I’m 77 and, like many people my age, tend to stoop rather than stand up straight. A few months ago I was standing by the kitchen door, talking idly. For some reason I turned and hit my head a stunning blow on the door frame. More recently I was looking over my wife’s shoulder as she worked on her computer; I reached out my hand, pointing to something on the screen. As I pulled my hand back, my fingers got caught in a box on the table and I toppled it over on to the floor, spilling its contents. After a while I realised that both times I’d been stooping. In my mind’s eye my head was clear of the door frame and my hand well above the table, but my stoop cancelled both. Is our body image slow to adjust to reality? If so why, and can it be fixed?
(Continued)
• I read with great interest your earlier correspondent’s explanation of how proprioception may fail to keep up with changes in body shape (7 March).
Four years ago, I was pregnant with twins. Even though I could see my quite sizeable belly, touch it with my hands and sense the twins kicking my internal organs, I couldn’t feel my belly “from within”.
“I knew I was pregnant but my abdomen seemed to me to be flat and in the very same place as before”
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When lying in bed on my back with my eyes closed, I could feel the blanket touching my belly, but my abdomen seemed to me to be flat and in the very same place it had been all the years previously. I recall having to be especially careful when shutting the car door: if I didn’t make a conscious effort, I’d slam it on my bump. Apparently, nine months were not enough for me to develop a proper proprioceptive feeling for my new body shape.
Can you also please convey my thanks and admiration to your correspondent David Muir, whose answers to the Last Word questions I always read with great pleasure?
Ilka Flegel, Kapellendorf, Germany
• We are happy to do so Ilka, and here is another of David’s answers – Ed
This article appeared in print under the headline “Mind lags body”
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