Posture Release Imagery

I am adding an image here that came upon me early when I was recognizing the existence of the type-specific muscle tonus patterns. I knew how it fit in with the four types but I did not recognize how it specifically fit in with the dorsal/ventral, lateral, and peristaltic wave patterns I was beginning to recognize. so I buried it in my thoughts and computer. But now I think I have a way to describe it:

Excitement or liveliness can be an enjoyable part of our lives… and so can relaxed calm. Depending on their personalities and postural sets, people tend to express and experience one more than the other. That is fine… vive la différence. But being habitually stuck in one of the extremes is problematic. Just like we need sunlight and dark, we need to experience some of each of these qualities to have a fulfilling life and emotional health. Agreed?

I tend toward excitability. I don’t always contain my excitement well. As for calm, I can be calm… but not easily when I am also excited. So I have needed to work on containing my excitement, not by clamping down on it so much as expanding in some way in order to more easily contain it. The thought that you are expanding all over when you feel excited can allow it to be contained, painlessly. My wife, on the other hand, has a sentence that she uses not infrequently to describe what she wants. She says, “I want to bust out.” For her, excitement does not need to be contained so much as let out.

So, here is how I think imagery about our body surface can help us with whatever combination of containment or release that our “vessel” could use in order to be capable of a well-rounded to life’s events. The four types of body surfaces shown here ”experience” sensations felt that match my other type-specific imagery (which  use the blue, read, green, and yellow color coding). You will have to spend time “being” all of the types to understand. Look at the illustrations here and then read the exercise instructions below.

(To begin with, in the illustration above, the two figures separated off to the left are templates for the remaining four figures. To the far left is a figure that, with a white line running through it, shows the distinction between the “director” segment and the rest of the body. The second figure to the left shows them separated, since distinguishing between the two parts is necessary for this image exercise. Forgive me for not creating these characters in female form, as tall short, or racially different is many ways. It is the differences between their body surfaces that is of significance and this is just the easiest way to show that.)

Now, notice that the four types shown have either body surfaces that are solid (impermeable) or full of holes running through them (permeable). You will be imagining that parts of your body are either sealed shut (impermeable) and that NOTHING can get out or that your body surface is full of holes so that EVERYTHING can getting out (permeable). (In this exercise, we imagine that things can get IN, whether the surface is solid or full of holes. It is the ability for things to get OUT that is at issue here.) By “things,” I mean anything you might imagine - air, energy, water, whatever -anything that gives you the sensation of being filled up.

Experiment with the four variations above, blue - totally impermeable, red - impermeable on top, permeable below, green - impermeable everywhere, and yellow - permeable on top and impermeable below. Spend time with each variation until you have a sense of the distinct “posture personalities” that are produced by each imagining. The last one, the yellow one, for instance, produces a very ”laid-back,” perhaps even lazy individual. The second one, the red one, in contrast, produces an “alert,” possibly over-alert upright individual. With diligence, you will come to experience them all and find one you enjoy the most, probably your tonal “opposite.” Complete this and then go to the next part below. 

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In the drawing below, permeability and impermeablity are indicated again (using a “bear rug” schema). I use this method of describing the characteristic on the body, permeable or impermeable, because it is more subtle than the version above. Imagine that you are looking down at your “back side,” your dorsal side, here. The core of the body of the four variations are largely similar to the ones above (by color) but have variations on one side or the other. In other words, for example, the blue version is not totally impermeable like that pictured above but has some ”leaks” (permeability) on the left of the upper part of the body and the right of the lower part of the body. Bodies, and the body types I describe here, are not identical on the left and right sides. We all have some habitual bilateral tonal assymetry that this imagery can expose. 

(The small creature in the middle with fewer “holes” represents a neutral type, somewhat permeable or open, somewhat impermeable or closed).

This has been a long and perhaps complicated explanation of an image exercise. Like other image exercises, however, it has the definite potential of opening up to you new ways of seeing yourself… and being yourself.

Questions? Need clarification of something?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010 at 7:56 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.