Anatomy of a cue that works.

Here is a cue from Sana’s own floor, one Sana reached for recently and kept.

Say it to a slumped posture and watch the chest open, the shoulder blades set, the neck lengthen. Nothing anatomical was named. Everything anatomical happened.

The Parts

What is this cue made of?

Three things, stacked in nine words.

• A location. Between the two points of the shoulders, precise enough to aim attention without a diagram.
• A direction. Forward, so the effort has somewhere to travel.
• An image with weight to it. Pride, which carries its own posture, and a heart that shines, which no body interprets downward.

The line works because the image does the biomechanics on the body’s behalf.

The Test

Why do image cues like this land?

Because a client mid-movement has no spare attention for translation. “Retract and depress the scapulae” is accurate and arrives like homework. An external image produces the pattern whole: the body organizes toward the picture, and the muscles that should fire, fire in company rather than one by one. This is the practical case for external focus, in one working example.

From Cue Dynamics · for Voice & Delivery

Cueing, trained as a language.

See the Masterclass

The Craft

How do you build your own?

Start from what you want the body to do, then ask what it would feel like to a person who has never heard a muscle named. Give the feeling a location and a direction, and keep it to one breath. Then say it to real bodies and watch: a cue is only finished when the room proves it.

Collect fewer lines like this and own them deeply. One cue that moves twelve bodies is worth a folder of ones that read well and land nowhere.