Effort and Human Potential

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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.

The common, everyday movements we make are the hardest to change.  We ascribe little significance to such habits until they are interrupted.  I speak from experience.  I postponed microsurgery for a herniated disk, not because I was afraid of the surgery, but because I dreaded the aftermath – six weeks of no bending, twisting, or lifting!

To prepare for these restrictions, I not only had to rearrange my home, I also had to rehearse moving in a different way.  Avoiding twisting and lifting didn’t seem so hard, but no bending?  How many times a day did I bend my back without even noticing?

Nevertheless, as Rudolf Laban explains, man “has the possibility and advantage of conscious training, which allows him to change and enrich his effort habits.”  This kind of change can almost be thought of as a meta-effort, or what Laban calls “humane effort.”  This is the effort applied to overcome habits and to develop more desirable qualities and inclinations.

Laban continues, “We are touched by the suggestion of quasi-humane efforts of devotion, sacrifice, or renunciation displayed by animals.  Such may or may not have a foundation in fact.  But we take it for granted that every man is able, and even almost under an obligation, to foster such kinds of effort.”

These quotes are taken from Laban’s book, The Mastery of Movement.  But he is not merely discussing the mastery of movement, he is also addressing the mastery of the self.   Or I should say “selves.”  For our humanity rests, not only on the reiteration of an embodied identity based on effort patterns, but also on our capacity to change movement habits through humane effort, and by so doing, change ourselves.

Effort and Assertion

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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.”   A human being, however, “can jump like a deer, and if he wishes, like a cat.”

Voluntary movement is intentional. Thus our bodies serve as an immediate means of acting on the environment to our satisfy needs.  We must make an effort to act.  However, according to Warren Lamb, “Effort goes with Shape organically…. The fact is we can never do Effort without Shaping and, if we emphasise the Shaping we still have to make an Effort.  The two are a duality, inseparable from each other, and fundamental to balance.”

Though fundamentally inseparable, it is possible for an individual to place more emphasis on effort than on shape, or vice versa.   This differential emphasis will characterize how the individual goes about acting in the world.

For example, Warren Lamb found that when a person emphasizes effort, he or she takes a more assertive approach.  Being assertive is commonly seen as being direct in claiming one’s rights, insistent, demanding and even aggressive.  In movement behavior terms, however, being assertive simply means applying one’s bodily energies to make things happen. The assertive person will believe that almost anything can be accomplished if he or she maintains focus and applies enough pressure at the right time.

This is the effect of an effort emphasis focused outwardly, on doing.  But effort also plays an important role in the inner life.  I take up this subject in my next blog.

The Somatic Revolution

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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.

The study of body movement, on the other hand, is much more difficult.  This is because movement is dynamic, changeable, and ephemeral – thus infinitely harder to pin down.  In addition, appreciating movement as a process of change necessitates altering certain habits of the mind.  It requires not only perceiving the beginning and ending positions of an action, but also all the bits in between.  It demands a shifting of focus from what is done to how it is done.  But in so doing, to quote Bergson, “What was immobile and frozen in our perception is warmed and set in motion…. We are more fully alive.”

Increasingly, body language, with its mechanistic view of human behavior, is out.  Body movement is in.  This can be seen, for example, in the rising popularity of various somatic practices.  The term “somatics” was coined by the American philosopher Thomas Hanna.  He defined the term as follows:

“Somatics is the field which studies the soma:  namely the body as perceived from within by first-person perception.  When a human being is observed from the outside – i.e., from the third-person viewpoint – the phenomenon of a human body is perceived.  But, when this same human being is observed from the first person viewpoint of his own proprioceptive senses, a categorically different phenomenon is perceived:  the human soma.”

Hanna understood that this shift in perception is revolutionary.   As I note in Meaning in Motion, the somatic perspective contrasts long-standing scientific views and medical practices that have tended to objectify the body and nullify personal agency.  Somatic practices approach the body from a different angle, acknowledging the intrinsically subjective aspects of corporeal experience and viewing the individual, not as an object to be acted upon, but as an active agent.

Body Movement Is In

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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.

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.

I found a way to deal with back pain by drawing on the concept of exertion and recuperation.  I began to intersperse periods of standing, walking, and lying into my sedentary workday.  To stand and work, I set up a laptop on the kitchen counter.  I took short breaks and walked figure 8s around the living room sofa.  I also took breaks and simply lay down for a while.  Varying the nature of activities across the day certainly aided in my eventual recovery.

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The upright posture of homo sapiens presents many challenges.  Degeneration of the spinal disks is one.  As Bartenieff notes, “A disturbance of posture can be thought of as the introduction of unfavorable statics:  some muscle groups being fixed in permanent contraction, others being left out of functioning.  Since posture is seen as readiness to move, to change throughout the body, such fixedness of one or more groups of muscles interrupts or reduces readiness to change and thus has far reaching effects on all patterns of the arms, legs, and trunk.”

So, while I am glad you are reading this blog, don’t just sit there.  Take a break.  Stand, stretch, walk, kneel, crawl, or lie down.  Change of any sort is recuperative!

Walking Is Recuperative

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Untitled design (4)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.  In the 1940’s when Laban studied repetitive labor in British factories, he built recuperative motions into the working actions themselves.  At the time, this was revolutionary.

Science now seems to be catching up.  For example, one study showed that six hours of sitting negated the positive effects of one hour of exercise.  This suggests that compartmentalizing exercise into an hour at the gym after work may not be as beneficial as one hopes.

As I note in Meaning in Motion, Laban first sought to maintain dynamic vitality by balancing fighting and indulging efforts in the work actions themselves.  Over time he came to realize that the rhythm of exertion and recuperation was more complex.

In fact, change of any kind can be recuperative.  This could be a change in how one is doing an activity.  Or it could be a change in the activity itself.  Increasingly, studies show that the change need not be drastic or of long duration.  But healthy variation needs to be rhythmic in the broad sense – integrated into the flow of daily activities rather than set aside for after work or on the weekend.

I had to apply this concept myself.  Find out how in the next blog.

 

Movement and Health

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Untitled design (2)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.  Wigman was asked to assist Laban in a private movement lesson with the afflicted lady, although Wigman was terrified that something terrible would happen if Laban made the woman move around.

Wigman describes the lesson in the following way.  After the afflicted lady was wheeled into the studio, Laban lifted her into another chair and conversed with her.  Gradually he introduced relaxing exercises of the head, arms, and shoulders.   Then he went so far as to make her lift her legs and move her feet!    As Wigman recalled,  “The drooping body of the suffering woman started to straighten up, the dull eyes came to life.  It was as if she had been raised from the dead.”

Wigman continues:  “It was then that for the first time in my life I understood how much natural healing power is inherent in the movement of human body if, focused on the individual case, the movement is correctly perceived and well applied in the right dose.”

The following blogs explore the healing power of movement further.