Henri Bergson, the French philosopher, was fascinated by how analytical thinking leads us to misperceive our own experience of being alive. For Bergson, life is an unceasing, continuous, undivided process, a sort of cosmic movement. Yet, we tend to conceive our lives as passing from feeling to feeling or thought to thought, as if each is separate, unchanging thing. In reality, feelings and thoughts are themselves in a state of flux, and it is the experience of continuous changes that is central to the experience of being alive.
Bergson illustrates this view with a movement example. Let us consider a movement that begins with the arms in an open position, and ends with the arms folded across the chest. The movement of the arms will trace a line in space. That line, like any line, can be broken into a series of points. With high speed photography, multiple placements of the arms as they traverse a line from the open to the crossed position can be captured and made discrete. But as Bergson points out, these snapshots turn the movement into a series of static positions. The movement itself is something else.
Echoing Bergson, Rudolf Laban writes, “In the past we have clung too stubbornly to a static conception of our environment, and consequently to a misconception of life in general, as well as of our own personal lives.” The body language proponents are clinging to a static and mechanical conception of bodily being. They are missing the continuity of change that is the essential quality of movement. Consequently, they misconstrue the meaning of nonverbal actions.
Therefore, body language should be out. Body movement should be in.