The Body’s Responses

You can find them anywhere.

The Body’s Responses
Positive (green, left) and negative (red, right) hand directing sensation locations, from different angles relative to a glass of water, when intending to pick up the glass of water, to drink it.
Prerequisites	Conversing with Your Body
Risks	Possible rebuild: Short term (15-75 min) Light sensitivity Need to elevate feet Attention disruption
Conversing with Your Body Needs Questions This Answers Do I need to use my hands? My hands are so busy. How about my nose? Chin? Eyes? Hips? Can I use my feet? My feet are made for walking, ‘cause that’s just what they do. What about my elbows? Can I get an answer in my lips? While we’re on the subject, why do lips quiver? What about the back of my neck? What’s that back of the neck tingly sensation? That thing is awesome.

You can trigger responses in any part of your body. Responses in your hands tend to be the most versatile, however there are many situations in which another body part might be more convenient to use to get information from your body. Different body parts might also feel more natural for different queries. This is especially the case if the body part you are querying with is directly involved in physically performing the intended action.

To get a response to a query from your hand, attend to your hand and intend to perform an action. A positive action-directing sensation in your hand moves towards performing the intended action, while a negative sensation moves away from the intended action. For actions that have no direction, this tends to be in front of you or behind you, respectively.

This works similarly throughout your body. It takes practice to get used to recognizing the sensations. If a sensation is confusing, don’t worry. You’re not the one confused in that situation. Your internal systems don’t have an answer for you yet. Ask again. You may get a clearer answer, or you may trigger a rebuild. Either way, you’re making progress.

However, the hands aren’t the only areas that you can use to get information from your body. This page will show you how to get information from every other part of your body. The encouragement or discouragement, yes or no, information you receive is the same throughout your body. You aren’t asking different parts of your body questions. The same answers will be returned in every part of your body. Some body parts will be more related to whatever action you are asking about, such as your hands to eat and your feet to walk. In those situations, they may be more convenient and possibly more useful than the simple yes or no you get from an unrelated body part.

When you learn the sensations for each part of your body, try them for yourself. Mix it up. Compare, contrast, and have fun with it. If you notice anything odd, send me your results. I’m dying to hear about all your experiences with it.

Foot Responses

Positive (green, left) and negative (red, right) feet directing sensation locations when intending to perform an action, such as sit down.

Lesson: Finding and Using the Sensations

1. Stand up normally.
2. Pay attention to your feet.
3. Imagine or intend to sit down. Do not actually sit. This is a query. You are asking your body a question.
4. Notice how your feet feel. Do they feel grounded, like you’re anchored to the ground by your heels? Do they feel energetic, like moving your feet around or wiggling your toes?

Practice: Asking Questions

Repeat this with different body positions until you are comfortable with it. You are looking to identify and get used to:

• A positive response. In a positive response, the sensation in your feet will move towards your toes, encouraging you to move.
• A negative response. In a negative response, the sensation in your feet will move towards your heel, encouraging you to stay in place.

Now try it with food. Pay attention to your feet and intend to pick up a glass of water. The sensation will move in the same way to provide a positive or negative response. It doesn’t matter what body part you use for what question you ask your body. Questions feel conceptually more natural for body parts that would be directly involved in performing the action, but if you can find the positive and negative responses in a body part, you can use that body part to ask your body about any action.

Facial Responses

Positive (green, left) and negative (red, right) nose-directing sensation locations when intending to perform an action, such as drink water.

There are many areas of the face that each provide their own responses to intended actions. They all feel like a tightness or drawing of facial muscles.

Lesson: Finding and Using the Sensations

1. Pay attention to your nose.
2. Imagine or intend to drink water. Do not actually drink. This is a query. You are asking your body a question.
3. Notice how your nose feels. Does it feel pulled towards the water you intend to drink? Does it feel pulled back, away?

Practice: Asking Questions

Repeat this with the different parts of your face and different items until you are comfortable with it. You are looking to identify and get used to:

• A positive response. In a positive response, the part you are focusing on will feel pulled towards performing the action or pulled forwards if the action does not have a particular direction.
• A negative response. In a negative response, the part you are focusing on will feel pulled away from performing the action or pulled backwards if the action does not have a particular direction.

