Kinesthetic experience: understanding movement inside and out

Abstract

This paper focuses phenomenological and empirical attention on kinesthetic experience, describing key experienced aspects of movement: its felt spatial dynamics on the one hand and its perceived three-dimensional form on the other. It proceeds on this basis to consider: (1) the ontogenetic and phylogenetic significance of animate movement and its kinesthetic underpinnings; (2) the fundamental import of recognising animation as the starting point for studies of animate life; and (3) the need to recognise common misconceptions of movement that distract us from the dynamic realities of movement itself. The clinical relevance of the analysis and the concepts it engenders are set forth in the conclusion.

Keywords:

• animation
• morphologies-in-motion
• synergies of meaningful movement
• phenomenology
• embodiment (and its derivatives)
• motorology
• clinical relevance

Acknowledgements

The original version of this paper was presented as a Keynote Address at a conference titled ‘Kinesthsia and Motion’, at the University of Tampere, Finland, in October 2008. A second version of the paper was presented as a guest lecture at the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota in March 2009.

Notes

1. Husserl's omission of feeling from his account of the ‘sphere of ownness’ and his specification of ‘fields of sensation’ within that sphere, blind us to the dynamics of self-movement and to the foundationally kinetic nature of empathy.

2. Of course, any movement I make creates not just a spatial dynamic but a spatio-temporal-energic dynamic. Because space and physicality are of specific moment here, I omit the fuller descriptive term.

3. I would like to thank the first reviewer of this article for her/his insightful suggestion of referring to philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and Bernhard Waldenfels in conjunction with ‘responsivity’. A delineation of the complementarity between their understandings and expositions of responsivity and the biological notion set forth here would be intriguing and highly profitable, and would thereby warrant, at least to my mind, a separate article.

4. Not only are airplanes experienced as objects in motion, but people may be similarly experienced: Mary's standing up and sitting down may be experienced as taking place in space and in time just as John's getting into his car may be.

5. Other forms of movement analysis exist in addition to a phenomenological analysis, the most prominent one being Labananalysis. I have been told by practitioners of Labananalysis that it is closely related to the phenomenological analysis of movement.

6. Although I am not a therapist, I have led movement workshops for, or involving, psychologists and psychiatrists (Psychiatric Institute, University of Heidelberg; Department of Social Sciences, University of Cardiff; Philoctetes Center, New York), have done a considerable amount of research and writing in psychology and psychiatry (e.g., Sheets-Johnstone, 2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2010), and have recently been interviewed for an online publication by a clinical psychologist (see reference section for details).