Effort in Japan – Work Hard

Posted on by

Working hard is a tradition in Japan.  Nowhere is this clearer than in Shirakawa-go, a remote farming village located in the mountainous region of Honshu between Takayama and Kanazawa.  Shirakawa-go, now a UNESCO World Heritage site, is an outstanding example of a traditional way of life perfectly adapted to the environment and the resident’s social and economic circumstances.

The village was founded in the late 12th century by survivors of the Heike clan. Virtually wiped out by the Genji clan in a brutal battle in 1185, the Heike followed the Sho River deep into the densely forested Japan Alps until they found an isolated valley in which to settle. … Read More

A Movement Analyst in Japan

Posted on by

I just spent three weeks traveling around Japan by train with my husband and daughter.  Both of them can speak and read Japanese.  I cannot.  Consequently, I am useless when it comes to most verbal transactions.

While deaf and dumb, I still can see.   To avoid total confusion, I spend a lot of time observing behavior, the social context, and the environment.  In the following blogs, I share some of these observations through the lens of Laban Movement Analysis.  I will focus on effort, general and personal space, and the use of the body.… Read More

Effort and Human Potential

Posted on by

Since the discovery of neuroplasticity (the lifelong capacity of the human nervous system to regenerate and form new neural pathways), we aging Baby Boomers have been admonished to reinvent ourselves and learn new things, presumably so we will stay young forever.

This is, of course, hard advice to follow.  Not everyone wants to take up scuba diving or have a second career. Moreover, we are creatures of habit.  And one hallmark of skilled movement is that it has become, at least in part, automatic.… Read More

Effort and Habit

Posted on by

As Fred Astaire crooned to Ginger Rogers —  “The way you wear your hat, the way you sip your tea, the memory of all that, no, no they can’t take that away from me. “ Simple actions are memorable.  According to Mabel Ellsworth Todd, “It is not our parents’ faces that come back to us, but their bodies, in the accustomed chairs, eating, sewing, smoking, doing all the familiar things.  We remember each as a body in action.”

We all have a preferred way of being in the world, and we embody this. … Read More

Effort and Inner Life

Posted on by

Effort is not only about doing; it is also about being, or what Rudolf Laban calls movement thinking.  “Movement thinking could be considered as a gathering of impressions of happenings in one’s own mind, for which nomenclature is lacking.  This thinking does not serve orientation in the external world but rather it perfects man’s orientation in his inner world.”

Laban relates movement thinking to effort in the following way: “Man’s desire to orientate himself in the maze of his drives results in definite effort rhythms.” … Read More

Effort and Assertion

Posted on by

Every voluntary human movement involves applying energy to change the position of the body.  Energy can be applied in many different ways.  Rudolf Laban referred to these various qualities of kinetic energy as effort.  Similarly, the moving body can trace many different shapes as it traverses space.  Consequently, the human beings possess a richer range of motion than most other species.   As Laban observes, “When jumping the cat will be relaxed and flexible.  A horse or a deer will bound wonderfully in the air, but its body will be tense and concentrated during the jump.”  … Read More

Somatic Mysteries

Posted on by

We rely on our senses to perceive ourselves and other objects in the world.  We must always regard other objects from a third-person perspective.  However, as I explain in Beyond Words,  “we can combine objective and subjective perspectives when we consider our own bodies.”  This is due to dedicated sensory systems that provide information about one’s own body that is not directly available for other objects.

Nevertheless, the soma can be confused.  Out-of-body experiences, in which people report leaving their physical body and looking down on it from above, are the most widely-experienced forms of somatic misperceptions. … Read More

The Somatic Revolution

Posted on by

In the previous two blogs I have been contrasting body language and body movement.  Body language tends to isolate still poses and particular gestures from the stream of ongoing bodily action and read fixed meanings into these snapshots.  In so doing, the process of change, which is the essence of movement, disappears, as does the broader context of sequential actions. Body language treatises tend to present a stilted and mechanistic view of movement behavior.  Perhaps this is why much of the study of body language promises to improve an individual’s ability to manage his/her image and manipulate others.… Read More

Body Movement Is In

Posted on by

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.… Read More

Body Language Is Out

Posted on by

Virtually any time I tell someone that I am a movement analyst, I am met with a puzzled look and the query –“Oh, like body language?”

Warren Lamb hated having Movement Pattern Analysis characterized as body language, and rightly so.  Popular treatises on body language primarily focus on poses and isolated gestures and affix simple meanings to these.

For example, while trawling the internet recently, I came across a “scientific portal on body language” that explained the meaning of various poses and gestures. … Read More