This reminds me… maybe muscle tension is a frequent solution to this problem?
Some context: Lately I’ve been wondering, Why do we often experience feelings as things in the body? For example, why do I feel anxiety in my chest rather than just “knowing” I’m anxious?
I suspect the feeling in my neck represented the information “I have the choice to leave the social situation I’m in right now” and/or “I am disliking/suppressing myself.”
Why might this feeling have manifested in my neck?
What if feelings use the body as a screen to communicate information with others? If you have a certain feeling in your chest, maybe others can see that.
BUT: What if a feeling represents information that your system doesn’t want other people to know? Hostile telepaths problem.
Im my case:
The feeling represented the awareness that I was insecure, and there were probably situations (probably social situations) in which it partially benefited me to be partially unaware of the fact that I was insecure.
Well, in that case, your system could create muscle tension to “jam the signal”…
If the muscles are stiff, maybe they can’t be used as a screen anymore.
Oh huh. Yeah. It’s not a solution by itself since there are lots of other cues hostile telepaths can use. But rigidity might dampen what they can read for sure!
This is testable. It predicts that improved skill with occlumency and/or gaining power should sometimes cause a release of chronic tension.
I read these comments a few days ago. It prompted me to try applying something inspired by what was written in the post, but immediately on my muscle tension: I slightly Focus on it, then tell myself to “side with” the tension / feeling, while also telling myself that it’s Ok to do so, not trying to “bust” it or put it into words, and using chipmonk’s technique (cf his blog) to explore resistance around being seen displaying “the underlying emotion”.
I have the very clear impression that it weakens the tension quite fast (just timed it, it took about 30 seconds). I’m not having any insight on what the tension was about specifically.
That’s purely subjective experience report, might be heavily biased.
IME you can usually see in someone’s face or body when they have a big release, just from the release of tension.
But I think it’s harder to distinguish this from other hypotheses I’ve heard like “negative emotions are stored in the tissues” or “muscular tension is a way of stabilizing intentions.”
This is testable. It predicts that improved skill with occlumency and/or gaining power should sometimes cause a release of chronic tension.
That wouldn’t be a test of the theory that hostile telepaths use muscle cues, since those things could cause muscle release for other reasons (as per Popper: tests can only be disproving, and they require a rival theory to decide between).
If gaining power never causes a release of tension, that still doesn’t disprove the theory, since again they could be tracking other things as well.
A more direct question would be something like: Can hostile telepaths in fact read people who are physically rigid better than people who have low muscle tension? Do their reads get better or worse when tension is added? Does it change the type of information they can read (and perhaps give more information for some axes and less for others)?
My impression is muscle tension gives a big sign on your back that you are hiding something, but makes it more muddy to non-trained people what exactly is being hidden.
It reminds me of Mark Lippmann’s blog post on virtual machines, and how we often have layers of virtual machines. Or in plain language: if you close your eyes and imagine your environment, and imagine making an escape within that imaginary environment, real-you might not tighten your muscles in such a way that you’d be readable.
I remember hearing that when we are seriously thinking about standing up, our heart rate and blood pressure rise in anticipation, but if we just hypothesise that we might stand up and keep it very abstract, the body doesn’t start those physical processes.
But it’s very obvious when someone has gone into their head! So hostile telepaths often want some kind of emoting or ‘really listening’ or ‘paying attention’ or ‘be present with me’.
So, yeah it conceals some information, but then it adds other information (such as meta information about concealment).
This reminds me… maybe muscle tension is a frequent solution to this problem?
Some context: Lately I’ve been wondering, Why do we often experience feelings as things in the body? For example, why do I feel anxiety in my chest rather than just “knowing” I’m anxious?
For example, my previous chronic neck pain seemed to be related to information that manifested in my neck:
Why might this feeling have manifested in my neck?
What if feelings use the body as a screen to communicate information with others? If you have a certain feeling in your chest, maybe others can see that.
BUT: What if a feeling represents information that your system doesn’t want other people to know? Hostile telepaths problem.
Im my case:
Well, in that case, your system could create muscle tension to “jam the signal”…
If the muscles are stiff, maybe they can’t be used as a screen anymore.
Oh huh. Yeah. It’s not a solution by itself since there are lots of other cues hostile telepaths can use. But rigidity might dampen what they can read for sure!
This is testable. It predicts that improved skill with occlumency and/or gaining power should sometimes cause a release of chronic tension.
I read these comments a few days ago. It prompted me to try applying something inspired by what was written in the post, but immediately on my muscle tension: I slightly Focus on it, then tell myself to “side with” the tension / feeling, while also telling myself that it’s Ok to do so, not trying to “bust” it or put it into words, and using chipmonk’s technique (cf his blog) to explore resistance around being seen displaying “the underlying emotion”.
I have the very clear impression that it weakens the tension quite fast (just timed it, it took about 30 seconds). I’m not having any insight on what the tension was about specifically.
That’s purely subjective experience report, might be heavily biased.
I think it’s true that people who have more power (whether emotional security or social status etc) generally have less muscle tension yea.
But that reminds me that I should check with my clients if they accidentally experience much less muscle tension
IME you can usually see in someone’s face or body when they have a big release, just from the release of tension.
But I think it’s harder to distinguish this from other hypotheses I’ve heard like “negative emotions are stored in the tissues” or “muscular tension is a way of stabilizing intentions.”
That wouldn’t be a test of the theory that hostile telepaths use muscle cues, since those things could cause muscle release for other reasons (as per Popper: tests can only be disproving, and they require a rival theory to decide between).
If gaining power never causes a release of tension, that still doesn’t disprove the theory, since again they could be tracking other things as well.
A more direct question would be something like: Can hostile telepaths in fact read people who are physically rigid better than people who have low muscle tension? Do their reads get better or worse when tension is added? Does it change the type of information they can read (and perhaps give more information for some axes and less for others)?
My impression is muscle tension gives a big sign on your back that you are hiding something, but makes it more muddy to non-trained people what exactly is being hidden.
It reminds me of Mark Lippmann’s blog post on virtual machines, and how we often have layers of virtual machines. Or in plain language: if you close your eyes and imagine your environment, and imagine making an escape within that imaginary environment, real-you might not tighten your muscles in such a way that you’d be readable.
I remember hearing that when we are seriously thinking about standing up, our heart rate and blood pressure rise in anticipation, but if we just hypothesise that we might stand up and keep it very abstract, the body doesn’t start those physical processes.
But it’s very obvious when someone has gone into their head! So hostile telepaths often want some kind of emoting or ‘really listening’ or ‘paying attention’ or ‘be present with me’.
So, yeah it conceals some information, but then it adds other information (such as meta information about concealment).
Actors might be interesting to study, here.