The Psychology of Bodily Kinaesthetics: Harmonizing Body and Mind

You’d be amazed to know the number of people who are well aware about aesthetics but have no idea at all about kinaesthetic. This article will help you distinguish yourself from that group. Let’s begin by knowing what do we mean by kinaesthetic. We all have a sense of movement and body position, allowing us to locate our body parts without seeing them and to control their movements. This is what kinaesthetic means. When you play or walk or jump, run, dance, swim, we are aware of our posture, our movement and we are able to control it, and all this is because of bodily kinaesthetic intelligence. 

Howard Gardner, an American psychologist proposed a theory on multiple intelligence where in he introduced this term bodily kinaesthetic for the first time. He officially used this term for the first time in the book “Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligence”, that he published in 1983. Through this theory and the book he wanted to say that intelligence is not merely a single entity but actually a collection of different kinds of intelligence, one of these bodily kinaesthetic intelligence and this intelligence enables us to control our body movement and handle objects skilfully.

Read More: Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences in Psychology

Importance of Bodily Awareness and Movement 

It holds immense importance in our day-to-day life enabling us to carry forward our regular activities without any conscious effort. 

• Physical health: By being mindful of your posture and alignment, you can safeguard yourself from injuries and potential damage during random movements and physical activities. This awareness helps you move in a coordinated manner, reducing the risk of accidents. Proper posture supports your body’s natural structure, preventing strain on muscles and joints, and promoting overall musculoskeletal health.
• Posture and alignment: Being mindful of your posture and alignment at all times is essential for your overall musculoskeletal health. Good posture helps prevent strain on your muscles and joints, reducing the risk of pain and injury. It also promotes better breathing, digestion, and circulation. By staying aware of how you sit, stand, and move, you can maintain a healthy alignment, support your body’s natural structure, and enhance your overall well-being. It will keep you from issues like back pain and muscle strain.
• Athletic performance: To be physically fit and active, you must have a good sense of bodily movements that will improve your performance. Other areas of application our dance and performing arts, gymnastics, mind-body connection, and skill development like martial arts, taekwondo etc.

Read More: Mindfulness: Why It’s Important and How to Practice

The Science of Bodily Kinaesthetic 

The science of bodily kinaesthetic takes interest into studying how our bodies move and how the sensory feedback is involved in controlling those movements. It aims to study the in-depth relationship between the brain, nervous system, muscles and joints in coordinating and carrying out daily physical actions. Having a command on bodily kinaesthetic can lead to advancement in sports performance, rehabilitation, ergonomic and even robotics. 

Enhancing the Bodily Kinaesthetic Techniques

In order to improve bodily kinaesthetic techniques and improve kinaesthetic awareness, you must try the following practices.

• Mindful movement practices: Keep yourself occupied in activities like yoga, tai chi or Pilates to focus on body awareness alignment and controlled movements. 
• Proprioception exercise: Proprioceptive senses like balance, stability or unstable surfaces (board) can be improved by exercising and challenging your body to take an extra step. 
• Feedback and reflection: Try to take constructive feedback from your trainers, coaches or friends to have a true understanding of your movements to refine them.
• Visualization and mental practice: Try to visualise yourself doing movements with the maximum precision and accuracy possible. Doing its rehearsals mentally may help you strengthen the neural pathways associated with your motor skills and enhance your overall kinaesthetic awareness. Other practices that can help our cross-training, are slow and controlled movements.

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Psychological and Cognitive Aspects of Kinaesthetic

To focus on how do you perceive learn and execute physical movements, your psychological and cognitive aspects have been of great importance. 

• Perception and body awareness: psychology has been known to study how we perceive our movements and body positions factors that affect our kinaesthetic awareness include our body image, self-efficacy and attention. If you indulge in practices that help you have a positive body image it will positively influence kinaesthetic abilities. 
• Learning and memory: Mental processes such as attention, memory and problem-solving are quite important for obtaining and refining kinaesthetic skills.
• Attention and focus: Mental processes like attention, may help you enhance the movement quality. To optimize our kinaesthetic performance, we need to have a balance between external focus and internal focus.
• Feedback and reinforcement: Techniques like reinforcement and motivation play a role in enhancing kinaesthetic skills. 
• Emotions and Stress: Your emotional state and stress level do affect your day-to-day physical activities awareness, and motor performance. So to have a hold on our performance we need to learn to manage our emotions, and stress and maintain a positive mindset for good mind and body coordination. 
• Motor learning theories have tried to explain how we progress from a conscious effort to automatically doing some of the movements via consistent practice and feedback. 

Read More: Positive Psychology: Harnessing the Power of Happiness, Mindfulness, Savoring & Inner Strength

Strategies to Teach kinaesthetic learners effectively

We have been listening from various medium that children are unique in their ability to learn and perform certain tasks and all of us have different learning styles. Howard Gardner’s main idea behind multiple intelligence theory was that we give attention to different intelligence of children and their different learning styles. There are children who show high kinaesthetic intelligence and their learning styles involve that ability, so it might be uneasy for them to grasp things via regular learning practices.

Here are some strategies to teach them effectively :

• Get moving: Involve them in activities that give hands-on experience because kinaesthetic learners learn by doing.
• Shake it up: Include some physical movements to the lessons to keep them engaged.
• Touch and learn: Try involving manipulatives for children to grasp concepts easily.
• Act it out: Indulge them in interesting activities like role playing and simulations.
• Explore outdoors: Take them on field trips let them explore the environment and learn on their own. 

Bodily kinaesthetic literally means to be mindful about bodily movements and positions and have control over them to enhance the quality of living and Excel in areas that involve physical activity. By promoting and embracing kinaesthetic learning, we can create a dynamic and interactive learning environment beneficial for all students.