The fabulous performance of athletes during the Winter Olympics demonstrates the constant advance of physical skills and human movement potential.  As Michael Murphy, co-founder of the Esalen Institute, wrote, “The worlds of physical adventure and sport dramatize our capacity for self-exceeding.”

According to Moshe Feldenkrais, once one man was able to run a mile in four minutes, it was only a matter of time before more people could do the same.  Indeed, the capacity of athletes to keep breaking records seems almost infinite.… Read More

Body-based mechanisms – mirror neurons, matching qualities of flow, and synchronous rhythms – are increasingly recognized as the subliminal bases of interpersonal empathy and social cooperation.

Is it possible that these same body-based mechanisms also play a role in understanding the art and artifacts that human beings create?

This is exactly what some artists proposed in the early 20^th century.

In asking how a visual object – a painting, sculpture, or building – comes to have meaning, these artists observed that “physical forms possess a character because we ourselves possess a body.” … Read More

Dancers and soldiers have known for hundreds of years that moving in synchrony with others fuels empathy and social cohesion.  It took the research of William Condon, however, to illuminate the importance of synchrony in effective and satisfying everyday interactions with other people.  He called his discovery “entrainment.”

Through exhaustive study of films of face-to-face interactions, Condon discovered that small synchronous movements occur within and between the actions of each conversant.

According to the anthropologist Edward Hall, “When we talk to each other our central nervous systems mesh like two gears in a transmission.” … Read More

In addition to the mirror neurons, the tension and elasticity of our own bodily movements play a role in how we understand and empathize with the actions of others.

Tension and elasticity are aspects of the motion factor of Flow.  Warren Lamb identified two types of Flow – effort flow and shape flow.  Effort flow has to do with changes in muscle tension as the effort to control one’s movements increases or decreases.  Shape flow has to do with the elasticity of the body shape as it grows or shrinks in response to one’s surroundings.… Read More

While the perception of the movement of other human beings is primarily a visual experience, it can be heightened by kinesthetic empathy.  Kinesthetic empathy involves physical identification with the movements one observes being executed.

It has long been known that we identify with the movements we see others doing — tensing during a critical moment in a sports event, exuberantly relaxing when the player scores.

The discovery of mirror neurons, however, has clarified the neural mechanisms that facilitate kinesthetic empathy.  These motor nerves simulate observed actions without producing movement. … Read More

As a child psychiatrist, Judith Kestenberg (1910-1999) wanted to support positive parent-child interactions. She recognized the importance of movement as a means of communication during infancy and early childhood.

She was also aware that nonverbal clashes could occur between the movement patterns of parent and child.  To facilitate healthy movement interactions and build a foundation of empathy and trust, Kestenberg came up with the notion of nonverbal attunement.

Attunement is the blending or adapting of one’s own preferred movement rhythms to those of another person. … Read More

Warren Lamb (1923-2014) spent his life studying movement.  As a protégé of Rudolf Laban, Lamb developed his observational skills analyzing repetitive labor in British factories.  Pattern was a key feature of these skillful actions.

When Lamb began to the study the bodily motions that accompany normal conversation, he also detected patterns.  He came to feel that these movement patterns were a deeply important aspect of an individual’s behavior, as unique as a finger print.

Moreover, Lamb felt such patterns were relatively stable in adulthood. … Read More

January is often a month of reflection, a time to think about past and future, pattern and change.  Consequently, this month’s blogs are devoted to four individuals who have reflected on pattern and change in human movement – Henri Bergson, Warren Lamb, Irmgard Bartenieff, and Judith Kestenberg.

The French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) was deeply affected by the instantaneous photographs of Eadweard Muybridge.  While these snapshots of moving animals and people revealed aspects of movement too rapid to be perceived by the naked eye, Bergson also discerned that such images turned movement, which is an undivided process of change, into a series of static images.… Read More

In the Preface to Mastery of Movement, Laban cites the story of the centipede who became immobilized and died of starvation because it was ordered to “move first with its seventy-eighth foot, and then to use its other legs in a particular numerical order.”  Laban sees this as a warning against “the presumption of attempting a rational explanation of movement.”

Nevertheless, Laban knows that making movement the subject of focal awareness has many benefits.  For him, “application of the common principles of impulse and function is the only means that can promote the freedom and spontaneity of the moving person.”… Read More