Lifting - Scientific Explanation?

[LaydeeSelby]

I remember doing some kind of experiment with a group of friends. Two of us tried to lift one person from the floor using only our little fingers and couldn't do it. We then applied strong pressure to his head for several minutes then tried lifting him in exactly the same way. This time we were able to lift him easily. Has anybody else ever done this? Is there any scientific explanation for it? Thanks.

[LazyGun]

We once had a conversation about this. It was a somewhat similar situation to yours, only it was an anvil and there were about 5 of us. We also each used just a single forefinger. There was some preparation time involved, pressing down hard with the forefinger on the anvil.

We later came to the conclusion that the successful lift of the anvil, apparently effortlessly, occured because we effectively overstressed the muscle groups by pressing down hard first, so when it came to lift, it felt effortless.

I think it might be more difficult to explain when talking about a person though... an anvil is rigid, whereas a body isnt.

[josy]

Is that where you would chant ' light as a feather stiff as a board, light as a feather stiff as a board....... I remember doing something like that, always used to work.

[ronnie3]

me and my brother and sisters used to do this as kids we had great fun dont know how it works though

[The Seeker]

It's weird.

At a party when I was a student, one of my friends, a 16 stone Jonah Lumo lookalike, sat down in a chair. There were four people at each corner of the chair and we pressed our thumbs and index fingers to the other hand, forming a 'gun' shape. We then tried to lift our friend from the chair using only our fingers, but to no avail.

We each put a hand over his head, in turn, until there were eight hands over him. None of the hands touched each other, but were just held in a line, on top of one another, directly above him. We held them there for about a minute, one of our friends shouted 'NOW!' and we put our joined fingers under both his knees and his armpits.

Well, he FLEW up towrds ths ceiling. We were all gobsmacked as we'd never seen anything like it. He was a large chap but he was as light as a feather. Very strange.

Maybe other ABers can try it and let us know how they get on?

[Karen2005]

Hello

I wondered about this too and asked in the Science section a while back. I'm not sure how you can post a link to previous threads, but if you do a search for "mind over matter", and click on the first result, you will see the thread. Some very interesting answers are there!

Karen