Imagine an apple

Alexander technique with Michael Ashcroft

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO EXPERIENCE “OPEN AWARENESS”? WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DOING AND NON-DOING? WHAT IS “THINKING”? Welcome to another episode of “Imagine an apple”. In this episode, Vynn and Francis talk with Michael Ashcroft about what it is like to do Alexander Technique, an awareness-based skill which he teaches. Twitter: @imagine_apple [https://twitter.com/imagine_apple] @SurenVynn [https://twitter.com/SurenVynn] @frabcus [https://twitter.com/frabcus] Timestamps: 01:00 Michael’s introduction to Alexander Technique 03:00 The origins of Alexander Technique 05:32 Internal Awareness 05:40 Michael Imagines an Apple! 06:44 How does AT make people aware of their awareness? 08:01 Coming back to the world 09:15 Being in the world 11:06 Attention in the world 12:10 Flow states 14:25 Non-doing 17:39 Habitual responding and not responding 19:29 Actively not doing vs just not doing 20:28 Mind and body are one process—Bodymind 23:20 Inhibition 24:26 Practice 26:20 Feeling “it” for the first time 27:31 Letting go of control 28:42 Meditation and Alexander Technique 34:15 Exercises in Alexander Technique 37:34 Thinking 39:54 What do you mean by thinking? 41:52 Conceptual thinking and subconscious thinking 43:10 Conscious cognition and nonconscious cognition 44:20 Parallel processing 45:44 Thoughts, feelings, IFS parts 47:14 AT mode 24/7 50:30 Technology and contracted awareness 52:15 Wrapping up 54:28 Tips about Alexander Technique 55:52 Francis’ experience of AT Links: * South Bank Alexander Centre [https://www.alexandercentre.co.uk/] - school Michael first went to * ”Unthought” [https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo25861765.html] - book by N Katherine Hayles * Expanding Awareness [https://expandingawareness.org/] - Michael’s Alexander Technique site * Fundamentals of Alexander Technique [https://expandingawareness.org/courses/] - Michael’s beginner course * Michael’s YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/c/MichaelAshcroft0/videos] * @m_ashcroft [https://x.com/m_ashcroft] on Twitter * Michael Ashcroft [https://michaelashcroft.com/] - personal website Theme written, performed and recorded by @MJPiercello [https://twitter.com/MJPiercello]

"Pristine Inner Experience" by Hulburt (a review)

How does Hurlburt’s method of sampling what is happening in our minds work? What have we learnt from it about the variety of our everyday inner worlds - from thinking without symbols, to schizophrenia, to guitar playing? Welcome to another episode of “Imagine an apple”! Today, Vynn interviews Francis about his new favourite book “Investigating Pristine Inner Experience”. The book describes Russell Hurlburt’s “Descriptive Experience Sampling” method, and what we’ve learnt from it. Timestamps: 00:53 Why Francis likes the book 02:55 Hurlburt and his method 09:34 Scepticism 13:58 Unsymbolized thinking 18:22 Sampling yourself 25:59 Variety of inner experience 30:30 Schizophrenia, emotion 39:38 Benefits, guitar playing 48:10 Sonder Show Links: * Investigating Pristine Inner Experience: Moments of Truth [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12296608-investigating-pristine-inner-experience] - book by Russell T. Hurlburt * Descriptive Experience Sampling Codebook [https://hurlburt.faculty.unlv.edu//codebook.html] - Russell T. Hurlburt and Christopher L. Heavey * My mind sampling results [https://www.flourish.org/2024/04/my-mind-sampling-results/] - Francis’ blog * RussHurlburt’s YouTube Channel [https://www.youtube.com/@RussHurlburt] - Recordings of DES sessions * Inner Experience in Bulimia [https://hurlburt.faculty.unlv.edu/doucette-and-RTH-1993-inner-experience-in-bulimia.pdf], Fragmented Experience in Bulimia [https://hurlburt.faculty.unlv.edu/jones-forrester-and-RTH-2011-fragmented-experience-in-bulimia-nervosa.pdf] - papers by Hurlburt * Sampling normal and schizophrenic inner experience [https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1990-97399-000] - book by Hurlburt * Sonder [https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/23536922667/sonder] - definition in the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows Contact Details: Please follow us, get in touch, tell us about your inner experiences! Twitter: @imagine_apple [https://twitter.com/imagine_apple] @SurenVynn [https://twitter.com/SurenVynn] @frabcus [https://twitter.com/frabcus] Email: imagine@flourish.org [imagine@flourish.org] Theme written, performed and recorded by @MJPiercello [https://twitter.com/MJPiercello]

