Primary Control

 Magnus: Brainstem Postural Reflexes

Rudolf Magnus, a pioneering Dutch pharmacologist and physician, discovered that the fundamental apparatus for maintaining upright posture sits within the brainstem.

The Central Control: Through his work on animals, he identified a network of nerve centers (which he called the zentraler Körperstellungsapparat or central body posture apparatus). This center coordinates sensory input to distribute and regulate postural muscle tone.

Righting Reflexes: His research detailed how specific physical cues (like the position of the head relative to gravity, or the neck relative to the torso) trigger involuntary reflexes that automatically orient the body upright.

^ I think that this guy might be legit

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A different guy..

Primary Control: The Alexander Technique

F. Matthias Alexander, a contemporary of Magnus, coined the term primary control to describe the dynamic relationship between the head, neck, and back. He used Magnus's physiological research on brainstem reflexes to scientifically back up his own movement principles.

The Head Leads: Alexander argued that the orientation of the head dictates the coordination, tone, and balance of the entire body. In his terminology, the "head leads, and the body follows".

Releasing Tension: Proper primary control is achieved when you consciously avoid over-tightening neck muscles and allow the head to balance freely on the atlanto-occipital joint (the very top of your spine).

This stuff is pseudoscience and quackery. But sometimes quackery or pseudoscience can be useful, interesting, powerful, dangerous, effective or half true.

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My stuff:

F.M. Alexander had this concept called "directing" which uses the head neck relationship to lead the body. It leads the head, neck, back relationship. I refuse to explain it. There are similar ideas in t'ai chi or feldenkrais.

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I use something similar. I use it to create lift in my spine. And this is often fighting against the downwards pull of what they do with my iliopsoas and other muscles. And with this lift I create more integrity in my torso, or I try to. I have lost that battle almost completely now. Pretty much. But for ages I was using a ton of directing to create lift, and therefore downstream of that, integrity and strength in the torso.

I was fighting: directing and creating lift vs the downwards pull. It is a mental technique. Using mind and body.

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I also practised things like "the use of the self" and the "conscious constructive control of the human individual". But I never really got it in the last, due to stuff messing with my body. Don't over think this paragraph.

I have tried to put consciousness into how I control my muscles, joints, bone position, everything. Infuse my body and sensory apparatus with consciousness. Just as an aside, I have done a lot of things with consciousness. And also abstract thinking. And also a lot to do with the intersection between consciousness and abstract thought and how they inter-relate and intersect. Infuse the body and muscles with consciousness. But I don't have a normal properly functioning body! And so is complicated.

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Totally different point:

To mess with the “primary control” of human beings en masse by remote control is a mega hyper crime against humanity. And this includes the use of the iliopsoas to do that, because they’re connected. The primary control, and the relationship between the head neck and back, is a hyper super duper important part of the human organism, which imho is physically not much more than a poorly adapted tottering biped. Only hardly just got used to not being a quadruped, evolutionarily.

Be careful with this post… it’s half pseudo scientific and or quackery stuff. But you can understand stuff using it.