Kinetic Awareness

The rubber balls enhance awareness and release tension by serving as a focal point for attention and movement and intensifying sensations. Developing your kinesthetic (or proprioceptive) sense, which lets you know the position of body parts without seeing them, gradually reintegrates body-mind functioning.

In Kinetic Awareness: Discovering Your Bodymind, Ellen Saltonstall writes “Kinetic Awareness is based on the premise that refinement of the kinesthetic sense, especially with regard to movement, can bring about the gradual reintegration of bodymind functioning.”

The goal of the work is the enjoyment and use of your bodymind’s full capacity for awareness and movement. Reawakening and sharpening the natural inner kinesthetic sense lets you use and enjoy your body for what it is.

By doing simple movements very slowly, you become aware of any blocks, physical or emotional, along a movement pathway. The idea is to focus your sensory awareness on the movement, letting the nervous system self-correct by releasing old constrictions and painful habits. By taking this awareness into everyday movements, you have the potential for an ongoing corrective effect.

Kinetic awareness has five phases:

• becoming aware of each body part and learning to move each part by itself as slowly and with as little tension as possible,
• freely articulating more than one part of the body at a time, slowly and without unnecessary tension,
• exploring movement at different speeds while remaining aware and without unnecessary tension,
• learning to change tension levels at will while maintaining awareness, and
• working with movement through space and interactions with others.

The working principles of kinetic awareness are

• Awareness without judgment. All feelings are important and can be used to know how your body functions best. Being aware of the whole range of sensations from inside, you can choose how to use your body.
• Learning to move slowly. Slowing down makes it easier to feel each part of movement and notice all accompanying sensations. Moving slowly lets you see what happens in your body when you tell a specific part to move. You can observe what moves easily and what resists. Slowness lets you interrupt automatic patterns and find a new way to move.
• Using as little effort as possible. Can you let go of unnecessary muscles that move only out of habit? Can you release tension and use gravity?
• Isolation (moving one part all the ways it can go). Focusing on a specific joint or area lets you sense more details about how you move, and you can begin to recognize interrelationships. Which parts move? Which parts don’t?
• Using tension as an ally by choosing the level of effort and having only necessary tension. Slow movements release tension because awareness is involved.
• Discovering the effects of breathing. Disturbances may become unconscious breathing habits. Poor breathing reduces stamina, lessens mental clarity, and causes muscles to receive less oxygen.

More information at the Kinetic Awareness Center or in Saltonstall's book.

Other source: Frances Becker, “Kinetic Awareness,” Contact Quarterly, Summer/Fall 1993.

Return from The Ball Work to Somatic Education.