Ringgggg's Stupid-Simple Hand Perceiving Exercise

[ringgggg]

It's funny how easy spatial awareness is to practice on the side when you're bored.

 

Like, really easy.

 

The fact that proprioception involves sensing limb proximity makes exercises with it common sense, especially when you consider that you’ve already have an innate understanding of where your hands are beforehand. I’ve taken the time to make an exercise utilizing this for the benefit of anyone willing to give it a little test for themselves. Think of it as a five-pound weight you can add to your budding imposition escapades.

The premise of it is (as the title suggests) stupid simple, but keep in mind that this can be done with any amount of focus. Just remember that what you put in is what you get out.

 

I’m sure there are infinite variations of the exercise, but what I generally find myself gravitating towards is this:

 

1) Look over to where your hand is right now. Study its current perspective while it’s still, and observe how that perspective shifts when you move it. You’re taking a mental snapshot of what that looks like so that you can picture that perspective in the mind’s eye.

 

2) Now, close your eyes and move your hand around so it lines up with the way you’re visualizing it. During this time, you can feel around for it with your other hand to determine where it actually is in real life, effectively embedding its placement into your intuition.

 

3) Move your hand around slowly and try to visualize your motion with spatial awareness. It should naturally feel like it’s lining up with your hand’s true position, though trying to feel around for your real-life hand actually reveals that this is not the case. The important thing is that it feels accurate to you.

 

4) To work in detail, try and touch your fingers together (with both hands) while using the same process I described above. You’ll inadvertently have to visualize where the hands are in relativity to one another to be able to touch them together, making sure you take into account their proximity both to each other and to you. You can make it more difficult for yourself and set a certain point you want to aim for, too. Just make sure you’re refreshing where your fingers are pointed every time so you can keep it a mystery as to where they actually are.

 

With that being said, note that you’re only predicting where your hands are. By doing this, you’re effectively building up the expectation that you’re visualizing your hands exactly where they are in real life using the actual sensation of having your fingers touch together. 

 

Also, don’t doubt yourself here! Everything going on behind the scenes in that big brain of yours is mostly out of your control. It’d be like getting mad at your muscles for not being able to lift the couch. I know it’s cliche of me to mention here, but repetition is key.

 

Map, touch, reset, repeat. That’s all there is to it. Happy imposing.

Edited January 23, 2024 by ringgggg

[ArthurPandragon]

@ringgggg, your technic rang a bell in my mind since it recalled me my tip to induce lucid dreaming when I was in this stuff.

Actually, I regularly watched my hands during daytime and then fastly moved my fingers. My aim was assimilating the reflexe to perform the same during dreamtime and then observe that my fingers were neither blum nor clearly separate as when I had watched them for real, which would have made me realize I was dreaming.

[ringgggg]

So you’re saying it’s like FILD? Interesting parallel.

 

 

[2serpents]

Interesting, what is the goal - to get the perception of your hands closer to their actual position?

 

It also reminds me of a dreaming technique that we use, but the goal with that (and FILD as I understand it) is to get the impression of moving without actually moving at all, to keep awareness but away from the physical body.

[ringgggg]

13 minutes ago, 2serpents said:

Interesting, what is the goal - to get the perception of your hands closer to their actual position?

Basically, yeah. You’ll never get a truly perfect representation, you’ll just get better at guessing where it is because you’re able to visualize it easier.

[ArthurPandragon]

Yes, it was a FILD in my case.