Hypothesis and Thesis

Hypothesis

An ecological approach to movement training releases a fixed and deterministic notion of self by engaging with the changing body/soma as part of a changing environment. My experience is that movement taught from an ecological basis creates the psychophysical conditions for individuals to experience themselves as situated in their bodies and embedded in the presence of the environment. This requires being present to the changing moment. The study of movement as part of the environment facilitates a perceptual transformation from 'self' as a discrete entity to 'self' as constantly becoming-in-the-environment. This stimulates a participatory, fluid and incorporated experience of self which conditions future attitudes, behaviour and related performative acts (i.e. communication through behaviour).

Thesis

In the course of my research, I identified movement as intrinsic to human expression. It precedes and underpins cognition, language and creative art. Movement may be seen as the most fundamental ‘skill’ and one that adapts to the environment.

If movement is the ‘skill’ of skills, through which we act in the world, and are acted upon, then a study of movement should reveal the process of my unique becoming-being-becoming in the world. The next question is how to approach movement, which in its transience is so intangible? My solution to this has been to introduce the movement dynamics as tools/method/approach through which to explore and experience movement itself.

Movement dynamics support the individual to learn to see movement from movement and transience rather than from a static position – a dynamic is the ‘movement’ of movement itself.

As the ‘movement’ of movement, they offer, as far as is possible, an ‘etic’ appreciation of movement which can be applied in any culture and in all fields of activity: artistic practice, education, daily life and therapy.

Ecological movement supports the mover to expand their embodied awareness to include the broader context from a position of ‘being among’, rather than ‘central to’. From that position they may experience their own system as an intrinsic part of a wider set of systems and act accordingly, rather than perpetuating an attitude of usage towards the environment.