Navigating a city with Anna

When you navigate a city, what is your inner experience? Do you see detailed overhead maps, or street-level views of landmarks, or neither? Vynn Suren and Francis Irving interview Anna about how she uses her imagination to find routes, program a computer and remember names. Anna describes how she sees both an overhead map view and street-level views of landmarks. She switches between them dynamically. What’s a visual map vs a spatial map? What features are salient? What is a waypoint? How do the imagined maps vary in quality between different cities? What does the marker look like that shows where you are? There’s then a discussion about how people work out the route to take on the map, and what happens when they get lost. What’s the inner experience of being lost? How do you find yourself again? The conversation switches to use of imagination while computer programming. Anna describes the abstract concepts she sees in a spatial structure. What then happens  when you’re interrupted? Does this apply to other tasks, e.g. getting quotes for insurance? To wrap up, the team talk about names and faces and how well people remember them. If you visualise writing is it serif or sans-serif, is it white or grey? Timestamps: 00:55 Imagine an apple 02:17 Inner background music 05:00 Navigating a city 08:26 Spatial vs visual 11:07 Finding the best route 20:17 Typical waypoints 22:49 Sense of direction 26:33 Getting lost 30:18 Variety of experience while navigating 34:08 Imagination while computer programming 38:56 Interruptions 41:02 Smoky grey shapes of thinking 44:35 Inner experience during collaborative tasks 46:29 Remembering names and faces Show Links: * This isn’t f***ing Dalston! [https://sites.google.com/view/tifd/home] - mapping the cognitive boundaries of part of London * The Image of the City [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Image_of_the_City] - book about how people make mental maps * Mind’s Eye Mentorship [https://www.gorcdc.com/visualization-training] - 1:1 coaching, used to be called AphantasiaMeow * Guugu Yimithirr language [https://www.naturalnavigator.com/news/2010/09/guugu-yimithirr/] - uses north/south where English uses left/right * Country Driving by Peter Hessler [https://www.peterhessler.net/country-driving/] - getting lost in rural China * Statistics of mental imagery by Francis Galton [https://galton.org/essays/1880-1889/galton-1880-mind-statistics-mental-imagery.pdf] - either this, or William James referencing it, mentions the smokey grey shapes * 1946 birth cohort study [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Survey_of_Health_%26_Development] - NHS research project Contact Details: Please follow us, get in touch, tell us about your inner experiences! Twitter: @imagine_apple [https://twitter.com/imagine_apple] @SurenVynn [https://twitter.com/SurenVynn] @frabcus [https://twitter.com/frabcus] Email: imagine@flourish.org [imagine@flourish.org] Theme written, performed and recorded by @MJPiercello [https://twitter.com/MJPiercello]

Spiritual experience with Jessica Corneille

Welcome to another episode of “Imagine an apple”! In this episode, we tackle the issue of spiritual experience. How do these vary between individuals, and how do they vary between human cultures? Twitter: @imagine_apple [https://twitter.com/imagine_apple] @SurenVynn [https://twitter.com/SurenVynn] @frabcus [https://twitter.com/frabcus] Timestamps: 01:40 What are spiritual experiences? 03:30 Oneness with the Universe 05:30 Nondual experience with Vynn 08:20 Rejection from life goals triggering nondual experience 09:30 Jessica’s move to Madrid and starting new job 10:49 Lucid dreaming 14:01 Hearing voices 19:20 Changing perceptions of reality 20:15 Scales of enlightenment experience 21:00 What were you reading? 22:02 Alan Watts and Buddhist Koans 23:30 Effing the ineffable 25:28 “I am God!” 27:27 The experience of love 30:15 How do you live day to day? 34:26 Psychedelics 35:35 Sense of self 38:15 Research on spiritual experience 41:15 Neurophenomenology 43:00 Mental health disorders associated with spiritual experiences 44:05 Vocabulary around mental experience 45:00 EPRC Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium 45:50 Kundalini Awakenings 48:40 Wrapping up 49:00 Can you recognize another? Theme written, performed and recorded by @MJPiercello [https://twitter.com/MJPiercello]

Dragons coming from the pavement

What are the limits of our imagination? Can we imagine an apple 100 miles away, or a sound higher pitched that we can hear? Can we project our imaginations into our actual vision? Vynn and Francis are interviewed by video games designer Berbank Green. He stretches our imagination with a series of exercises (see full list below). Can you imagine a smell that knocks you out? Can you imagine an apple as large as the moon? How accurate are our imaginations? Berbank describes his “prophantasic” ability to put an imagined apple on the actual table in his real vision, and how he used this in childhood. Timestamps: 00:48 Detail of imagining an apple 05:10 Imagining a distant apple 09:00 An eagle’s perception 11:18 Microscopic and earth-sized apples 16:13 Thinking of lots of apples at once 19:30 4D apples 23:48 Inner experience of designing a video game 27:07 Imagining emotions in video games 30:35 Limits of audio imagination 35:17 Prophantasia - imagining things in the real world 40:10 Imagining being something else 51:40 Noticing where language comes from 57:23 Dreaming and the subconscious 64:02 Apple having an eccentric British accent Show Links: * Teach Your Monster to Read [https://www.teachyourmonster.org/] - a video game Berbank made * Berbank’s Twitter account [https://twitter.com/berbank] * Miegakure [https://miegakure.com/] - a true 4D puzzle-platforming game * Fire Kasina with Jane Flowers [https://zencastr.com/z/BhH1iPLN] - earlier episode of this podcast * Consider Phlebas [https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/iain-m-banks-3/consider-phlebas/9780356521633/] - novel with mind fragmenting Berbank’s Imagination Exercises: Imagine an apple - what does it look like? - where is it? - can you smell it? - taste it? - feel how heavy it is? - does it make you remember anything? OK now test limits: - Can you see the apple if it's behind you? - How far away can you make the apple before you can't see it?   - What is your perspective of the apple at this distance? - How small can you imagine that apple?   - What happens when it gets too small?   - How heavy is that?   - Can you make it lighter?   - Can you feel how light your max imagination is? - How large can you imagine it?   - What happens when it gets too large?   - How heavy is that?   - Can you make it heavier?   - Can you feel how heavy your max imagination is? - How many apples can you think of at once? - How powerful can you make the smell of the apple?   - Can you imagine it to the point where it's overwhelming? - Can you imagine a 4 dimensional apple? - Can you imagine an apple that has a face?   - That's actually in front of you?   - That's floating in front of you with sparkling effects and crackling lightning?   - That's talking to you in an eccentric British accent? etc. etc Contact Details: Twitter: @imagine_apple [https://twitter.com/imagine_apple] @SurenVynn [https://twitter.com/SurenVynn] @frabcus [https://twitter.com/frabcus] Email: imagine@flourish.org [imagine@flourish.org] Theme by: @MJPiercello [https://twitter.com/MJPiercello]