Leading Your Movements
- It likes to move it, move it.
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Questions This Answers
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Direct & Indirect Information
You may have noticed that some areas of the body feel more natural for some queries than others. Your hands feel better at querying picking things up, while your feet feel more natural querying about walking. That is because hands are involved in picking things up and feet are involved in walking. They are part of the process and communicate more to you than a simple yes or no when you query them. The yes and no, that’s indirect information. A body part involved in the activity you’re intending, however, will also provide you with direct information: instructions for how your body wants you to perform the intended action. You can use querying to access muscle memory. While it’s easy to use muscle memory without querying, it’s fun to practice muscle memory with querying.
Lesson: Holding a Pen
- Place a pen down in front of you.
- Hold your hand out in front of you, paying close attention to it for a query.
- Intend to pick up the pen to write. Do not actually pick up the pen yet. This is a query. Unless you have written your hand to death today, your body likely has no reason to reject picking up the pen to write.
- Pay attention to the subtle sensations. Where did they move to? Move your attention to different parts of your hand. Where is the sensation?
- Rotate your hand in different directions, slowly, while still intending to pick up the pen to write. The sensations will adjust to your motions. Pay attention to where they move to.
- Try to move your hand in ways that follow the sensations. Make sure every little motion is an attempt to move in the direction of the sensations. You will find that they direct you to pick up and hold the pen.
This is direct information.
Practice:
Try practicing with it. You can intend to do anything that you have learned that is now in your muscle memory. Your body may still discourage some actions, but what it encourages it will also direct with direct information.
- If you know how to touch-type, pay attention to your hands query your body about. The sensations in your hands will move in very subtle ways to direct your fingers to the home row.
- If you play an instrument, pay attention to a body part involved in playing that instrument and run a query about playing it.
- If you play a sport, pay attention to a body part involved in the sport and query your body about performing a move that you have practiced a lot.
Indirect information is useful, but direct information can help more in a lot of situations.
