Moving without moving: mental imagery, mental simulation of movement using the Franklin Method®. Practical application for dancers & movers in injury & beyond…
Time out from dance or any movement form can be a constructive time if we can approach things using our best resource and with a different mindset whilst our bodies have space to heal.
These are my thoughts today, which are very dance orientated, but to be honest you can replace the word dance with any other movement practice! What’s being explained below is my personal experience and use of mental rehearsal. It is a practice that I use directly with my clients, dancing and non dancing, at times when there may be an injury or something not feeling quite right. It’s an illustration not only of the neuroplasticity of our brains in action, but the power of mental imagery and its practical application for everyone that moves in any way.
As a Franklin Method® Educator there are so many applications of mental imagery and below I have mentioned just a few, and have focused on using no movement at all, its specific application to injury and re-establishing function where there has been disruption in some way.
Neural activity inside the different regions of your brain happens when there is movement. In imaging you can literally see those regions light up. However, if for any reason you cannot move this is where mental imagery training can also produce neural activation - and the exciting thing is that there are regions of the brain activated through imagery alone! The ideal situation is to apply movement and imagery to literally light up many different regions of your brain to produce optimal and healthy movement. The more involved and interested our brains are in movement, the better!
The system of the Franklin Method®, its scientific name being Dynamic Neurocognitive Imagery®, helps you produce optimal movement within your own body by teaching you how to combine specific imagery with biomechanics, anatomy and physiology. But there are more benefits than just movement execution, which I describe below.
A weekday morning. My regular class - is a chance to connect with joy with my own body, with music and movement I absolutely love and the wonderful people I share that space with. Not today though as I am on what I call ‘box rest’ from my medical professional. It’s a conversation that dancers and movers don’t like to hear - time out from dance / movement and with it there comes all kinds of worries. I recall in the past viewing the situation in such dramatic and negative terms, but what I have learnt from experience of long periods of injury is that this is a very useful time. It’s an opportunity to step back and learn something different to improve your movement so that when the time comes to return you take back not only positive experiences, but also enhanced skills, understanding and greater confidence.
So what was the work? To any outward observer, walking by they would see someone with their earphones on looking at a blank screen not moving for an hour. And outwardly, that was what I was doing! However, what was happening in my mind was a mental rehearsal, or in my practice we call it mental simulation of movement. Standing in the space I’m normally in, at the same time, the music I normally hear is playing and in my mind the whole class is being run in a very intense way - after all, that was my exercise for the day!
As dancers, you may have done something like this before - to try to improve musicality, learn choreography, or run a performance or variation in your mind. Or, your teacher will map the class with their hands - those gestures, which to an outside observer is a strange language - and you’ll be responding, mapping out and translating their meaning in their hands, eyes or voice in your mind with your hands too. You are mentally rehearing your movement, timing, execution and phrasing and you may not even have been aware of this. Or, you may be watching someone else move and if you are incredibly focused or practiced feel the same movement in your body and you feel different parts of your body literally light up with movement information - you are experiencing a form of mental rehearsal.
Dancers already have this elevated skill because compared to non-movers they have a continual focus on their body and movement, and usually have done so from a young age. That said, there are still more take aways for dancers.
So, what else can it offer? Well, eventually for expert and practiced imagers, they do have a much higher command of their motor control system than those who could be considered either poor imagers.
Dynamic Neurocognitive Imagery® is currently proven to help both dancers who are movement experts as well as those who suffer from Parkinson’s disease and have lost some of the function. Our scientific studies demonstrate how we can improve how we move using our system of imagery and development of our body schema (think of this as the brains mapping out of the body). Our brains direct our movement. Sometimes through injury or illness we can lose this important sense. If we can improve our own mapping, then the implications are massive not just at either extreme end of the movement spectrum, but for everyone that moves.
Those implications can be measured in terms of performance, function, movement longevity but also less measurable things such as confidence, self esteem and ability to cope with pressure - all highly desirable results.