Other Facial Regions

Cheek

Forehead

Chin

Throat

Lips

Positive (green, left) and negative (red, right) face-directing sensation locations when intending to perform an action, such as drink water.

The Lip Quiver

Lips have a vibrational muscle movement sensation that comes with a positive response: the lip quiver. A lip quiver occurs when lips are not closed during a query that attends to lips and returns a positive response.

Abdominal Responses

Positive (green, left) and negative (red, right) abdominal directing sensation locations when intending to drink water. Sensations extend up from the triggered location.

Lesson: Finding and Using the Sensations

1. Sit up or stand up normally.
2. Pay attention to your abdomen.
3. Imagine or intend to drink a glass of water. Do not actually drink a glass of water. This is a query. You are asking your body a question.
4. Notice how your abdomen feels. Do you feel a contraction? Is the contraction downward and expansive or upward and compressive?
5. Are you noticing any sensations in your chest, throat, or mouth?

Practice: Asking Questions

Repeat this with different foods until you get comfortable with it. You are looking to identify and get used to, in order of importance:

• A baseline positive response. In a positive response, the sensation in your abdomen will feel downward and expansive, and may extend to your mouth, neck and chest, like it wants you to pull food inside you, scarfing it down.
• A baseline negative response. In a negative response, the sensation in your abdomen will feel upward and contractive, and may extend to your mouth, neck, and chest, like it wants you to vomit.

Under normal circumstances, you won’t want to use this area for querying your body, as the negative response is a very weak version of the vomit reflex. However, for the one possible benefit to using this area excessively, please see Rapid-fire Grocery Querying.

Eye Responses

Eye Directing Sensations

Positive eye-directing sensations

Negative eye-directing sensations

These diagrams are meant to shows your vision. The highlighted red or green is where your eyes will be pulled to look. Positive (green, top) and negative (red, bottom) eye-directing sensation locations when intending to perform an action, such as drink water.

Eye responses can be very useful for finding where your body wants your attention, if it wants your attention on something that is somewhere in the room that you’re in.

Lesson: Finding and Using the Sensations

1. Pay attention to your eyes.
2. Imagine or intend to drink water. Do not actually drink. This is a query. You are asking your body a question.
3. Notice how your eyes feel. Do they feel pulled towards the water you intend to drink? Do they feel pulled away to the side?

Practice: Asking Questions

Repeat this with different items until you are comfortable with it. You are looking to identify and get used to:

• A positive response. In a positive response, your eyes will feel pulled towards performing the action or pulled forwards if the action does not have a particular direction.
• A negative response. In a negative response, your eyes will feel pushed away from performing the action or pushed away to the side if the action does not have a particular direction.

Tongue Responses

Positive (green, left) and negative (red, right) tongue directing sensation locations when intending to drink water. In a negative response, sensations can extend back to the throat in a weak gag reflex.

The tongue is a bit more difficult to get used to receiving positive or negative responses from than other body parts, but you can get used to it with practice, if you want to use it for this.

Lesson: Finding and Using the Sensations

1. Pay attention to your tongue.
2. Imagine or intend to drink a glass of water. Do not actually drink a glass of water. This is a query. You are asking your body a question.
3. Notice how your tongue feels. Do you feel it lightly pulled in a particular way? Is it contracting backward or curving up and being pulled forward?

Practice: Asking Questions

Repeat this with different foods until you get comfortable with it. You are looking to identify and get used to, in order of importance:

• A baseline positive response. In a positive response, the sensation in your tongue will feel curved upward and pulled outwards.
• A baseline negative response. In a negative response, the sensation in your tongue will feel compressed backwards, and may extend to a weak gag reflex.

Arm Responses

Your arm can provide the same type of directional sensations that your hand can, both on an individual part level and together as a whole. As these parts do not have as many moving parts as your hand, the sensations are a bit less detailed, but they are still useful.

Lesson: Finding and Using the Sensations

1. Pay attention to that same subtle sensation in your arm that you felt in your hand. Where in your arm do you feel it, specifically?
2. Imagine or intend to drink water. Do not actually drink. This is a query. You are asking your body a question.
3. Notice how the sensation in your arm moved. Where did it move to?

