Humane Effort

Human effort is rich, complex, and quite variable. Nevetheless, every individual develops effort habits over time. One’s effort “personality” is the product of individual temperament. It is shaped by social circumstances and developed through movement training and the other activities one engages in – whether voluntarily chosen or not. Thus nature, nurture, and movement experience combine to generate an individual’s ingrained effort habits.

While much of our movement behavior is habitual, we are also able to think about how we move. “Man’s selection of effort sequences no longer appears to be entirely subconscious,” according to Rudolf Laban. Consequently, man “has the possibility and advantage of conscious training, which allows him to change and enrich his effort habits.” This is due to a special kind of effort, which Laban refers to as “humane effort.”

Humane effort can be described as the energy applied to overcome the influence of nature and nurture, to alter the effect of inherited or acquired capacities. Humane effort is a kind of meta-effort, one that arises from the capacity to reflect on the very habitual motions most commonly taken-for-granted. “With humane effort,” Laban notes, “man is able to control negative habits and to develop qualities and inclinations creditable to man, despite adverse influences.”

As Laban elaborate, humane effort is of paramount importance, not only for movement education but also for self-development. F. Matthias Alexander corroborates Laban’s perspective. In The Use of the Self, Alexander chronicles his own struggles to change speaking habits that kept causing him to lose his voice. He had to study the customary way he held his head and neck and to identify damaging patterns that had come to feel natural. To solve his difficulties, he had not only to embody more effective patterns but also to overcome the feeling of naturalness he had come to associate with a way of moving that was harmful.

Overriding “what comes naturally” requires a special kind of effort, one that unites self-awareness with the will to change. Laban felt this was a uniquely human effort. He used the adjective “humane” because he saw this kind of effort as a civilizing and humanizing force, one bearing the best qualities of mankind.