 |  | | | | |
| | Foundation for Movement Intelligence What is Movement |  | ||
| | | | ||
| | | | | |
| |||||
| | ||||
| |||||
| ||||||||
| |
The Elegance of Movement Intelligence With a nod to Howard Gardner’s Frames of Mind, we define Movement Intelligence [MI] as our innate capacity to polish the process of transforming intention into action. MI incorporates conventional kinesthetic concepts of flexibility, balance, alignment and strength, as well as coordination and endurance, but it is something more: it recognizes the human organism’s ability to organize itself “organically” — elegantly and in its entirety, with spontaneously coordinated harmony — for optimal efficiency, maximal efficacy, and pleasurable, sustainable living. Its hallmark is an intrinsic sense of effortlessness that comes from having and heeding well-calibrated sensory-motor feedback. In line with the latest research on neuroplastcity, MI recognizes that overcoming physical limitations and dysfunctions is as much a matter of working with the “software” of the brain as with the “hardware” of the body.
Just as infants develop their movement vocabularies while learning to make their way from rolling to creeping to crawling, so too can “grown-ups” continue to expand the range and hone the quality of their adult somatic expression, intelligently cultivating and refining their movement repertoire throughout their lives. With an emphasis on not just surviving, but thriving, our infinite ability to improve in this domain — to mature our “movement I.Q.” — is a lifelong endeavor. It embraces aesthetic as well as athletic pursuits, from “pre-hab” to re-hab, and provides keys to healthy aging and a successful, satisfying life’s journey.
As an innovative approach to personal ergonomics, MI can take on novel appearances, • heightening intrinsic [“slow-twitch”] extensor tone to improve skeletal alignment, • protecting vulnerable joints in order to reliably withstand the impact of • gently pushing and pulling on bones [springy compression and distraction] • obviating bone fractures by improving balance [in order to prevent falls] as well as | | | ||||
| ||||||||
| | | | | ||||
| | | | | ||||
| |
Some General Principles* of Movement Intelligence include:
Economy — “Intention without Tension” / “Path of Least Resistance” Intelligent movement is “reality based” and “gravity adjusted,” i.e., appropriate to the task at hand, with the investment of necessary and sufficient energy — not too much effort, not too little. Extraneous tension and motion is ideally eliminated (e.g., unnecessarily stiffening the chest’s nearly 100 articulations) and the resulting full-bodied action is unforced and unhurried, and follows a trajectory of least resistance without invoking or exhbiting any interfering intentions. The less excess effort involved, the more you can feel and refine your actions [c.f. Weber-Fechner Law]. Reductions in excessive background force boost the “signal-to-noise” ratio, allowing you to make increasingly subtle distinctions and differentiations.
Alignment — “Access your Axis” Best movement practices create more space within the body, lengthening the spine’s span by minimizing its curves and truing it to a plumb line perpendicular to the surface of the earth. When a balanced, horizontally “hanging” pelvis efficiently cantilevers a column of vertically streamlined vertebrae, breath is unobstructed, turning economical, and anti-gravity challenges — like getting up out of a chair, climbing stairs, and jumping — all feel effortless. Intelligent movers orient themselves about an axis, and navigate with reference to it: around it and along it. As you better true your axis to gravity the quality of your movement becomes lighter, freer, and easier — a direct result of conserving your angular momentum and decreasing your moment of inertia. The power of movement is such that it reinforces the posture in which it is carried out, so rather than getting caught in a vicious habtual cycle of downward deterioration and self-destruction it is better to be on a virtuous path — an upwardly mobile spiral of continual improvement of poise and skill, in ever refined, assymptotic approximations of an unobtainable perfection.
Power — “The Domino Effect” Aligned bones allow you to reclaim your innate strength and power in a sustainable manner. They function to transmit force through your limbs, all the way up from the ground through your skeletal axis to the top of your skull — evident when “heading” a soccer ball, or transporting a bucket of water, but also essential in the everyday carriage of your head atop your neck. When bones are not well-aligned, the ascending ground reaction force [GRF] bifurcates and is damped as muscles compensate for misdirected vectors; an uneven distribution of load also creates shearing stresses in the joints that eventually erode their intra-articular cartilaginous surfaces.
