We carry images, atmospheres, and stories around with us every day. Wherever you’re sitting, standing, or walking right now, try this for a moment:

• change slowly back and forth between 2 or 3 different postures. The first one might be “default,” the posture you’re already in; then another posture more “upright” than usual, verging on rigid; and another more “deflated,” slack and lacking structure. Cycle through them, notice how the “atmosphere” or “background sense-imagery” of your experience changes. What happens to your mood, your sense of the space around you, your sense of self?

Most of the time, we don’t notice these atmospheres we carry around with us, but they permeate our lives. Robert Bosnak describes this dynamic well:

We are embodied by imagination, imagination grows itself a physical body.

Look at the stooped posture of someone who walks around in a world that feels grey, heavy, and bleak. The curve of his spine has become the home his bleak image embodied for itself.

The atmospheres and images we spend our lives marinating in matter. They shape us and bleed into how we live our lives. So we might as well begin to notice them, and even step into cultivating them.

Once we notice these scenes and images, these atmospheres that are always with us, we can begin to navigate them. We can even use the tools of image return to explore them, metabolize them, and alter them.

Make a habit of writing down (perhaps in your Waking Journal) any time you actively notice some somatic scenery you’re moving through during the day.