Arm Directing Sensations

Positive arm-directing sensations

Negative arm-directing sensations

Positive (green, top) and negative (red, bottom) arm directing sensation locations when intending to perform an action. As shown, areas and ranges of motion are the same for positive and negative responses. It's mainly the relative direction of the sensation compared to the intended behavior that will indicate whether the sensation indicates a positive or a negative.

Practice: Asking Questions

Repeat this with other areas of your arm, and with different items, until you are comfortable with it. You are looking to identify and get used to:

• A positive response. In a positive response, the part you are focusing on will feel pulled towards performing the action.
• A negative response. In a negative response, the part you are focusing on will feel pulled away from performing the action.

Other Upper Body Responses

Positive (green, left) and negative (red, right) neck directing sensation locations when intending to perform an action. A negative response feels stiffening, while a positive response tends to produce a pleasurable tingle.

There are many areas on your upper body that each provide their own responses to intended actions. The most useful one is the back of your neck. The tingly sensation in the back of your neck tends to be pleasurable and is useful if you want to reward yourself for taking care of your body.

Lesson: Finding and Using the Sensations

1. Pay attention to the back of your neck.
2. Imagine or intend to drink water. Do not actually drink. This is a query. You are asking your body a question.
3. Notice how the back of your neck feels. Does it feel tingly and relaxing? Does it feel squeezed stiff?

Practice: Asking Questions

Repeat this with other upper body areas, and with different items, until you are comfortable with it. You are looking to identify and get used to:

• A positive response. In a positive response, the part you are focusing on will feel pulled towards performing the action or, as in the back of the neck, tingly and pleasurable.
• A negative response. In a negative response, the part you are focusing on will feel stiffened and compressed, reducing mobility.

These other areas don’t provide the same pleasurable response that the back of the neck produces, but they can still be useful areas for querying.

Upper Body Directing Sensations

Back of the head

Shoulder

Upper back

Mid-back

Positive (green, left) and negative (red, right) mid-back directing sensation locations when intending to perform an action.

Certain areas of the upper body only provide directional information, such as your side, your overbust and your underbust. In those areas, the only difference between a positive and a negative response is whether the sensation is pulling towards or away from performing the intended action.

Upper Body Directing Sensations

Overbust

Side

Underbust

Positive (green, left) and negative (red, right) side, overbust, and underbust directing sensation locations when intending to perform an action. These locations only provide directional information.

Positive (green, left) and negative (red, right) breast directing sensation locations when intending to perform an action. Pictured is attention on the individual's left breast, however, it works the same way for the right breast.

Finally, with attention on the bust itself, responses appear to occur in other areas of the torso rather than in muscles within the bust itself. The responses can appear in your back, directly behind the bust. They can also appear to the side of the bust. This seems to help direct where a breast points, in ways that the muscles within your breast are not able to assist you with. This behavior of your body providing breast-pointing instructions from areas that do not include the breast itself could be evolutionarily selected for, as pointing the breast at a mouth is important for both breastfeeding and relationships.

Pelvic Responses

Positive (green, left) and negative (red, right) lower back directing sensation locations when intending to perform an action.

Your pelvis has several areas that can provide behavior directing responses. You are likely going to want to be standing while first learning these queries.

Lesson: Finding and Using the Sensations

1. Pay attention to your lower back, just above your buttocks.
2. Imagine or intend to drink water. Do not actually drink. This is a query. You are asking your body a question.
3. Notice how your lower back feels. Does it feel relaxed and directed towards the action? Does it feel squeezed stiff and directed away from the action?

Practice: Asking Questions

Repeat this with other pelvic areas, and with different items, until you are comfortable with it. You are looking to identify and get used to:

• A positive response. In a positive response, the part you are focusing on will feel pulled towards performing the action.
• A negative response. In a negative response, the part you are focusing on will feel pulled away from performing the action. There will also be a clenching sensation.

Positive (green, left) and negative (red, right) buttocks and hip directing sensation locations when intending to perform an action.