Balance — “Be to All Sides” Rather than holding rigidly still, stabilizing yourself in gravity paradoxically requires continuous adjustment, facilitated by suppleness at every joint, and thus entails subtle perpetual postural sway. Buoyed by righting reflexes, you remain unbraced and unbiased even at the peak of this physically heightened state — ready to move in any direction at a moment’s notice. As you restore your potential energy and home in on an elevated sense of tranquil equilibrium and tensegral balance, you may experience a sense of relaxed alertness along with a serene feeling of dignity, confidence, and calm. Maintaining an unperturbed equanimity, the French say: “Je m'en balance.”
Flow — “Reversible Continuity” Rather than repeatedly falling and catching oneself, as some would have it, we see intelligent movement as akin to a well-inflated rolling ball: in balance at every instant — ready to slow, stop, reverse, or change speed or direction without any bumpiness, jerkiness, hesitancy or preliminary preparation. While in motion, noiselessly transferring weight to smoothly translate your body through space, your movable parts must continuously counterbalance — maintaining both your uprightness, and the uninterrupted rhythm of your respiration. (For example, taking a step from standstill, your hip withdraws backward to counter a forward-lifted leg, leaving you in perfect balance, with your breathing unaffected.) Flow is operative at any speed, but moving slowly is initially your best test, and your best teacher. A hallmark of continuous flow is spontaneous, autonomically paced breathing: unfettered, omni-dimensional and omni-directional, and, at the highest level of differentiation, informed by — but independent from — the rhythm of your activity. [The trademark human ability to maintain a respiration rate independent from activity contrasts with four-limbed animals whose spines are oriented perpendicular to gravity, and whose inhales and exhales during locomotion are timed with the fore-and-aft sloshing of their viscera, especially when running.]
Holism — “As Above, So Below” The integrated physical body is a sophisticated somatic system in which each part reflects the whole; no local change is possible without affecting the entire network. For example, a repositioning of the head redistributes weight in the feet, and vice versa. This reciprocal relationship also carries over to other physiological systems, e.g., respiration, circulation, and digestion. Movement is thus our most visible indicator of systemic deterioration, and also provides the most accessible entry point for early intervention [even Alzheimer’s].
Division of Labor — “Share the Workload” In a well-functioning body there is an even distribution of tonus, of weight, of effort, of pressure; there is no over-activation or involvement of any particular part, which, if present, signals the need for a rebalancing or readjustment of the entire system, as a whole — and is not a call to isolate and over-focus on an already overworked symptomatic area. When you reach down to pick something up from the ground, to what degree(s) do you bend your knees, fold your hips, and angle your ankles?
Integration — “We’re all Connected” Integration entails proportional skeletal involvement, i.e., the participation of all joints in every activity,
with unfelt [“effortless”] effort distributed evenly among them. With the whole body involved, including our internal network of sphincter muscles, each part plays its role in contributing to our overall intention, without any joint getting unduly bent out of shape. Involvement of our lower limbs — the hips, knees, ankles and all ten toes — manifests as a springiness which can be felt to reverberate freely, echoing throughout the body as do the ripples of our respiration. Performed in moderation, avoiding extremes, our actions reflect our intentions and are carried out without triggering habitual [protective, yet conflicting] internal interference, and without generating incongruent, self-contradictory external behavior. Natural Movement — “Ride the Spiral” In healthily integrated locomotion there is an organic spiraling of one side of the body over the other in an overlapping double-helix that revolves in alternation around the hip-joints. A three-dimensional “corkscrew” trajectory also naturally occurs in all four limbs: internal rotation when extending away from the body’s central core; external rotation when withdrawing towards it. This helical winding and unwinding shapes our bones, which in turn influence the way our movements spiral through space — whether we yield, push [“crouch & spring”], reach, grasp or pull. A preparatory frictional instant of “slippage/grippage” occurs just before ground reaction force [GRF] kicks in, and intensifies into an equal and opposite reaction.
