I had an experience today with ideomotor cues. Ideomotor cues are a means of communicating with the embodied unconscious through subtle, involuntary, movements. In the introduction to our book, Elhaz Ablaze: A Compendium of Chaos Heathenry, I proposed that “Chaos Heathenism is Heathenism that remembers it has a body.” Well, ideomotor cues are a means to involve the whole bodyself in decision making.
(By the way, the book is actually in stock. the Amazon warning is a mistake, an artefact of print on demand publishing).
So: ideomotor cues are a vehicle of, well, applied Heathenry. Weird, right? This is a website about Chaos Heathenry, so get used to it.
Here’s how it works. First, we assign meaning to specific movement. For example, I assign my pointing finger the meaning “yes” and my middle finger “no.” I will need to be able to observe subtle sensations and movements in these two fingers.
Now, I ask: “body, please give me a yes response.” And then notice if my pointing finger responds in some way. Again “body, please give me a no response.” Again, notice if the middle finger responds. Now it might be that some other body parts want to be your cue providers, and they’ll make themselves known if that is the case. But it is likely that the body will take the path of least resistance and run with your plan of using the two fingers.
Now, ask: “body, are you willing and able to give me answers at this time?” If it says no, immediately stop there. Don’t go violating your own bodymind. That would be stupid.
If the cue is affirmative, however, then you’re in the clear to pose a question. Here is an example of how nicely it can work out.
Today at work I had a window of time with multiple tasks I could do but no clear idea of which was the highest priority. Typically in these situations I just make an arbitrary decision and run with it on the principle that it is better to do something than nothing. Today I consulted with my body instead.
The reason why I did this today specifically? I was getting tangled in fruitless self-doubt and self-criticism, as those of us with high standards sometimes (often?) do. I had an idea of what the ‘right’ choice would be yet I felt anxious and resistant to it. Once, I would have assumed that this meant I had to ‘Step Up’ and push through my resistance. Now, however, I am more respectful of my inner communications.
So, in the midst of a potentially brewing internal strife, I set myself up for ideomotor cueing as described above. First I asked if I should do the task I felt obligated toward yet resistant to. My middle finger twitched ‘no.’ I asked three more times, because I didn’t trust that I wasn’t somehow influencing myself to give the answer of least resistance. But no, every time, I was told not to do that option.
So I asked for the next thing I could think of, which felt much more comfortable yet didn’t seem at all urgent or time sensitive. Nevertheless, it gave an emphatic ‘yes!’ I rechecked several more times, but there was no doubt. This did not assuage my feeling that I ‘should’ do the thing I didn’t want to do, but I decided to trust my body. After all, shoulds and compulsion are authoritarian in nature, and I wish to be liberated of all internalized authoritarianism.
So I took my body’s advice, and on the way back to my main work area I ran into someone who needed help right there and then, but who hadn’t thought to ask me. We immediately joined forces and I used the time I had in a manner far more productive than anything I had considered prior to asking my body for advice. It worked almost magically. None of this would have worked out if I hadn’t followed my body’s “yes” to a different task that brought me into the path of what was actually the best use of my time.
How did my body know to steer me into the path of a choice that I didn’t know existed, yet was actually just wonderful? I don’t exactly know. I suppose it might be a matter of the fact that the body is part of the larger fabric of wyrd. If the body is the whole of ego and unconscious, and if the personal unconscious floats on the ocean of the collective unconscious, and if the collective unconscious is nothing less than matter itself…
All of which invites some reflection on Snorri’s description of the cosmogonic giant Ymir. To enrich that reflection, and in conclusion, you might enjoy these comments from Jung, which I hope will inspire you to play with ideomotor cueing yourself!
The symbols of the self arise from the depths of the body and they express its materiality every bit as much as the structure of the perceiving consciousness. The symbol is thus a living body, corpus et anima; hence the “child” is such an apt formula for the symbol. The uniqueness of the psyche can never enter wholly into reality, it can only be realized approximately, though it still remains the absolute basis of all consciousness. The deeper “layers” of the psyche lose their individual uniqueness as they retreat farther and farther into darkness. “Lower down,” that is to say as they approach the autonomous functional systems, they become increasingly collective until they are universalized and extinguished in the body’s materiality, i.e. in chemical substances. The body’s carbon is simply carbon. Hence “at bottom” the psyche is simply “world.” [In other words, pantheism, possibly AKA the web of wyrd?] in this sense I hold Kerenyi to be absolutely right when he says that in the symbol the world itself is speaking[!!!]. The more archaic and “deeper,” that is the more physiological, the symbol is, the more collective and universal, the more “material” it is. The more abstract, differentiated, and specific it is, and the more its nature approximates to conscious uniqueness and individuality, the more it sloughs of its universal character. Having finally attained full consciousness, it runs the risk of becoming a mere allegory which nowhere oversteps the bounds of conscious comprehension, and is then exposed to all sorts of attempts at rationalistic and therefore inadequate explanation.
