How You Move Affects How You Think

I have become fascinated lately with an emerging area of science: that of Embodied Cognition. Embodied what? What the heck is that?!?!?!

Those that study Embodied Cognition believe that the nature of the human mind is largely determined by the form of the human body.

Let me cite some research examples:

• A recent study at the University of Vanderbilt was the first to demonstrate that the brain uses bodily cues to help understand and solve complex problems. Participants who were instructed to swing their arms in a particular way were 40% more likely to solve the problem than the control group.

• A study conducted at the University of Amsterdam showed that subjects thinking about the future leaned forward, while those thinking about the past leaned backward.

• Researchers at Yale found that subjects holding warm coffee in advance were more likely to evaluate an imaginary individual as warm and friendly than those holding cold coffee.

• Students told that that a particular book was important judged it to be physically heavier than a book that they were told was unimportant.

• In a parallel study with heavy versus light clipboards, those with the heavy clipboards were more likely like to judge currency to be more valuable and their opinions and their leaders more important.

This leads me to think about all of those folks in America who are experiencing chronic pain – particularly back pain since it’s so prevalent.

If you are in chronic pain, how do you believe that it affects the way in which you experience the world?

The answer – it affects it a great deal.

You see, chronic pain causes limitations in the way in which you move.

If you have limitations in movement, you will have other limitations in your self-image – the way in which you think, feel and emote.

As Dr. Michael Merzenich, Professor Emeritus at UC San Francisco states, “Awareness, cognition and movement are really inseparable…isolated weakness or loss in ‘movement’ or ‘awareness’ or related ‘cognition’ is a human impossibility.”

So if chronic pain takes away some of our freedom of movement, it will also cause us to lose our ability to think, feel, and emote in a clear fashion.

The implications are HUGE.

If we are able to learn to move in a more efficient way – in a way that is more harmonious with our structures, thereby decreasing or eliminating chronic pain – we would then be able to think, feel and emote more efficiently as well.

We would become much more highly evolved.

And more intelligent.

And more productive.

And more creative.

… the possibilities are endless.

LET ME ASK YOU SOMETHING…

Chances are, you have experienced persistent, chronic pain at some point in your life. How did it affect you?

LET ME SUGGEST…

Leave a comment and let us know if this makes you rethink the importance of efficient, effective movement in your life.

*****

Chad Estes

Movement Specialist

cestes@etmconsultants.com

Your Brain, Learning, and Vitality

What is it that keeps our brains vital?

It’s L-E-A-R-N-I-N-G.

What type of learning is best?

To answer that question, we must first look at how our brains are organized.

What I’ve come to discover (and what neuroscience is now demonstrating), is that our brains are organized through movement.

Read that last statement again, slowly:

Our brains are organized through movement.

When you think about movement, what comes to mind?

More than likely, you mind goes to the movements that occur in our:

Joints
Bones
Muscles

You know, all of those movements that allow us to move around and take action in the world.

Did you ever stop to think about it in more detail?

Like how you speak, for example.

The movement of your lips.

The movement of the air over your vocal cords, driven by the movement of your diaphragm, to create the sounds that make up the words that you use to communicate to others.

And don’t forget the movement between the nerve cells in your brain that initiates and makes possible this ability to speak.

Movement is the language of our brains, and our brains are the great organizer of ALL movement

Movement is everything.

Without movement, life ceases to exist.

What has been shown in recent research – what we as Anat Baniel Method and Feldenkrais Method practitioners have known for quite some time – is that the quality of our movements are a manifestation of the quality of the workings of our brains.

According to Dr. Michael Merzenich, pioneering researcher of our brain’s plastic nature:

"Movement is inextricably controlled on the basis of ‘feedback’ from our bodies and brains, and movement control is guided very directly by the cognitive resources that guide all of our behaviors. They are weaker or stronger, enabled or disabled TOGETHER. Neurological processes that control the flow of cognition and thought are not really different from those that control the flow of movement — and in fact are complexly, inextricably inter-twined!"

What we have found is that when you begin to refine your movements, you begin to refine the way it is in which you think.

It’s called ‘embodied cognition’.

And this is clearly demonstrated in this study.

What it shows is that movement actually helps organize our brains ability to solve problems – and solve them faster.

Faster???

… from just movement?

How does 40% faster sound?

Gimme some-a dat!

As neuroscientific research marches on, you are going to see a new paradigm in terms of how this is implemented into educational and corporate training programs to:

Boost memory
Increase problem solving skills
Create perceptual changes in the way we take in and process information (which will increase creativity)
Enhance the way we handle stress and anxiety (which costs American businesses $300 Billion dollars per year!)
Eliminate repetitive stress injuries
And increase employee productivity

All through movement and attentional training.

We just happen to be at the forefront of this.

So if you’re looking for that edge, that extra something that’s going to enable you to outpace your competition. Give us a shout.

You’ll be glad you did.

LET ME ASK YOU THIS…
What are you or your company doing to keep you (and your brain) from being stuck in the rut of rote repetition?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
Let us know how you apply the power of movement in your daily life.

*****

Chad Estes
Movement Specialist