Initiation — “Where to I Begin?” With the head directed off the top of the spine, our peripheral limbs lead in slow gentle motion; our central core leads in faster full-bodied activity [where the torquing torsion of our torso twists around the hip joint hubs, and is transmitted centrifugally — with a whip-like motion — to the tips of our fingers and toes]. Either paced dynamic is enhanced in quality through a coordinated eccentric lengthening of antagonist muscles, whose passive release accompanies the activation of the agonists, e.g., extensors extend when (or even slightly before) flexors flex. Integrated full-bodied movement can be sensed as occurring about the body’s center of gravity, an ever-shifting point which circulates within the hub of the pelvic basin, in front of the sacrum. With reference to our orientation in the immediate environment, we can begin moving with a push or reach/pull from either end of the spine, or from our limbs — either singly, or in pairs [homologously, homolaterally or contralaterally]. Overseen and led by the head and eyes, initiations that include rotational “topspin” easily involve our entire selves. This transverse, rotary “dial” style of initiation makes our movement more three-dimensional; it also conserves energy, and preserves upright balance.
Wave — “What’s your Sine?” / “There is still a part of you that moves on all fours”
There are three kinds of waves in nature: transverse, longitudinal, and torsional. When walking forward there is an organic fluctuation of weight, both fore and aft, that originates in our center and that can be sensed in the sole of our stepping foot. The definition of “progress” may figuratively be “three paces forward, one pace back” — when walking such directional shifts in pressure occur literally within the span of a single step. If unblocked, the resulting undulation ripples and ricochets upward, through the chest, and its serpentine echo can be felt to reverberate as high as our spine’s topmost vertebrae. This sinuous [transverse] wave-like way of moving harks back to the caterpillar and fish, but can be found throughout the entire vertebrate kingdom of quadrupeds and bipeds — both sagittally and laterally. And as you walk, if you let your shoulders slightly swing along with your arms, energy flowing out through you fingertips, you may also feel alternating spiralic [torsional] waves up from your heels and ankles that twist you onto your toes, the spirals also incorporating a [longitudinal] movement up and down along our axis: sprightly springiness on both ends — from tensile pull (coming at the height of our extension) and from compression (that bounces us back up from the depth of our yield into the ground beneath).
Osteogenesis — “Use it, or Lose it” Bones develop through rhythmic pulsations, as a secondary bonus of moving as nature meant: in a dynamic springy fashion, with the alternating pressure of body weight thrust into the ground and rebounding with a counterpressure that streams upward, lifting the body and propelling it forward. Rhythmic vibrations are the lifeblood of bone building, promoting the circulation of cleansing and replenishing fluids, e.g., venous return, as well as a push and pull on the bones — whose alternating compression and tension tugs on the tissues, prompting growth at the cellular level that makes them both sturdy and resilient. Body-based rhythms useful to explore are those of the breath, the assymetric/iambic (one-two punch) “lub-dub” of the heartbeat, walking, running, hopping, skipping, and jumping . . . unhurried, and paused at inflection points for increased awareness and choice. Repetition is necessary, but it is important not to carry bone-building activities to the point of exhaustion; better to interpose cycles of rest and recuperation, so that sufficient motivation remains for future practice. Without the daily reinforcement of bone-strengthening processes, atrophy tends to set in [c.f. Wolff’s Law].
Visualization — “Somatic In-sight”
Our imagination has the power to influence muscular tone and postural alignment, and to make changes in our self-image and our quality of movement. For example: recalling the touch of soft textures like velvet or silk; picturing melting ice cream or honey; pretending that you are walking on concrete, glass, or grass; or feeling you are falling into piles of leaves, feathers, or felt. Effective kinesthetic visualizations use specific bodily-based locations and directions, and are always in motion; without invoking any voluntary movement you conjure up an image, enter into it, and become one with it. In so doing you may find yourself expanding in all directions into the surrounding space.
