Success with Posture Release Imagery requires some curiosity and willingness to experience sometimes odd or seemingly “wrong” sensations. It also requires a little tenacity because, for various reasons, the imagery exercises may fail to “work.”
I have already written some directions for executing many of the various imagery exercises you will find or have found in the PDF file articles and on the universal and type-specific exercise page’s. However, here are some more suggestions and some probably repeated ones to help with increased success with the imagery.
People are different in their ability to imagine Posture Release Imagery. However, you can get more effective with it over time if you discover and remove blocks to success you may have in front of you. I do not know what all blocks might be, but I will start with the most obvious advice and add whatever else I can bring to mind.
The most obvious suggestion is to eliminate any “multi-tasking” you might be doing as you are trying out an image. Driving a car and texting, for instance, is not an appropriate activity to be involved in while doing these exercises. While driving a car without doing other things, it may be possible to lightly refresh or remind yourself of an image with which you earlier have had success. That can be valuable (and not dangerous) in that circumstance. Things like listening to music when you work on the exercises I do not consider helpful. I see them as a possible or probable hindrance, but others might think differently.
Imagery can be used while in many different postural positions and while moving. Being on hands and knees, for instance, could be useful while imagining the archetypal organism that demonstrates the ideal dorsal-ventral surface relationship. However, since imagining is not the same as imitating (which interferes with good imagery), it is not that important to position your body anything like the image you are imagining.
Sitting up in a chair is the most secure position to be in while still being basically upright. This is usually the position of preference. Sit toward the front of the chair so you are not resting on the chair back and where the seat is not slopping backwards. Standing is less secure but can be the place where changes that are more exciting take place… for that very reason. Some imagery calls for standing and some is just easier to imagine in that position.
Moving is not a crime while doing the imagery. Moving that is either repetitive, like easily walking in an unobstructed environment or simple light movement, can sometimes be a useful way for an image to “jiggle” its way into our body structure. When not particularly moving, some of us can be physically “fixed” while doing an image exercise, therefore preventing the changes. Without being wild, “throwing caution to the wind” can be a useful thought to allow pass through your mind. We hate to give up our habits, even for a few seconds, and so the willingness to allow something new to visit your sensory world is important.
Lightly moving body parts and facial features can be occasionally helpful. However, if you tend to be fidgety, try not to move in that way so much. But when you are trying to imagine and you sense yourself motionless while nothing is happening, maybe a twitch in the face, a small wiggle of the fingers, toes, or “tail” may get you responding to the image.
Some exercises can be useful to imagine while you are easily standing and sitting. I heartily recommend playing with some of the imagery while jogging, hand-washing dishes, raking, and so forth. Besides the body positions to imagine in, there is the question of where to “position” the image itself. This requires experimentation, since individuals’ abilities to imagine vary and vary over time. Generally, the basic image instruction is to imagine that you actually are the archetypal creature depicted (with some allowance to imagine three dimensionally though my drawings generally lack in that regard). Alternately, you can imagine that you essentially have the creature’s qualities on your body, without totally changing shape to do so. That can reduce the impact but may be necessary.
However, images can also be imagined, with some success, to exist outside and away from your body, in the upper right, lower left, or elsewhere in your imagined visual field. In this case, you can then secondarily allow the tactile-kinesthetic qualities to land on your body surface. For instance, a white fuzzy dorsal surface can be imagined visually outside yourself and imagined (“felt”) on your body surface as well.
Finally, at some point it may be very fruitful to imagine that “ideal” creature is inside of you! If the creature is imagined to be small enough to comfortably fit inside yourself, the image can become a pleasant influence upon your structure and movements, without requiring you to give up your actual (and habitual) attributes all at once. You can be your old self, but a source of structural strength and ease will be inside, working away on a less than comfortable shell. The more you pay attention to a new “inner self,” the more it changes your outer self.
These are just ideas that may help with imagery you have already worked with. Some of these suggestions may allow images to take on new life. Undoubtedly, other approaches or hints that I cannot think of right now exist to help people to greater success with PRI.
I may be able to clarify more if you have questions of me or you have suggestions for others and me. Feel free to write.