Whatever else bodily experiences contributes to, it certainly figures prominently in the development of our mental scheme of our bodies, or body image. According to Fisher, professor of psychology at the State University of New York Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, the relationship is clearly dramatized in people with certain extreme forms of pathology that distort the body image in "extravagant ways."
Take the case of Gerstmann Syndrome. Due to a lesion in the cerebral cortex, afflicted persons have trouble perceiving and identifying parts of their own body. They can't distinguish right from left on their own or another's body. They can't recognize their own fingers, name them, or point out individual digits. Nor can they count, reflecting the fact that fingers figure prominently in the development of arithmetical operations early in life.
If movement is action directed toward a goal, then it is problem-solving in the bodily sense. It is means-ends knowledge through our bodies.
How To Boogie
According to renowned psychologist Jerome Bruner, before we move we first represent in our minds a desired goal or intended state. That gives rise to a "hypothesis," a working idea about how to fulfill the goal - say, execute a dance step - under given conditions - in rhythm with certain music, for example. We check the results in a match-mismatch process, and correct our movements when they don't match what we intended.
Through this process, small acts of skill are incorporated into larger motor routines or movement sequences. You learned to ride a bicycle by integrating various movements required of your legs (pedaling), head ( fixing on a course), and trunk (balancing). Kinesthetic thinking lies in orchestrating a sequence of motor skills, integrating your multi-sensory, emotional, and intellectual experiences, and selecting and executing appropriate movements.
Even the simple act of drawing requires not solely depicting the visual properties of people, objects, and scenes; we also incorporate our body's experience of these objects, or physiognomic perception. According to Rudolf Arnheim, the psychologist of art, and Ernst Gombrich, the chronicler of artistry, we perceive the "solidity" and "strength" of a building, the "aliveness" of a landscape and the "warmth" of a color by interpreting what we know through our bodily experiences of such conditions.
The Logic of A Toss
The problem-solving capacity of the body is manifest in myriad ways. Martha Graham, the genius of modern dance, maintains that the body has its very own logic, motor logic. Certain movements come naturally because they logically follow from the plan of the movement - a baseball throw or a somersault.
My own research suggests that there are three core cognitive components of kinesthetic intelligence - motor logic, kinesthetic memory, and kinesthetic awareness. Motor logic encompasses your neuromuscular skill in articulating and ordering movement.
Kinesthetic memory, akin to what researchers of human cognition call procedural knowledge, concerns how to do something - the movement sequences of riding a bicycle. It enables you to think in terms of movement by your ability to mentally reconstruct muscular effort, movement, and position in space. Kinesthetic awareness - which informs you what and where things are by the pressure and stretch of muscles -allows you to consciouly appreciate your body's position and direction in space.
Such abilities are highly developed in dancers, athletes, craftsman, and others who work with their hands and bodies. But it is a mistake to think they are restricted to them. All work involves movement. Work directs movement towards purposes. And means-ends knowledge fosters action.
From the days of the Greeks, movement in Western culture has been concerned with sport, recreation, and the care of the body, without reference to how it infuses thought. Physical education early on was divorced from the development of other subject matters, especially literature. The balance and interrelationship between mind and body were all but forgotten.
Now, however, we are on the verge of correcting this age-old misunderstanding. With new knowledge gained from the social and neurosciences and a deeper understanding achieved through study of the artistic mind, it is now more apropos to say that we think with our bodies not simply inhabit them.
PHOTO: (BILL LONGCORE/PHOT RESEARCHERS)
PHOTO: (BILL PETERS/FPG)
PHOTO: (ED BRAVERMAN/LEO DE WYS INC.)
PHOTO: (FRED LYON/PHOTO RESEARCHERS)
PHOTO: (BARRY D. MARCUS)
HOW TO DEVELOP YOUR THINKING BODY
Body therapies. One of the most effective ways to relieve stress, and irrational thoughts and feelings, is through so-called body therapies. Sports and dance are the most common examples. But there are others. The Alexander technique, Feldenkreis method of body awareness, deep muscle massage, and Pilates method all work the body systematically. Try one! If it is not known exactly hoe these types of therapies may work, that's because the deep interconnections between the body and the mind are still largely unexplored.
Activities such as drawing, painting, photography and playing a musical instrument (or singing) involve the thinking body in important ways. They interplay our intellectual and emotional experiences, cultivate our aesthetic sensibilities, and enhance our enjoyment of life. Take up an artistic pursuit, enlist a private tutor or enroll in a college-level course in your community, and develop the aesthetic dimension of the thinking body.
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