In the case of injury, mental imagery is really important, and is considered a stepping stone on the road to a return to full activities. M. Leiderbach’s 4 Stage Rehabilitation Protocol. ©1994 for Dance divides the rehabilitation process of lower limb injury into 4 distinct stages: Restrict, Restore, Reaquire and Refine. It outlines what is happening on a clinical level as well as at a studio level. In Stage 1, the clinical level will be focused on reducing swelling and pain, evaluating the disfunction, encouraging an active rest and maintaining aerobic conditioning. Stage 1 is the phase where dancers can really feel distress.
Time out from what they love doing also can bring with it feelings of losing out on every single level. This is where somatic work and mental practice and rehearsal can really help.
Somatic movement and mental practice is recommended by Leiderbach as something that can be done at a studio level, whilst tissue loading is restricted. Eventually when both the mental rehearsal is combined with movement execution, real positive structural changes happen within our brain - here we have the neuroplasticity of our brains in action. We really can change how we move, by how we think, and for the better.
So, within my own class, practicality, what was I doing? I’ll keep it simple and mention a few things going on because my mind really can do some gymnastics whilst doing very little! I know the sequences already (one level of challenge out of the way), the focus was really on keeping everything very calm and very positive as an experience. In my mind every movement was precise, and I really worked on perfecting parts of the movement I know would benefit from being refined. Additionally, I was working on seeing the movement of the very specific areas, joints and ligaments in my body that I’d been working with on a clinical level, ensuring that I could see them moving with the same precision that had been actively stored in my mind working in partnership with my own medical professional. Here we have an example of mental imagery being used to reinforce healthy movement after injury, so that when I do return to moving again I can do so with that level of accuracy to prevent any excess tension or strain.
Today, as a development, I had an additional focus on my interoceptive state, listening in to the body’s sense of internal wellbeing. Reading points where suddenly my system registered additional pressure allowed me to call upon the tools I have already established as part of my own everyday practice, in order to settle the physiology within my system right down. It allowed me to keep inside the music and inside the class. This is a developed practice, but that’s because it has been with me for a long time (I’ll suggest some useful things beginners could do later!). At the end of my class I finished the session feeling calm, positive, confident and highly motivated and engaged in my own active rest. And I really enjoyed it!
It’s never just about moving but it’s also so much about how you are feeling about your movement, and about yourself as a dancer / mover. Positive action and thinking around any injury is such an important skill to have and is also an empowering skill.
From my perspective, when I am ready to return back I’ll hopefully go back with the same level of empowerment that I felt today. When I frequently say our bodies are listening and are on our side, I really do mean it.
But what else can working on a level of moving without moving offer? For dancers, mental simulation of movement has so may day to day advantages - you can practice where there is no space, when you are tired or travelling around and most importantly you can reduce your risk of injury down as you are not repeatedly running faulty movement patterns in your body and motor system. You can work with accuracy all of the time! It’s also available whenever you need it. And, obviously, it is a very low risk activity as you are not moving!
Knowing how your body works is crucial if you are trying to override a faulty movement pattern and that is something dancers often do need the help with, but if you do not have those skills what can you do to help yourself initially?
It’s a good idea to start with something simple as mental rehearsal as a full on practice like the one I described is tiring - so if you have a performance its probably not a good idea to run the whole performance in your mind in a very intense way!
When you do, as a dancer, practice the movement from your own or a first person perspective. There is no point trying to see yourself as though you are flying overhead watching yourself from above, or any other angle. It’s advised that keep your mental viewpoint as it would normally be. Closing your eyes to imagine things is not so helpful, unless you dance with your eyes shut! Sometimes I do this if I am drilling down into something really specific in my body, but for a mental rehearsal keeping vision is an important part of that rehearsal in a space. Slowing steps down in your mind is also less effective than if you run everything at the full speed you would normally work at, again because the nature of the movement is not going to be in slow motion! Again there are times I really like breaking the movement down slowly, but for mental rehearsal keep it as real as you can. Be an active participant in what you do. See yourself in movement as you normally see yourself in movement, from your perspective. See that space in your minds eye from your perspective, or practice in that space if you can.
