Dear Miss Made,

I deal with chronic neck pain, and I deal with it by detaching my head most of the time. It’s a great way to keep my neck strain-free, but it means I have to carry my head around if I want to be aware of my surroundings. It’s no big deal if I’m just walking, but when I have work to get done, it can be a bit of a juggling act. I’ve had to learn to do a lot of things one-handed.

I’ve heard that there are ways for a headless person to sense where they’re going and what they’re doing, but none of the links I’ve found pass the BS test. Do you have any advice? At this point, I’d settle for a way to keep better track of where my head is.

Sincerely,

Dizzy in Denver

Dear Dizzy,

First of all, good call on avoiding a lot of the stuff you find online about this problem. A lot of people will tell you they have a solution for things like this, and it’s just bait to get you to subscribe to their paid seminar or buy into a pyramid scheme for bogus supplements. (That said, like and subscribe! My merch store has keychains and stickers now! #iamawareoftheirony)

So you want to get better at navigating headless. If you’re just talking about wandering around your own home, it’s not much different from wandering around in the dark. Move carefully, feel your way forward with your hands and feet, and try to remember where you put your furniture, and you could probably fetch a drink while your head stays on the couch. You could probably even make popcorn if you learn which microwave buttons are where.

If you want to do more than that, and you don’t want to learn Braille, then that’s where clairvoyance comes in. It should allow you to be completely aware of what’s around your body, but like a lot of the woodgier effects, it’s a tricky skill to learn. Unlike division, nobody makes a prop to help you do it, and unlike things like levitation, there’s no easy way to map it onto a mundane skill. You kind of have to make up a way to make it make sense for you. Kind of like whistling. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Sam? #movienight

The one thing that helps it come easier is previous magical experience, but if you’re already going around headless most of the time, you’ve got that handled. You know that little tingle you get when you push the blade through? That tells you it’s working. If you want to get a start, just wander around your place headless and try to visualize the room where your body’s standing. If you start to feel that tingle, push a little harder. Try to visualize more specific details while holding onto that feeling. If you start to get a headache or vertigo, take a break. (If you’re in the habit of pushing yourself to the absolute limit, make sure you do this with someone else around. You wouldn’t do strength training without a spotter, so don’t try clairvoyance training alone either.)

If you want a shortcut to this sort of clairvoyance, you can try to disappear your head instead of detaching it. Without an existing vantage point to distract you, you should find it much easier to develop the awareness you’re looking for. Of course, disappearing body parts is already a challenge, unless it’s something that you already made appear to begin with, like an extra arm or leg. And disappearing something vital like your head is an even bigger challenge, because you have to get used to the feeling of your vitals functioning without the physical sensation of breathing and so on. But if you like manipulating your body in this way, it’s a great way to train coordination.

Whew, this is a long one. But you hit on a nice deep topic, and I guess I’ve got a lot to say on this one. We’re almost done, though.

You mentioned wanting to keep better track of where your head is, and you’re right, it’s much easier to train that than to develop full clairvoyance. In fact, you already have the ability to do this. It’s called proprioception, the natural human ability to know the spatial position of your own body parts. It’s how people can touch their nose with their fingers without looking, unless they’re in the middle of failing a field sobriety test. #pleasedrinkresponsibly

Even if your head is tucked under one arm, I bet you can still do this. Give it a try. If you’re used to carrying your own head around, you’ll probably be able to hold your head in one hand and touch your nose with the other, without feeling around too much. If you can do that, it’s not much of a stretch to track where your body is relative to your head.

Whether you have that level of awareness already or not, the secret to developing it is still just practice. Start by setting your head aside and watching yourself do yoga, or something else that keeps your body in the same place while changing position regularly. Every so often, reach out for your head, just to keep locked in. After a while, you should find yourself able to move out of your own field of view without losing track of your position. Once you get there, it’s a matter of pushing your comfort zone, until you can navigate your whole house without getting too lost. It’s kind of like playing first-person video games your whole life, and then trying a new one with fixed-position camera. It’s just a matter of learning a new control scheme.

So, that should give you a couple of options for a training regimen. I hope that wasn’t too overwhelming. Good luck, Dizzy! Make sure you don’t lose your head! #illseemyselfout

Yours in headlessness,

Miss Made