I have a rather complicated relationship with my tailbone. We’re in that “it’s complicated” phase, as they so aptly put it on social media. But what isn’t complicated these days? Exactly. My tailbone is totally on trend.

“It is the spirit that builds the body,” as it says in the final part of Friedrich Schiller’s famous “Wallenstein” trilogy of plays about the Thirty Years’ War. I often think of this line when I try to gently loosen my tailbone from the sacrum and, at the same time, encourage my slipped vertebra to slide back gently into place by a millimeter or two.

In my imagination, I’ve gotten pretty good at it by now. As for whether anything is actually moving down there—I’m not sure.

But that doesn’t really matter; for now, it’s enough if the bones move in my mind. Because it’s all about imagination—it’s about seeing the individual vertebrae in the right position in my mind’s eye, each one perfectly in its place, exactly where we want it to be. And in between, looooots of space for each intervertebral disc.

It’s all about the alignment of the vertebrae, and that’s correct when the mind visualizes the image correctly.

So, once again: Keep your tailbone lifted and relaxed. And please move the 4th lumbar vertebra back just a little bit into line, so that it can align nicely with all the other vertebrae and rise straight up toward the crown of your head.

I’m trying to address this crazy piece of bone in a spaceship-like manner, Ground Control to Major Tom: “Can you hear me now?” Somehow it’s not quite working yet—at least not the way it’s supposed to according to the instructions.

At first, I couldn’t feel my tailbone at all. When I was learning from the books, I almost despaired over this at first—how on earth am I supposed to separate the sacrum from the tailbone?! I read about it in various versions and tried again and again.

Once, out of sheer frustration, I threw a book into the corner. I was tempted to say that I just couldn’t do it. Because I have a spondylolisthesis, because I once had a herniated disc, because, well, some of the bones down there just aren’t quite textbook-perfect for me anymore.

Excuses! In the end, it always works out somehow—you just have to picture how it moves and gets into the right position for long enough. So, here’s another try:

This time, I’m picturing a pair of dangle earrings with gemstones that hang loosely in a vertical line. The more concrete the image, the more powerful its effect.

My “Steissbein” is a Cascade dangle earring featuring five colored stones in iridescent aquamarine, arranged in a vertical row and tapering toward the bottom. The stones are loosely strung together with movable white gold connectors that allow for a gentle sway.

And now I actually feel something stirring very gently. It’s the sensation of something small moving, right where the coccyx is located on the anatomical model.

Emotion arises from the imagination, from a thought. That is why I now know that Friedrich Schiller was right: “It is the spirit that builds the body.”

Sitting upright, with my tailbone swaying away from my sacrum in an aquamarine blue motion, I continued reading a bit more of the verses from the Wallenstein plays, and stumbled upon famous lines such as “Life is serious, art is cheerful” or: “Man grows with his greater purposes.”

The line “That’s how I recognize my old friends” also comes from *Wallenstein’s Death*, as does “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.” Well then! In any case, it never hurts to revisit the old classics every now and then.