The diversity of applications of movement analysis showcased at the June conference in Montreal was awesome. And that is just the beginning….
As the sociologist Bryan S. Turner noted: “The body is at once the most solid, the most elusive, illusory, concrete, metaphorical, every present and ever distant thing.” Surely the same can be said of bodily movement – it is omnipresent in human life, yet elusive to perceive and interpret. Nevertheless, it has enormous potential.
According to journalist Olive Moore: “This science of movement study is so remarkable that at first its significance is difficult to grasp. But if we think of human movement as we should – as the outward and visible symbol of man entire, his spirit mirrored indelibly in every conscious and unconscious movement he makes – we have for the first time in human history a complete diagnosis which allows no error and cannot lie.”
It is true that disciplined movement study like Movement Pattern Analysis profiling can provide objective insight into human behavior; it can enhance the understanding of self and others. But movement study can be more — it can bring us closer to something fundamental in existence, something of great intrinsic value.
As the philosopher Henri Bergson observed: “Movement is reality itself.” Once we recognize this, “What was immobile and frozen in our perception is warmed and set in motion. Everything comes to life around us, everything is revivified in us.”