Many thanks for the comments, I shall certainly try that. It’s just plain wierd how these mental images affect the muscles!

I see what you mean about the internal parts, although on a few occassions while practising the technique I’ve had this amazing sensation for a few short minutes where I could feel my entire spine and almost ’see’ it in 3-dimensions – it was so easy to lengthen and control my body in all sorts of movements. This was fantastic, I haven’t experienced that for ages – wish I could make it happen again!

After all we have lots of muscles connecting the vertebrae – surely we can kinsethetically sense its position from the feedback from these muscles…

Of course it might be a completely unreliable sensation – but it really felt right, more than anything else I’ve felt!

I have a couple of thoughts and suggestions for the “block” you currently describe having (I am the writer of the article concerning dorsal and ventral surfaces, etc. that you have linked here). Your variety of inquiry sounds very good. Inquisitive minds solve problems.

Now for my thoughts: The article that you read, that contained the dorsal and ventral image exercise, next had an exercise concerning three functional units of the body, the “director,” “motor,” and “rudder” segments. I suggest that you read that again or one of the other articles on my website and play with freeing the “director” segment from the rest of the the body. Rather than attempt to free the neck, try freeing the “director,” which ends in the middle of the shoulder and splits the arms. You’ll have to read that portion of the article again. You may remember that the “director” segment should be thought to be horizontal and not verical like the “motor” segment. This is the most peculiar thing about the image… imagining that the director segment, which is horizontal, and motor segment, which is vertical, are free from each other and actually at right angles to each other actually brings the head and neck up and combats any tendency towards a Dowager’s hump. Imagining the two lateral halves of the body as separated from each other may also help. With diligence, one of these will do the trick.

I am more a fan of imagery of the sort that I have created than of thinking about internal parts, like vertebrae, that I cannot directly sense but can only infer from other surface sensations and antomical knowledge. Early man did not have internal anatomy knowledge but certainly could have plaid with body surface sensations and imagery.

That’s enough, I’m sure… and probably crazy stuff to someone who has not read the article.

John Appleton
posturereleaseimagery.org