The Gravity of Small Movements: Bodily Wisdom in Action

“Oh no!” My kids roll their eyes. “Mom’s talking about dance again. Everything is always dance!” Well, they have a point. Every day I read articles and research studies and books that—without mentioning the word—scream at me: dance matters! My sensory education as a dancer primes me to notice and respond to any movement in terms of how it participates the ongoing rhythm of bodily becoming that every person is.

This week was no exception. It wasn’t only big movements—full body leaps, spins, twists, and taps—that caught my attention; it was small movements, like those involved in balancing, rocking, and fidgeting. What do these movements have to do with “dance”?

For example, I came across a research study about the micro-movements people make while running. The authors of the study assert that running does not involve the rote repetition of mechanical acts. A runner’s gait, they argue, is not only highly variable, but requires constant improvisation. In order to run, a person engages in a nonstop process of keeping herself upright in response to muscular errors and imbalances. The authors express hope that their research could help produce better robots.

What struck me first about the article was the network of assumptions about the relationship between “a body” and “movement.” Here, a body is a material thing; movement is what it does. That movement is measurable. Muscles make “errors”; a body sometimes falls; and a body’s ability to keep itself upright while running is “subconscious.”

Here’s another view: falling is not an error that requires correcting: it is what humans do. It is the way in which a bodily self uses gravity to gain momentum to propel herself into dynamic patterns.

Walking is all about falling. With every step, there is a moment of hesitation or lift where a bodily self falls through space, and in this falling, gains momentum. When the forward foot hits the ground, the action of the earth pressing up against the bottom of the foot and up through the leg and back redirects the momentum of falling into a desired shape and direction.

A dancer is one who creates opportunities to fall through space so that she can use the pull of gravity to propel her upward again. As Martha Graham said of her dancers: “they fall so they can rise.” A primary aim of dance training, then, is to engage this “subconscious” capacity of a bodily self that the running researchers identify and practice it, learning to use it with greater degrees of consciousness.

Thinking about this research study on running got me thinking more about gravity itself as well, and a human person’s relationship to it. The study seemed to presume that a body is a thing that falls, while gravity as a force that acts upon “it.”

Once we admit, however, that a bodily self exists as a capacity to use gravity, that relationship appears differently. Gravity—the pull of the earth—is the medium in which a body exists. Gravity is what a bodily self exists to exploit as a source of movement potential. Every aspect of a bodily self—our cells, senses, and systems—works by way of an oscillating rhythm, pushing against and surrendering to this force that permeates and organizes every dimension of our shape and function. We are enmeshed in gravity. As dancer Sally Hess relates, “Our attachment to Mother Earth is built into our organism—our bodies through all their cells, sing and dance gravitationally. We are creatures bound to our parent in magnetic love” (245).

Nowhere is this fact clearer than in discussions of the effects of space travel on human health. When a human person enters what is called a “microgravity” environment, his bodily self responds immediately. For one, bodily fluids—usually suspended throughout a bodily self by movements designed to balance the pull of gravity—float upward and pool. This fluid build-up causes congestion, swelling of the face, and intercranial pressure so great it may gradually flattens the back of the eye, resulting in blurred vision.

Further, with no weight to hold, the matrix of muscles that give a bodily self its height begin to atrophy. Muscles of the legs and back in particular, shift their composition, dropping their capacity to carry heavy objects. Bones, which usually engage in a rhythm of shedding and rebuilding themselves, simply shed, losing density and mass. The heart, with no need to pump blood up through the body, weakens and blood pressure drops. The vestibular system, used for orientation and balance, loses its pedal anchors, causing extreme nausea. Precision with small motor skills declines. And these changes are only the beginning.

When scientists respond by trying to address the various issues separately—providing anti-nausea patches and drugs to manage blood pressure symptoms—they downplay what these effects reveal: gravity is the force field in which human bodily selves are enmeshed. Humans exist only to the degree which we engage in every dimension of our cells, organs, and systems, the push and pull of the earth in relation to us.

Wisdom Essential Reads

The Strength of Kindness

What Is Insight, and How Does It Help Us Grow?

Then again, this “us” is not a mass; what we call “matter” is also a collection of movement patterns of various speeds, durations, rhythms, and directions—movements, intermovements, and intramovements—that have evolved over billions of years for their potential to enable other patterns of movement at varied scales and intensities. We can walk, run, and leap because we are movement all the way down.

The example of space travel, however, reveals another fruit of being a gravitational-being. The same capacity that humans exercise every time they fall—and rise—through space is the capacity that enables them to develop into new patterns of movement in response to the challenges of a micro-gravity environment. It is what I call kinetic creativity.

A bodily self is this capacity to sense how to move in the moment and for the moment in ways that align with its ongoing health and well-being. This is the wisdom of a bodily self that operates on all levels—spiritual and emotional, as well as intellectual and physical. It is the play of gravity within us.

Of the many possible implications of this way of thinking, I note three. First, when it comes to aging, experts agree that falling is a huge problem. Elderly people and their caretakers live in fear of falling. In response, certain experts encourage dancing as well as weight lifting and other movement activities as ways to sustain balance and strength.

However, from the perspective unfolded here, the value of these activities does not lie simply in increased strength; it lies in their ability to quicken kinetic creativity—to cultivate the ability of a bodily self to lift itself up in the moment, translating gravity into forward action.

Second, two recent research studies have concluded that gentle rocking helps adults—and not only infants—with getting to sleep, sleeping deeply, and waking rested. With the creation of “rocking beds,” researchers were able to conclude that this improved sleep quality translated into better cognitive skills.

Yet, once we perceive bodily selves as constellations of movement patterns suspended in the force field of gravity, this finding makes sense. Rocking entrains the various rhythms that comprise a human—pulling and smoothing the tensions of muscular and mental activity gathered during the day into ordered waves. The same dynamic is at work in the finding that infants who co-sleep with their parents have lower rates of sudden infant death syndrome. We humans are constituted by the movements we make, and those movements are made in relationship with the rhythms of the earth pulling within us and upon us.

Third, in the world of obesity research, scientists are finding that people who fidget may burn from 100 to 800 calories a day that those who don’t. Fidgeting, scientists propose, is the way a bodily self releases calories that it does not need.

Here again, once we think of the bodily self as its own rhythm of becoming, the logic seems reversed. Fidgeting is not just a release of excess, it is a normal state. A sedentary life is not. Fidgeting means that a bodily self has pent-up potential—not just of calories, but in the shape and tone of its own muscular system. In a sedentary state, even as in a microgravity environment, a bodily self is irrepressibly creative when it comes to finding ways to preserve its ability to keep moving. Fidgeting is an adaptive response to a health-harming environment.

In the act of practicing dance, whether learning specific techniques or improvising and inventing, a person is engaged in a process of tapping, mobilizing, and exercising this very wisdom of the bodily self that keeps us upright and rested, energized and fit. The process of learning to make and recreate patterns of bodily movement requires us to use the kinetic creative that we are: to rise as we fall; to settle ourselves amidst chaotic lives, and to channel our actions potential in desirable directions.

Dancing, in other words, has value not just because it enables a person to accomplish impressive feats—though that benefit is highly pleasurable—but also because it nourishes the matrix of small movements—the push and pull in relation to earth that we are... earth-born creatures who dream of space.