Imagined movement works because when you only imagine a movement, your brain uses networks similar to the ones it uses when you actually do it, so it practices the movement even though nothing visibly moves. Researchers call this motor imagery. Studies have found that imagined practice improves how well people perform a movement, changes activity in the motor cortex, and increases strength, though less than real practice does. That’s why in somatic work an imagined movement is a full part of the lesson, especially when the real movement is too much or when you want to notice finer differences. The easiest way to understand it is to try it.
All you need is a chair and three minutes. You don’t even have to stand up.
Exercise: a head turn you only imagine (3 minutes)
Sit on the front half of a chair, with your feet on the floor about hip-width apart and your hands resting on your thighs. Do the real turn only within a range that feels clearly comfortable, and if the movement causes pain, stop. If even the real turn is uncomfortable, stay with the imagined part.
- Starting point. Slowly turn your head to the right, only as far as it goes easily, without pushing at the end. Notice which spot on the wall your eyes land on. Bring your head back to the middle.
- Imagined turn. Now your head stays still. Imagine turning it to the right, very slowly: your eyes move first toward the right side of the room, your head follows them, and your neck turns underneath it. Imagine coming back to the middle, too. Repeat five or six times, a little more slowly each time.
- Chest and shoulders. For the next few imagined turns, include your chest. Imagine your breastbone following your head a little, your right shoulder moving very slightly back and your left shoulder slightly forward. Let the imagined turn be easier and softer than the real one you did at the start.
- Real turn. Now actually turn your head to the right, just as easily as in the first step. Where do your eyes land now? How does your neck feel as you turn?
- The other side. Bring your head back to the middle and turn it to the left, the side nothing has prepared. Compare how far it goes and how easy it feels.
If the difference is clear, stay with it for a moment before you read on. If you don’t notice anything special, that tells you something too. Imagining is a skill, and it gets clearer each time you try.
What happened while your head stayed still
Perhaps your head went a little farther to the right, your eyes reached a different spot on the wall, or the turn ran smoothly, without the small catch at the end. The left side, which nothing prepared, usually stays the way it was.
That’s why the comparison matters. While you were imagining, your head didn’t move a millimeter. If the real turn is easier now anyway, the imagining alone brought that change.
In three minutes, your neck muscles couldn’t have stretched or gotten stronger, so the change has to be somewhere else: in the place where the nervous system plans the movement.
Before it happens, every movement exists as a plan that sets the order and the amount of effort: what moves first, what follows, and what can stay still. When you imagine a turn slowly and in detail, you’re practicing exactly that plan. And a plan in which the eyes, neck, and chest work together, without hurry, gives the real turn better instructions.
How the brain practices an imagined movement
The French neuroscientist Marc Jeannerod spent much of his career studying what happens in the brain when we imagine a movement, watch someone else do it, or are just about to do it ourselves. He concluded that all three are forms of the same action, one that stays hidden: the brain simulates the movement, and in doing so it uses largely the same networks as when the movement is actually performed [1]. For you, this means that an imagined movement also trains the real one, just without the final step.
Piano practice without playing
The best-known example comes from Mark Hallett’s lab at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US. Alvaro Pascual-Leone and his colleagues taught adults with no piano experience a simple five-finger exercise. One group practiced on the piano. The other sat at the piano for five days in a row and only imagined the exercise, without moving their fingers [2].
After five days, the group that only imagined the exercise played noticeably better than at the start, though not as well as the group that actually practiced.
The area of the motor cortex that controls the finger muscles changed in a similar way in both groups. Then the group that had only been imagining practiced on the piano for real, in a single two-hour session, and reached the level the other group had needed five days to reach. The authors concluded that imagined practice prepares the motor system, so later physical practice pays off faster [2].
Strength without weights
Physiologists Guang Yue and Kelly Cole asked young, healthy people to imagine pushing their little finger hard out to the side, five times a week for four weeks. In the group that only imagined the movement, strength rose by about 22 percent. In the group that actually tensed the muscle, it rose by about 30 percent, and in the group that didn’t train, it stayed almost the same [3]. Vinoth Ranganathan and his colleagues later ran a similar twelve-week program and checked whether the same holds for a larger muscle. One group imagined moving the little finger, and finger strength rose by 35 percent. Another group imagined bending the elbow, and the strength of the muscles that bend the elbow rose by about 13 percent [4].
These results shouldn’t be overstated. Each group had about ten people or fewer, and the people who actually trained the muscle gained more strength than those who only imagined the exercise. For the elbow, the difference compared with people who didn’t train at all was so small that the researchers couldn’t say for certain it was real [4]. So for strength, you still need real training.
What matters more for you is what these studies reveal about where strength and skill come from. A large part of both lies in how the brain controls the muscles, and that part can be trained even while the body is still.
The muscle knows something is coming
Even when you only imagine a movement, your muscles don’t stay completely quiet. Aymeric Guillot of the University of Lyon and his colleagues reviewed the studies that measure this. While a person imagines a movement, a very small electrical activity appears in the muscles. It’s too weak to move a joint, but clear enough to reflect the features of the imagined movement. As they interpret it, the brain sends the command to move, and other mechanisms stop that command at the same time, before the movement becomes visible [5].
So while your head stayed still in the experiment, your neck muscles were most likely receiving a very quiet version of the instructions for the turn. When the real movement came, they weren’t starting from zero.
Imagined movement in Awareness Through Movement lessons
Moshe Feldenkrais included imagined movement in his Awareness Through Movement lessons long before any of these measurements. In some lessons, a movement is first explored on one side and afterward only imagined on the other. In others, part of the movement is only imagined from the very beginning.