Three areas that all result in a clenching response when the response is negative are the buttocks, groin, and the wider area of the pelvis.

Pelvis Directing Sensations

Buttocks

Pelvis

Groin

Positive (green, left) and negative (red, right) groin and pelvis directing sensation locations when intending to perform an action.

Leg Responses

Positive (green, left) and negative (red, right) upper leg directing sensation locations when intending to perform an action.

Your leg can provide directional sensations and different types of responses in positive and negative situations. This works on an individual part level and together as a whole.

Lesson: Finding and Using the Sensations

1. Pay attention to that same subtle sensation in your upper leg that you felt in your hand. Where in your leg do you feel it, specifically?
2. Imagine or intend to drink water. Do not actually drink. This is a query. You are asking your body a question.
3. Notice how the sensations and contractions in your leg moved. In what way did it move?

Practice: Asking Questions

Repeat this with other areas of your leg, and with different items, until you are comfortable with it. You are looking to identify and get used to:

• A positive response. In a positive response, the part you are focusing on will feel pulled towards performing the action, and you will feel pulled downward behind your leg, towards bending your knee.
• A negative response. In a negative response, the part you are focusing on will feel pulled away from performing the action, and you will feel an upward pull behind your leg, towards straightening your knee.

Leg Directing Sensations

Knee

Lower leg

Positive (green, left) and negative (red, right) leg directing sensation locations when intending to perform an action.

Positive (green, left) and negative (red, right) leg directing sensation locations when intending to perform an action.

Expanding to a Wider Area

When starting out, every body part that you try to get a response from should be a small area. That’s why I’ve focused on a knee or a single hand, rather than a wider area. It takes practice and rebuilds to get larger areas to respond together when you put your attention on them. However, you can get them working. Below is a diagram of the responses from attending to an entire leg simultaneously. You can try to get it working if you’re interested and find that it might be useful for you. Consider this a steppingstone to the areas in the following sections that are much wider and more difficult.

Wide-Area Responses

Up until the full legs in the previous section, every area that you’ve learned to put your attention on has been specific. This is because the wider the area, the more difficult it is to get a response, by default. You will have to go through rebuilds to adapt to handle larger areas. You may not need to do that. However, if you do want to be able to receive responses in larger areas, you can with practice.

Responses in wide areas, such as putting your attention on your full head, your full upper body, your full lower body, or your entire body simultaneously produces the same responses that the individual areas produce. The main difference is that because so much is going on, it’s hard to differentiate or pay attention to any one specific instruction. That’s why I haven’t diagrammed those areas for you. It would take a lot of rebuilds to get used to this and get better at it, but if you really want to, improvements do appear to be possible. You can look at the previous diagrams to see what the possible response activations are in the areas that you are attending to simultaneously.

Dual Wielding

Sensory Homunculus and Motor Homunculus sculptures at the Museum of Natural History, London, based on the cortical homunculi mapped by Dr. Wilder Penfield. Photographed by Dr. Joe Kiff.

Even though my abilities have expanded to attend to wide areas of my body simultaneously for receiving body communication responses, I still couldn’t attend to responses in both of my hands at the same time until very recently. It is very difficult to get working, requiring many rebuilds. Perhaps you can get it working for yourself. Perhaps not. Regardless, this difficulty to get both hands to work for responses simultaneously is likely natural. The reason that it’s so difficult to attend to body directing responses in both hands simultaneously becomes apparent when you look at sensory and motor homunculi. These homunculi are sculpted representations of the amount of neural tissue in the sensory and motor cortexes of your brain devoted to sensing and controlling each area of your body, respectively.

Look at how huge the hands are in those sculptures. That’s the amount of neural tissue devoted to your hands. Since we humans use our hands so much and in such complex ways, the human brain devotes a lot of real estate to sensations from hands and the ability to make hands move. Attention on one hand is focused. Your body can easily communicate with you through that focused attention, directing your hand. However, when your attention is spread to both hands, it can get a bit fuzzy. Additionally, that attention on receiving body communication responses in both hands simultaneously can get problematic fast. It may not respond for you at all, or it may feel a bit overwhelming. Give adapting to it a shot, if you think it may be useful for you, but be prepared for rebuilds throughout the adaptation process.

