Body Language Is Out

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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

Change of Any Kind Is Recuperative

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In her re-thinking of physical therapy through a Laban lens, Irmgard Bartenieff noted that “the basic activities of the body are lying, sitting, crawling, kneeling, standing, and walking.”  In dealing with back and leg pain caused by a herniated disk, I had to re-thinkthe rhythm of my workday.  Fortunately, I’m self-employed and work from home.  However, like many people, I had become accustomed to sitting at my computer for extended periods of time.   But during periods when my back problems were acute, I could not sit for any length of time comfortably.… Read More

Walking Is Recuperative

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According to a story in the Washington Post, mounting scientific evidence shows that sitting for long periods of time can lead to poor circulation, heart disease, and joint pain.  Unfortunately, many American adults sit for approximately eight hours a day on the job. However, a recent study at Indiana University showed that five-minute walking breaks reversed some of the negative effects of prolonged sitting, especially when integrated into the working day.

This study supports Rudolf Laban’s notion that working activities should be designed to incorporate active recuperation rather than passive rest periods or breaks. … Read More

Exertion and Recuperation

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When the dancer Rudolf Laban began to study work movement in British factories, two concerns predominated.  The first was efficiency; the second was fatigue.  By the 1940s, of course, there were laws governing the length of the workday and providing additional protection for the health and safety of workers.  Nevertheless, repetitive activity of any sort is tiring.  Human beings are not machines.  We cannot repeat any motion endlessly without the need for variation.

In turning his dancer’s eyes to repetitive labor, Laban identified a basic rhythm. … Read More

Movement and Health

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Movement is good for you!  Increasingly medical research is underscoring the health benefits of bodily motion.  Yet this is hardly news.  Prior to World War I, Rudolf Laban began giving movement classes in southern Switzerland.  In the nearby Kuranstalt Monte Verita, according the Mary Wigman,  “there were a number of very sick people who believed that the warm sunny climate would ease their suffering.”

An elderly lady bound to her wheelchair who suffered from an incurable kidney disease was among those attracted to Laban. … Read More

Using Your Movement Pattern Analysis Profile

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I had my profile made by Warren Lamb almost forty years ago. So I think I’ve learned a bit about making use of the information in the profile.

In an earlier blog I noted that movement is a process of change. I can also say that learning to use your movement profile involves change. There are several distinct phases.

Phase 1:  You want to be 100 percent in every facet of decision making.
The relative magnitude of the different effort and shape elements in an individual’s repertoire comprise the movement pattern.… Read More

No One Wants a Bar of Soap

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There is a well-known marketing adage – no one wants a bar of soap. Customers want to be clean, have soft skin, or smell nice. By extension, no one wants a Laban Movement Analysis. Instead, our customers want to dance better, find a way to stop back pain, or gain insight into self and other.

Rudolf Laban called movement “man’s magic mirror.” He saw that movement reflects motivations, thoughts, and feelings. He drew analogies between the mastery of movement and the mastery of self.… Read More

Moving Beyond “Groupthink”

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“Groupthink” is a characteristic of overly cohesive groups. Symptoms of groupthink include overconfidence and risk taking, suppression of dissent, and collective rationalization. The old adage that “like hires like” has some truth in it. Unfortunately, any group composed of like-minded individuals is in danger of succumbing to groupthink.

Long before “diversity” became politically correct, Warren Lamb was encouraging diversity in working teams. His model of diversity was not based on age, race, creed, or gender. Rather it was based on decision-making style.… Read More

Movement and Managing Success and Failure

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In Ambition, Gilbert Brim observes that “we look for the challenges that are right for us, for what we can just manage, and in this way form and shape our lives.” For most of us, however, identifying the “right challenges” is a matter of trial and error. It involves not only assessing the situation, but also assessing our own capabilities.

The latter assessment is the more difficult, for as the novelist Thomas Mann notes, “Our consciousness is feeble; only in moments of unusual clarity and vision do we really know about ourselves.”… Read More

Movement: Becoming Versus Being

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Movement is a process of change. This seems self-evident. And yet, when the analytical brain is focused on motion and change, understanding breaks up the flowing continuity into successive and distinct positions and states. What was dynamic becomes static, what was becoming becomes an invariable being.

One of the things I most appreciated about Warren Lamb was his insistence that movement is a process of change. The dynamic qualities of effort and shape must be observed to vary. A movement is never simply strong – it is becoming stronger.… Read More