything but the words of the prayer.