Spatial Awareness — “The Big Picture”
When you attend to the world with half-open “soft eyes” — sensing the space you are in, and the space within you — you may notice the three-dimensional interrelationships in, around, and between objects, others, and yourself. This shortcut to transpersonal presence through attending simultaneously to your somatic self and your peripheral vision — a “double-arrow” of attention — can evoke a transcendent state: a relaxed-yet-alert awareness of, and blending with, your surroundings. Rather than employing narrowly-focused concentration, you are now/here yet nowhere in particular, merged with and absorbed into your immediate environment, in a receptive and regenerative mode which transparently fosters instinctually integrated coordination.
Human Potential — “Poetry in Motion” As Movement Intelligence unfolds in us, our growing mastery of weight, space, time, and flow gradually comes to embody a self-directed physiology of physically enlightened living. With our personal biomechanics better calibrated, we become refined instruments of somatic sensitivity and expression, and can begin to reclaim our birthright to elastically sculpt time and space, playfully improvising as artists of life. Phrasing our movement with pregnant pauses, we are ever engaged in the process of living — the journey, not the destination — yet our perpetual earthly dance is tuned to the music of the spheres; we are both in the world and of it, and as much as an inch or two taller from the ground. The presence and vitality we sense is the basis for an internally felt “Biological Optimism” as well as an externally recognizable body language of self-mastery and leadership.
Organic Learning — “Deep Deliberate Practice makes Perfect”
Lasting neuromuscular repatterning best takes place on life’s sidelines, in the “greenhouse conditions” of a safe learning environment, where our organism is given a chance to mindfully explore and map out movement variations [permutations & combinations] — particularly previously unused options (including allowing yourself to be “sloppy” and make deliberate “mistakes”) — in slow motion, with open, non-judgmental awareness. A pleasureable, comfortable quality imprints upon our consciousness the feasibility and desirablity of more optimally engaged patterns. Back out on life’s playing field, we trust our “procedural” memory’s autonomic moving centers [cerebellum, somatosensory cortex, et al] — enriched with these newly acquired patterns [reinforced by myelination] and continually updated with moment-to-moment real-world feedback — to spontaneously coordinate appropriately integrated responses, autonomously making course corrections, as necessary, to accurately, satisfactorily, and pleasurably realize our intentions.
[For Students]: “Be Ye Lamps unto Yourselves” / “Seek, and Ye Shall Find”
[For Instructors]: “Teach without Teaching” / “Speak first to the Elephant, then the Rider” There is a difference between getting the feel for something, and talking about it. Somatic learning — the reprogramming of the brain and the repatterning of the neuromuscular system — requires direct experience, not verbal description. With skillful means, avoid invoking obedience to external authority, or imitating idols or ideals; instead, value and evoke uniqueness, self-reliance, and autonomy. Guide your students’ explorations with hints of what to pay attention to, notice, and listen for, as they make their own way and find out what is true for them. Without directly teaching, set up conditions for learning; if at all, give explanations only after an experience. Remember that words, at best, can only report on experience; they may motivate us beforehand, and remind us later — but the map is not the territory, the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon! So don’t explain it,
be it; serve as a serene model for others’ mirror neurons. Show a restraint that honors the learning process, allowing your students the dignity to make and own their own discoveries. First learn to see yourself, then learn to see others; finally help others to see themselves. Ignite others’ imagination. Cultivate a climate of curiosity, not authority, in which students sense that there are secrets hidden that they must discover for themselves; find ways to convey insights so that others may achieve their own. Rather than providing answers, inspire people to live — and love — the questions themselves. Artfully parking verbally-based cognitive processes “offline” somewhere (preoccupying them with a task) can help create space to experientially solve the movement riddles we are posed, granting full ownership of the solution, and making our learning more potent and enduring. We may find ways to occupy conscious working memory (e.g. with a song) and enter a state of nonreactive awareness, in which our less-conscious procedural memory is more easily updated. As FMI Founder Ruthy Alon has observed, succinctly summarizing this process of playful exploration — which opens up endless pathways for incremental improvement — “Health is search.” * Learning to embody these principles in your everyday activities and practices FMI ° 145 Newbury Street ° Portland, ME ° 04101 © 2012 Foundation for Movement Intelligence | | | ||||
| ||||||||
| ||||||||
| ||||||||
