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]

Alexander technique with Michael Ashcroft

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
Theme written, performed and recorded by @MJPiercello [https://twitter.com/MJPiercello]

"Pristine Inner Experience" by Hulburt (a review)

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
Theme written, performed and recorded by @MJPiercello [https://twitter.com/MJPiercello]

Navigating a city with Anna

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]

Spiritual experience with Jessica Corneille

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
Theme by: @MJPiercello [https://twitter.com/MJPiercello]

Dragons coming from the pavement

What is the experience of imagining a gremlin on someone’s shoulder? How do people imagine music, sounds, time and emotion? How is imagination used to find keys and remember names?

Vynn and Francis chat with Ronja about her imagination, covering a wide range of topics that may inspire you to ask your own friends and family what happens in their minds.

As someone mostly aphantasic, Francis quizzes Ronja about how she imagines a gremlin on a friend’s shoulder. How solid is it? Does it rotate with the world? Is it alive, and to what extent is it under conscious control?

The conversations continues on the topics of imagining emotion, smell and music. Then it gets practical, discussing how imagination can be used to find things lost in your house, navigate to a destination and assemble furniture.

What are different ways people remember names, and what techniques can improve that? How do people imagine while watching movies and reading books, and what is it like to imagine emotions?

Timestamps:

00:48 Gremlin on your shoulder
04:27 Aliveness of the gremlin
05:43 Emotion, smell and sound
07:07 Imagining music
10:20 Sounds and memories
13:40 Harry Potter
15:10 Looking for keys
19:13 Phantasia coaching
21:27 Shape rotating
23:42 Navigation
28:02 Names and faces
34:14 Visualising time
39:15 Emotion, books, movies
46:16 Imagine an apple

Show Links:

 * SET by PlayMonster [https://www.playmonster.com/product/set/] - pattern matching card game
 * Mind’s Eye Mentorship [https://www.gorcdc.com/mem-info] - formerly called AphantasiaMeow
 * Mind’s Eye Courses [https://rcdc-courses.teachable.com/] - also by AphantasiaMeow
 * Visualisations of calendars [https://twitter.com/shanhorandraws/status/1775749356672663638] - Twitter thread
 * Manar’s Twitter account [https://twitter.com/manarh] - the gremlin was on his shoulder

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
Theme written, performed and recorded by @MJPiercello [https://twitter.com/MJPiercello]

Everyday imagination with Ronja

What is it like to have intrusively strong romantic feelings? What are the causes, and what techniques can improve it?

Vynn and Francis interview life coach Michelle Akin about what it is like to experience limerence. This is a common, yet not talked about, obsessive love addiction which can repeatedly break relationships.

What is the difference between limerence and love? How do limerent people behave with their object of desire? What does it feel like inside their body?

The conversation goes into the possible causes of limerence, both innate and relating to attachment in childhood. Michelle describes different methods of therapy and group programmes that can help with it.

How do people visualise the object of their limerence? What is the impact of attending to negative traits of the object of limerence on bodily feelings of despair?

To finish, Michelle describes how many people messaged her directly when she posted on social media about limerence, and advice she gave them.

Timestamps:

01:15 What does limerence feel like?
02:45 Is it a physical experience?
03:22 Sex and Love Addicts
05:57 The commonness of limerence
07:44 Dorothy Tennov the coiner of limerence
11:00 The difference between limerence and love
13:56 Is limerence a type of crush
17:17 Anxiety in limerence
18:21 What causes limerence?
21:56 Vibrational Harmonic Healing
22:30 Limerence therapy specialist
26:20 Limerent connection as healing the father wound
28:10 New friendships
28:27 Visualising the objects of limerence
32:10 How to handle limerence
34:16 Number of people being impacted by limerence

Show Links:

 * Limerence: What Is It And How Do We Let It Go? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l5ALCPEBkc] - video by Heidi Priebe
 * Michelle’s AMA about limerence [https://twitter.com/MichelleAkin/status/1751203085270011998]
 * Michelle’s Twitter account [https://twitter.com/MichelleAkin]
 * Inconvenient Epiphanies [https://michelleakin.substack.com/] - Michelle’s substack
 * Dorothy Tennov [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Tennov] - Coiner of Limerence

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
Theme written, performed and recorded by @MJPiercello [https://twitter.com/MJPiercello]

Limerence with Michelle Akin

How can you use fire kasina meditation to develop hyperreal imagery? How does this differ from mind’s eye imagination?

Vynn and Francis interview fashion designer Jane Flowers, who has developed a hyperphantasic ability using fire kasina meditation.

Jane describes how she developed imagery while doing fire kasina meditation. She talks about the progress from seeing visual snow, to the brain pattern matching it as 3D, to forming plants and rich, controlled shapes. She describes ways to prepare your mind and body for these visualisations.

The difference between Jane’s kasina visualisations and normal mind’s eye visualisations is explored in detail, including tactile sensation and comparison to reporting on psychedelics.