Testing out combinations in a live class is a good place to start and it is likely if you are very experienced you are already doing this to a degree. But, making it more focused can start to help you develop your own deliberate and focused mental rehearsal practice.
Recreate as many variables as you can, even variables you may wish to avoid, such as performing under high pressure situations. See and imagine yourself as practising with such calmness, precision and success - or any other feelings that are helpful to you!
See yourself as successful in what you do and see yourself enjoying your movement, because that is what you love to do, and, additionally you’ll also increase your chances of success - why? because your brain is expecting this to happen! Your brain likes positive experiences!
It is a definite collision of events to be moving without moving not through choice, and committing myself to journalling about it, while my colleague who works with Olympic Athletes is also journalling about the same thing but in a different way!
Mental imagery is used by elite sports players all of the time and is a dedicated part of the their training. And I suspect we will probably have some stories to read from the Olympics about it. For elite dancers, they will also have had access to this training. To become elite you have to look continuously for ways to refine your movement skills and stand out as different or the best when compared to so many others who are competing for the same thing, and mental imagery is an essential part of their toolbox.
Everyone though wants to improve their longevity to maintain function, hobbies or just enjoy life and make their movement easier and more comfortable.
This immensely powerful system, the Franklin Method® is for everyone.
“Better information leads to better navigation” Eric Franklin
Another ‘Eric’ as I term them - one of his most used sayings, but one that is fundamental to how we work, and is a practice. All of us have the ability to make so much change using what we already have if we learn to optimise this, and all of us have so much we can learn from our own bodies.
Within my studio, my goal is to make this more accessible so that whoever you are, and wherever you are, you can improve your movement using one or many parts of the toolbox that the system has. If you are working with me currently in Pilates you are already working within this system but in a more covert way. If you are in my Somatic Movement Studio everything we do is explicitly Franklin Method® and my dancer specific programming is specifically tailored to issues that dancers encounter or need help with.
So, if you are curious and would like to learn more come and join me in my Studio where you can develop these tools and so much more, in the Virtual space, with no travelling, all you need is a space where you can focus just on you.
Without any pressure, because if we are totally relaxed in what we do, we will certainly improve our movement and wellbeing in mind and body.
If you want to find out what is running you can find that in the events section. Join my mailing list so you can find out very early on all of the different activities that run in my Virtual Studio! If you are a dancer, see my specific Franklin Method® for Dancers page and mailing list!
I look forward to supporting you in your use of imagery to improve your movement, regardless of what level you work at very soon! Let me know if you found this helpful in any way - if you did it will make me really happy as I wanted to do something useful in my non-moving time!
In wellness, Sarah xx
Some references to a few of our studies about how the Franklin Method®…
Improves mental imagery ability in people with Parkinsonʼs disease (Abraham et al., Neural Plasticity, 2018)
Improves disease severity and motor and cognitive functions in people with Parkinsonʼs disease (Abraham et al., Neural Plasticity, 2018).
Improves pelvic schema and graphic-metric representation in people with Parkinsonʼs disease (Abraham et al., Complementary Therapies in Medicine, 2018).
Improves mental imagery ability and characteristics in dancers (Abraham et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 10:382, 2019. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00382)
As with any injury do not attempt to self diagnose - correct diagnosis of the issue by your medical professional means you will be placed on the right clinical pathway for your issue and will facilitate a more speedy recovery. Franklin Method® is not a substitute for medical care but is a supportive addition to your own rehabilitation.
©Sarah Pritchard, 2021, All Rights Reserved.
DISCLAIMER: as I do not know your individual circumstances, none of my blogs, my videos, my guidance in the Facebook group or any other materials available to you where I have not taken you on as a one to one client shall be construed as advice and I shall have no liability to you in any circumstances should you choose to rely on any of the materials I publish.