“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Some of these mental habits can be cured rather easily, comparatively speaking. When he felt joyful yesterday, the sense of release was translated, as it should be, into physical expression – he sang, for example. This automatically released, exercised and relaxed areas of the chest, shoulders and back. He felt like running, and made a halfway respectable attempt to do so.

Feelings of spontaneity therefore automatically release the body mechanisms when they are allowed expression. When this occurs and he sees himself for example running, to some extent this makes the mental image of a nonrunning self less vivid. The body and mind are so connected that the mind remembers, say, muscular spontaneity as the muscles remember mental spontaneity. And the will, now, can be used to initiate a series of actions that will be spontaneous; and the motions now, the physical motions, in turn set up mental images of spontaneity that become self-generating. Do you follow me?

I suggest therefore at this point, that you encourage Ruburt in spontaneous physical activity as divorced, say, from a discipline exercise. Often, out of habit now, though not always, the muscles are restricted. Let him try as he once suggested, running in the apartment, or outside. The motion is associated with joy and spontaneity. Do you see?

One reason, you see, that I suggest the running is that any running at all prevents him from projecting into the future a nonrunning self. Once he runs he can improve on the running, but he can no longer consider himself someone incapable of running. This is extremely important from both a mental and physical standpoint.

Now he has been improving, but now we will work at this from both angles. Earlier we could not have done so. A sense of play must accompany this however. We do not want for example a desperate attempt to run, which is self-defeating. The same applies to what I said about getting up and down from the floor. And these should not be overdone.