Prophantasia / hyperphantasia

Timestamps:

00:36 Mask illusion
02:41 Meditation imagery
05:16 2D to 3D
08:11 Kasina visualisations
11:20 Charging up
13:29 Phases of forming visualisations
16:00 Comparison to mind’s eye
21:59 Temperature
23:37 Therapeutic benefits, psychedelics
28:03 Implications for reality
32:47 Comparison to prophantasia

Show Links:

 * Why Are Transgender People Immune To Optical Illusions? [https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/28/why-are-transgender-people-immune-to-optical-illusions/] - mask illusion blog post by Slate Star Codex
 * Kasina Practice, Mastering the Core Teaching of the Buddha [https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iii-the-samatha-jhanas/29-kasina-practice/] - instructions in book by Daniel Ingram
 * Commentary on the Vimuttimagga [https://firekasina.org/2015/04/03/commentary-on-the-vimuttimagga/] - canon sources on fire kasina visualisations
 * Fire Kasina website [https://firekasina.org/]
 * Jane’s Twitter account [https://twitter.com/itsjaneflowers]

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
Theme written, performed and recorded by @MJPiercello [https://twitter.com/MJPiercello]

Fire Kasina with Jane Flowers

How does the inner mental experience of autistic people vary? What is our day to day experience that creates stress or tension? Can we skillfully reduce it?

Vynn and Francis interview philosopher and neuroscientist Michael Johnson. Michael founded the Qualia Research Institute, and wrote the book Principia Qualia about consciousness.

The conversation begins with the inner experience of autistic people. How does a denser, more connected neural network lead to more variety of experience?

Then it goes through Michael’s theory of vasocomputation in detail. This relates to the Buddhist concept of “tanha” (grasping) and how it relates to stress and tension.

Do we control the world too much, or in ways that make no sense? What is the experience of doing this, and how can we use techniques like meditation to change this?

Timestamps:

00:46 Autism and neuron connectivity
07:44 Autism and inner experience
10:03 Meditation
11:34 Vasocomputation
13:27 Free energy and active inference
17:18 Buddhist concept of Tanha (grasping)
23:10 Three unskillful active inferences
25:36 Skillful active inference
27:40 Pain and pleasure
28:37 Qualia

Show Links:

 * Autism as a disorder of dimensionality [https://opentheory.net/2023/05/autism-as-a-disorder-of-dimensionality/] - article by Michael Johnson
 * Principles of Vasocomputation: A Unification of Buddhist Phenomenology, Active Inference, and Physical Reflex (Part I) [https://opentheory.net/2023/07/principles-of-vasocomputation-a-unification-of-buddhist-phenomenology-active-inference-and-physical-reflex-part-i/] - article by Michael Johnson
 * Michael Johnson’s Twitter account [https://twitter.com/johnsonmxe]
 * Michael Johnson’s website [https://opentheory.net/contact/]

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
Theme written, performed and recorded by @MJPiercello [https://twitter.com/MJPiercello]

Tanha with neuroscientist Michael Johnson

What do musicians see in their mind’s eyes and ears while playing? How do they use that to create the impact of the music on the audience?

Vynn and Francis interview professional cellist Matthew Pierce who is aphantasic - he has no visual imagination. He uses his audio, spatial, emotional and bodily imagination to perform music.

Matthew goes into detail about learning to play an instrument, using different kinds of imagination to train the subconscious to control the body while playing.

How does the body move while playing a cello and a piano? Where do you need to visually pay attention while in an orchestra? What are they different layers of habit that are built up while learning an instrument?

To finish, there’s a discussion about a lack of visual imagination making it harder to do paperwork.

After this interview, Matthew composed, performed and recorded the intro and outro music for “Imagine an Apple”. Thanks Matthew, it’s very much appreciated! Check out his other musical work in the links below.

Timestamps:

01:33 Inner audio experience
04:16 Spatial imagination
05:56 Teaching playing an instrument
09:40 Body position while playing cello
11:09 Imagining what you want to play
15:11 Difference with visual imagination
16:19 Places you look while playing in orchestra
18:35 Reading music as sound vs notation
23:21 Musical keys, embodiment of playing
30:52 Imagining audio of an orchestral piece
36:15 Imagining emotions of audience
41:50 Different kinds of mind’s eyes
44:39 Paperwork when aphantasic
50:02 Vynn and Francis chat about the episode

Show Links:

 * Piercello’s Progress [https://piercello.substack.com/] - Matthew’s email newsletter on Substack
 * Matthew’s Twitter account [https://twitter.com/MJPiercello]
 * Matthew’s YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLdxOcmHYxraZ2kUt-c5L5w]
 * Prelude from J. S. Bach's Suite No. 1 for Unaccompanied Cello [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5H6DgY_k3M]

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
Theme written, performed and recorded by @MJPiercello [https://twitter.com/MJPiercello]

Music with cellist Matthew Pierce

A podcast about our different inner mental experiences. Presented by Vynn Suren and Francis Irving.

Why can some people imagine and others can't? How do different people experience emotion? How is our view of our own minds influenced by our culture?