Why is Body Language Popular?

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

There seems to be a great divide in the American public’s awareness of movement.

When it comes to watching sports, like the recent Winter Olympics in Sochi, the American viewing public seems perfectly happy to witness a progressive process of change. This appreciation of movement as movement accounts for the popularity of events like downhill skiing, figure skating, and ice dance, where Bergson’s “flux and continuity of transition” are particularly obvious.

When it comes to everyday activities, this appreciation evaporates. Movement is omnipresent in working and conversing.… Read More

Movement Versus Body Language

Posted on April 14, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Body language tends to single out isolated gestures and still poses for purposes of study. Then it attaches psychodynamic interpretations to these snapshot. Thus “arms folded over the chest” means a person is closed. Lifting and exposing the palm signals flirtation, rubbing the nose indicates disapproval, and so on.

Body language isolates postures and gestures from the steam of ongoing movement in manner analogous to “instantaneous photographs,” such as those of Eadweard Muybridge. His photos recorded various moments in a series of actions.… Read More

Body Language and Social Order

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

In Body Language and Social Order, Albert Scheflen argues that body language is used for political control, manipulation, and the maintenance of power and class hierarchies. The book reveals how specific bodily behaviors in public places reinforce the status quo. Scheflen utilizes numerous candid photographs of men, women, and children to support his arguments.

When I first read this book many years ago, I found it deeply disturbing. I felt that body movement was a liberating force, not a binding one.… Read More

Imitation and Intuition: More Tools to Enhance Body Knowledge

Posted on March 31, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

According to Laban, human movement can be understood in three different ways. It can be appreciated simply through the unreflective act of moving itself. It can be grasped through objective analysis. And movement can be interpreted by linking concrete actions with abstract ideas and feelings.

Different sorts of understanding arise for each perspective. Movement analysis provides a means for observing with greater definition. It slows the automatic process of interpreting simply on the basis of body knowledge. By so doing, analysis supports taking a more objective approach to movement study and helps one transcend body prejudices.… Read More

Movement Analysis: Enhancing Body Knowledge, Transcending Body Prejudice

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Rudolf Laban observed that movement can be perceived from three distinct angles:

the “biological innocent” — the person enjoying movement inwardly, as a bodily experience,
the “scheming mechanic” – the person who observes movement analytically and objectively from the outside,
the “emotional dreamer” – the person who seeks the meaning of movement in the intangible world of emotions and ideas

Laban asserts that these three perspectives operate constantly in all of us. Sometimes we favor one or the other view, and “sometimes we compress them in a synthesized act of perception and function.”… Read More

Body Prejudice

Posted on March 10, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Like body knowledge, body prejudice originates from our capacity to categorize and generalize on the basis of personal movement experience. As I write in Beyond Words, second edition:

Over time, a positive or negative meaning comes to be associated with a certain type of movement. If this meaning is automatically projected onto all similar movements, regardless of context and modifying details, an inappropriate and prejudicial reaction may result.

Just because a movement is pre-judged does not mean it is judged wrongly, but this is always a possibility.… Read More

The Anatomy of Body Knowledge

Posted on March 9, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Body knowledge develops gradually, as a combination of perception of our own movements and observation of the movements of other people.

Similar to all other forms of knowing and attaching meaning to human actions, body knowledge rests on three processes: categorizing, abstracting, and generalizing.

Categorizing is discerning related and unrelated movements; grouping those that are similar. For example hammering is one kind of movement and stamping is another.

Abstracting is leaving out particularistic details to generate broader categories. Hammering involves the hands and stamping uses the feet, but both hammering and stamping employ the same effort qualities and can be abstracted as belonging to the broader category of punching movements.… Read More

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Years ago during a modern dance class the instructor demonstrated a complicated movement. When the class attempted to repeat it, he complained. “No, the arm goes here, not there.”

The class protested, “We just did what you did.”

“Well then,” he countered, “do as I say, not as I do.”

Whether one is trying to dance or determine if a friend is really dependable, actions speak louder than words. In the long run, what really matters is not what someone says, but what they do.… Read More

Movement Analysis is a Physical Activity

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Like other physical activities, observing movement is a process that involves effort and recovery. The following excerpt from my book, Beyond Words, describes movement analysis as a process consisting of four phrases: (1) relaxation, (2) attunement, (3) point of concentration, and (4) recuperation.

Relaxation
The initial preparatory stage involves relaxation as the observer strives to “get in the mood” for whatever will come. This takes the form of letting go in order to achieve a state of mind analogous to the “unfocused focus” of the naturalist who “goes alone into a field or woodland and closes his mind to everything but that time and place, so that life around him presses in on all the senses and small details grow in significance” (Wilson, 1986, 103).… Read More

In Praise of Whole Body Movement

Posted on February 17, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Shakespeare praised man’s “infinite faculties”. But human beings are constantly in danger of coming apart. Whether we bifurcate the individual into body and mind or even greater divisions (ego, ID, superego; thinking, feeling, sensing, intuiting, etc.), keeping it together is a uniquely human challenge.

Body movement is one medium through which these divisions can be unified. Laban created physical practices to facilitate the integration of man’s infinite faculties. This part of Laban’s work is known as “choreutics” or space harmony. Laban characterizes his choreutic exercises as “attempts to stop the progress of disintegrating into disunity”.… Read More