Review

A Handy Recap

• Your hands aren’t the only areas that you can use to get information from your body. There are many situations in which another body part might be more convenient or feel more natural to use to get information from your body.
• If a sensation is confusing, it’s likely that your internal systems don’t have an answer for you yet.
• The encouragement or discouragement information you receive is the same throughout your body. You aren’t asking different parts of your body questions. The same answers will be returned in every part of your body.

Foot Responses

• Foot: In a positive response, the sensation will move towards your toes, encouraging you to move. In a negative response, it will move towards your heel, encouraging you to stay in place.

Facial Responses

• Sensations in the face all feel like a tightness or drawing of facial muscles.
• Cheek, forehead, chin, throat, lips: In a positive response, the part you are focusing on will feel pulled towards performing the action or pulled forwards if the action does not have a particular direction. In a negative response, the part you are focusing on will feel pulled away from performing the action or pulled backwards if the action does not have a particular direction.
• Lips: In a positive response, if your lips are not closed, a lip quiver will likely occur.

Abdominal Responses

• Abdomen: In a positive response, the sensation will feel downward and expansive, and may extend to your mouth, neck and chest, like it wants you to pull food inside you, scarfing it down. In a negative response, the sensation will feel upward and contractive, and may extend to your mouth, neck, and chest, like it wants you to vomit.
• A negative response in your abdomen is a very weak version of the vomit reflex, so try not to use it very often, as your body will not like that

Eye Responses

• Eyes: In a positive response, your eyes will feel pulled towards performing the action or pulled forwards if the action does not have a particular direction. In a negative response, your eyes will feel pushed away from performing the action or pushed away to the side if the action does not have a particular direction.

Tongue Responses

• Tongue: In a positive response, it will feel curved upward and pulled outwards. In a negative response, it will feel compressed backwards, and may extend to a weak gag reflex.

Arm Responses

• You can run queries using any part of your arm, or your whole arm.
• Arm: In a positive response, the part you are focusing on will feel pulled towards performing the action. In a negative response, the part you are focusing on will feel pulled away from performing the action.

Other Upper Body Responses

• Back of head, back of your neck, shoulders, upper back, middle back: In a positive response, the part you are focusing on will feel pulled towards performing the action. In a negative response, the part you are focusing on will feel stiffened and compressed towards your spine, reducing mobility.
• Back of your neck: A positive response will feel tingly and pleasurable.
• Overbust, underbust, sides: Only provides directional information towards or away from your intended action.
• Bust: Responses appear to occur in other areas of the torso rather than in muscles within the bust itself. Responses can appear in your back directly behind your bust, or to the side of the bust, helping to direct where your breast is pointing.

Pelvic Responses

• Lower Back: In a positive response, it will feel pulled towards performing the action. In a negative response, it will feel pulled away from performing the action and you will get a stiffening, compression sensation around your spine.
• Hips: Only provides directional information towards or away from your intended action.
• Buttocks, groin, pelvis: In a positive response, it will feel pulled towards performing the action. In a negative response, it will feel pulled away from performing the action and you will get a clenching sensation.

Leg Responses

• You can run queries using any part of your leg, or your whole leg, though your whole leg may be more difficult to get working.
• Legs: In a positive response, the part you are focusing on will feel pulled towards performing the action, and you will feel pulled downward behind your leg, towards bending your knee. In a negative response, the part you are focusing on will feel pulled away from performing the action, and you will feel an upward pull behind your leg, towards straightening your knee.

Wide-Area Responses

• Wider areas are more difficult to get responses from. You will have to go through rebuilds to adapt to handle larger areas.
• Responses in wide areas produce the same responses that the smaller areas that they overlap produce.
• With so many responses occurring simultaneously thought your body, it’s hard to differentiate or pay attention to any one specific instruction.

Dual Wielding

• It is very difficult to get sensations in both hands working simultaneously. It tends to require a lot of rebuilds.
• The difficulty of using both hands simultaneously (dual wielding) is likely due to the extreme amount of neural tissue devoted to feeling and moving your hands.

Conversing with Your Body

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