Body Imagery

Are you able to close your eyes and "see" your body? What do you see?

Do you see colours? Do you see mass and hollow? Or do you sense it in another way? Ie: Sounds and feelings?

Seeing the body is the process of bodily awareness - to be aware of which part of your body or rather muscles is active, which part is passive.

Activity is when a muscle participates in a supporting function in your posture or movement, either mildly or in extreme. It may be extended, or contracted.

Generally, the bodily muscles work together to move, even in a small movement, like lifting a glass of water, as one change in a muscle, creates responses in various adjoining muscles, and all our muscles are intertwined, connected, working as a whole system. Technically, any effort to stop certain parts of the muscles from responding develops into unnatural movements, which inevitably develop tension in another part which is overworked.

When one portion of muscle is overworked, there will certainly be parts of the body muscles which are underworked - passive.

These passive muscles are unhealthy, as habits causing its lack of use will certainly lead to decline of its strength, leading to atrophy, and of course postural changes.

This imbalance may start in one way or the other - either a person had developed the habit of tensing up certain muscles, or the habit of letting certain parts of the body drop when doing an activity.

Movements require full enthusiasm and commitment

It's like, "why do we need to be happy?" As in, we choose to be happy in whatever we do. Because we have to live whether we are happy or not, and we may have to do things we wish we didn't have to, so why not do it well, and do it happily in a relaxed and positive manner?

Movements are the same. We can move like we are forced to, like we don't really care about it, or we can move like we really mean to, using the whole body, the whole set of muscles involved.

Compare doing something alone to involving everyone around you. 

Everything, including your back, your head, and your bottom, even your legs and your feet moves along, but in a somewhat relaxed, yet directed manner.

So, what do you do, if the body is not wholly involved?

It could mean having to let go of tense muscles. It could mean picking up slacking muscles.

But another way, is also to sense the whole body. To see it moving as a whole. To see it all lit up inside, or to feel that the energy is through. 

This imagery is not just limited to the anatomical body. As you learn to be conscious of the insides of the body, also be aware of what's outside. As we move, our energy fills the space around us. To be able to fully fill up this space, your body would have already been balanced.

Exercises to do this

There can be guided or standard exercises to achieve full balance of the body. Practices of Qigong and Taichi was developed in the way that helps a practitioner develop this flow in the body and outside.


However, a generally good mover have good balance and awareness of the body and its surrounding space as a whole.


In an active warm up, where you move in your stretching instead of doing static stretching, your aim to find these areas of imbalance, stuck energy and other tension in the body, and let them through.

Which is why, active stretching with body awareness is more ideal compared to standard warm ups as our bodies are different from one another and from one day to another. To do so, it involves the coordination between mind and body.

To respond to these differences are only wise, if one is to perform well.