I Am Because I Move

I am because I move. It’s a play on words and I don’t mean it to be an absolute statement but rather, a doorway to exploring the relationship between cognition, affect, senses, and movement, and how this contributes to an individual’s identity and expression of self.

The phrase is inspired by a couple of other well-known phrases. I am because we are, which is the most common English translation of Ubuntu, which also translates literally to “a person is a person through other people”. The message is a shared humanity through empathy and compassion, recognising that we can’t exist in isolation; we need one another.

It is a beautiful saying and congruent with Rogers’ humanistic approach to healing and growth, which is facilitated by empathy, unconditional positive regard, and congruence or authenticity. While relationships can certainly be a source of pain and suffering, they can also be catalysts for positive change. So too can being a member of a positive community; for example, the concept of kibbutzim. A kibbutz is a collective and intentional society that emphasies the group over the individual.

Much of Rogers’ work has been interpreted through a Western individualistic lens yet the translation of his person-centred approach into schools and communities has had its successes too. I’m an educator who draws on his theories and I’ve found that when an individual student feels seen and heard, and supported in ways that are uniquely beneficial to them, they seem to find it easier to settle into the group and contribute to that group’s growth. When the individual doesn’t feel seen and heard, and doesn’t feel supported in ways that are uniquely beneficial to them, they don’t tend to settle and often, they withdraw or leave.

The second well-known phrase that has inspired my own phrase, I am because I move, is I think, therefore I am. It was spoken by 17^th century French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist, Rene Descartes. He was trying to find proof of existence and engaged in a process of radical doubt to find an absolute truth. His conclusion was that because he was actively thinking, he existed. This led to what became known as mind-body dualism or the Cartesian split, quite unlike Ubuntu, which embodies unity and wholeness.

I like to think Descartes was moving in the direction of self-transcendence but in his theory, the self-doesn’t dissolve, even if it transcends the physical world. This is the complete opposite of spiritual concepts such as fanaa’ in Sufism where the purpose of spiritual advancement is the annihilation of the ego. This is a slightly different interpretation to the conceptualisation of self-transcendence by Maslow, which focuses on looking outwards and being selfless vs. self-actualisation, which is more of an inward journey.

A strong sense of self is needed in both concepts for transcendence of self to occur. What is interesting today in the field of Positive Psychology is the importance of character development, which contributes to both the actualising self and transcending self. Many students and practitioners of Positive Psychology miss this connection, perhaps as they’re diving only into the science or not digging deeply enough into humanistic processes. But to me it is quite obvious, as stark as day in fact particularly when you investigate the origins of character strengths and virtues within Positive Psychology; so much was drawn from world religions and cultures, and these are predominantly collectivist despite the field coming to fruition in a Western individualistic context that emphasises utility and “tools” for success.

A couple of moments in my own life have also inspired my exploration of the phrase, I am because I move. The first is a comment made by my last supervisor, a Sociologist and therapist. Identity is embodied, she said. We had been unpacking my own identity as a Third Culture Kid and how it influenced my character development. I lived overseas – not that it felt that way at the time, it was just my reality – for the first 40 years of my life. Moving to my country of origin, not just to study as I had done in the past, but to work and live, and buy a home, was a culture shock to my system. How I thought, felt, and moved was challenged in ways I’m only just beginning to make sense of some 8 years later.

Another moment was with a student, a psychotherapist who was (ironically) attached to the importance of attachment theory. It is the one theory that riles me up, not because it isn’t helpful but rather, because some therapists tend to prioritise it above all other ways of looking at an individual’s identity and relationship formation. In doing so, it becomes a reductionist way of looking at someone. I would much rather it sit as one of several theories a practitioner uses to interpret how their client functions in the world.

And finally, there is a moment from yesterday which sparked this blog entry, reminding me of Thomas Hanna’s phrase that movement is life. I was practicing a guided mobility session for the neck and the cue was to turn the head to the right and keep the chin up. When I turned my head, my eyes immediately looked down to my shoulder in an introverted gaze, not unlike that of drishti in Ashtanga yoga where we focus our attention on a body part. I suddenly remembered the cue of “chin up” and as I lifted my chin from my neck, my eyes lit up. My attention was directed outside of me towards situational awareness, prompting a kinesthetic memory of karate training and eye gaze, or metsuke, focused vision.

I am because I move. There are so many more threads to unpack here but for now, I will pull out three: (1) Physical movement influences our mental, emotional, and spiritual states; (2) Movement is both an instinct (primal) and skill (learned); (3) How we move is influenced by our social and geographical environments. When all of these come together in the present moment, as an embodied state, who we are is felt and expressed in how we move. And when that capacity to move is limited or taken away, who we are changes. By law of nature, it must change. We might resist that (e.g. after a physical injury) but the fact is that we can no longer move as we did and therefore, an evolution or revolution of self is necessary.

The relationship between movement and character development evolves through each stage of the life cycle, leaving kinaesthetic imprints or “codes” as I tentatively call them. This naming of them is inspired by Bar-On Cohen’s ethnographic research on somatic codes in karate, which sparked the idea for my PhD.

These are early ideas, more sketches of ideas that I’m capturing in my Inner Athletics reflections. They mark a new phase of exploration for my research map and they follow a lengthy post that takes stock of how I’ve reached this point that has allowed me to move forwards. Moving forwards, no pun intended, will focus on the questions my PhD research is raising and in particular, my reflexivity around them.

The next leg of my research is set to take another 2 years. This will see me complete a full decade of Inner Athletics and fulfil a commitment I made to myself to investigate all angles in the Inner Athletics Research Map and find out what my vision of “movement therapy”, which first came to me a couple of decades ago, really means to me.