Eyes, Imagination, Abstract Thought and Muscles all Tangled Together

Coupling is when moves or processes get joined together enough that the joining becomes habitual. For instance, when you turn your head you probably turn your shoulders a little, lean on one sit-bone, and cast your eyes in the same direction as the head-turn. It makes sense for shoulders, sit-bone and gaze to follow the head's lead. But it is also really useful to separate them out — to disassociate them — and then to put them back together and notice the difference. In a Feldenkrais lesson we might have you move your head to the right but your eyes to the left, then after a while go back to moving the head and eyes in the same direction and Shazam! Something feels clearer and lighter. When eyes are involved this technique is especially powerful, but whoa is it complicated. The coupling happens with genuinely visual work involving the eyeballs — moving your eyes, looking — as in the example of turning your head. It also happens with visual-adjacent work when you imagine a visual object but only in your mind's eye. Yet you still engage your ocular muscles. And finally there is an even weirder visual coupling with abstract thinking. Abstract thinking may not be visual at all but it still seems to require many of us to engage our eyes: mental effort like fancy math or figuring out what epistemic justice means. Basically, if you squinch your eyes or rotate your eyeballs when you move, imagine something visual or work on a non-visual idea, then coupling with the eyes is going on. It can be very interesting to uncouple those eyeball/brain rest-of-body habits.