When the two sides are then compared, the difference can be as clear as the one your neck showed you a few minutes ago. I use the same principle in my classes and sessions. When a movement is too much for someone, they only imagine it for a while. Then we go back to the real movement, and they compare how it feels now.
Self-image and what’s missing from it
In Awareness Through Movement, Feldenkrais writes that each of us acts in line with our self-image. He describes that image as having four parts: movement, sensation, feeling, and thought [6]. The image is always incomplete.
Many people experience a head turn as a movement of the neck alone, even though the eyes, the rib cage, and the way you rest on the chair all take part in it. Parts that are missing from your self-image usually either work harder than they need to or don’t take part at all.
Imagining shows you what real movement hides. When you do a movement, habit carries it out faster than you can notice how.
When you only imagine it, habit has nothing to cover the gaps with. For an imagined turn to be clear, you have to know where your breastbone is and where it’s going. A part you can’t clearly imagine is usually a part that’s poorly represented in your self-image. Each time you imagine more clearly, you fill in that image, and as the image fills in, the real movement changes too.
A movement you can imagine clearly is also easier to do.
That’s why, in the head-turn experiment, it mattered that your eyes moved first and your chest followed your head. Learning to move separately the parts that usually work as one block, such as the eyes and head, the head and neck, or the neck and chest, is one of the basic paths to easier movement in this work.
When imagined movement helps you most
Imagining doesn’t replace moving. It’s most useful in a few very concrete situations.
When a movement hurts or feels too big
If there’s a movement you avoid, say turning your head to look over your shoulder while you park, try imagining it a few times first, slowly and in a small range, before you do it. When you expect discomfort, the body often tightens in advance, and that tightening makes the movement even harder. An imagined movement gives your brain a chance to practice the plan without the resistance you’ve braced for.
When you’re too tired
In the evening, when you don’t have the energy for even a short exercise, imagining is a good choice. It takes attention and almost no strength. Lying in bed, you can imagine the same head turn, or a movement of one foot, a few times, very slowly. Your body rests, and the learning of the movement goes on.
After an injury, as part of getting back to movement
During a period when part of your body needs to stay still or move only a little, you can imagine the movements you’ll return to later, always within what feels comfortable. The piano study showed that imagined practice prepares the motor system, so later physical practice pays off faster [2]. That’s why imagining makes sense precisely while you’re waiting for the movement to become possible again.
When you want to notice finer differences
The movements you repeat a hundred times a day run on autopilot, which makes them the hardest to notice. Here, imagining works like a magnifying glass.
If you tend to clench your teeth while you work, imagine your jaw letting go very slightly, and notice what changes in your neck and your breathing as it does. I wrote about how this habit is learned and how it can change in the article on jaw clenching and a tight jaw.
Where to go from here
- Online 1:1 sessions: online Feldenkrais sessions combine the Feldenkrais Method with the other somatic approaches I use, and we work on exactly what you need. From session to session I follow your progress and we build on it. It starts with a free 20-minute call.
- Workshops and retreats in person: see the events page.
Frequently asked questions
Does visualizing movement really work?
Yes. Athletes, musicians, and dancers use it as mental training, and studies have found that it improves how well people perform a movement. It works best combined with real movement, when you alternate imagining and doing.
Can I build muscle strength just by imagining?
Partly. In small studies, strength increased after imagined training too, but less than after real training. Imagining is a good addition to strength training and a good way to prepare for it.
How long should I imagine a movement?
A few minutes is enough to notice a difference. Attention fades after a while, so short and frequent works better than long and rare.
What if I can’t imagine the movement clearly?
That’s a common place to start. Do the movement for real, very small and slow, and then imagine it right away. After you alternate the real and the imagined movement a few times, the imagining gets clearer.
Should I imagine how the movement looks or how it feels?
How it feels. Imagine the movement from the inside: which part moves first, where the pressure on the chair changes, how your gaze travels. A picture from the outside, as in a mirror, tells you less about how you organize the effort.
Is imagining movement the same as meditation?
No. Meditation usually trains attention on the breath, the body, or thoughts. Imagined movement has a narrower task: to practice one movement in detail and then compare it with the real one.
Sources
- Jeannerod M. (2001). Neural simulation of action: A unifying mechanism for motor cognition. NeuroImage, 14(1), S103 to S109.
- Pascual-Leone A., Nguyet D., Cohen L. G., Brasil-Neto J. P., Cammarota A., Hallett M. (1995). Modulation of muscle responses evoked by transcranial magnetic stimulation during the acquisition of new fine motor skills. Journal of Neurophysiology, 74(3), 1037 to 1045.
- Yue G., Cole K. J. (1992). Strength increases from the motor program: Comparison of training with maximal voluntary and imagined muscle contractions. Journal of Neurophysiology, 67(5), 1114 to 1123.
- Ranganathan V. K., Siemionow V., Liu J. Z., Sahgal V., Yue G. H. (2004). From mental power to muscle power: Gaining strength by using the mind. Neuropsychologia, 42(7), 944 to 956.
- Guillot A., Di Rienzo F., MacIntyre T., Moran A., Collet C. (2012). Imagining is not doing but involves specific motor commands: A review of experimental data related to motor inhibition. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6, 247.
- Feldenkrais M. (1972). Awareness Through Movement. Harper & Row.
I am Nikola, a certified Feldenkrais practitioner and somatic coach, with about nine years of somatic work. Here I write about different approaches to the body: how to understand it better, how to learn new ways of using it, and how to build a more holistic relationship with your body and with life.
Ways to work with me
- 1:1 somatic sessions onlineindividual work, online
- Online Feldenkrais sessionsIndividual guidance through movement on Zoom
- Workshops and retreatsin person, in a group
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