Kq—Boosting your Kinesthetic Quotient
How has your Cq (curiosity quotient) enriched your everyday life this past January? Hopefully you are still in awe of the mundane as miraculous as it actually is! Let’s allow our curiosity to boost our Kq, also known as our kinesthetic intelligence. Most of us are aware that there are various styles of learning: visual, auditory, reading/writing, kinesthetic, and so on. Our K-12 schools have a high degree of learning in the first three but often fall short in offering kinesthetic learning. And all of us are becoming quite adept in computers, social media, googling for information on our cell phones, puzzling and colouring on iPads, and even navigating to a local restaurant via the screen in our car. And we are all fine…or are we?
Our evolutionary (and recent) ancestors possessed a high level of kinesthetic intelligence: hunting for game they knew how to stalk and read the nonverbal cues of their prey; in agriculture, they knew how to swing a scythe for long hours without unnecessary strain, and climb a haystack with ease; socially they intuited the correct time to ask for a dance. These examples demonstrate an active participation in interacting with the environment and others, whereas in our tech-y age, we are relatively much more passive in acquiring information (“Alexa, who is….?), goods (Amazon is built upon this!), social interaction (yes, I’m learning Spanish with an online group), and so forth.
The consequences of a low Kq? Research shows that a low level of Kq is associated with low degree of physicality, less ability to interpret social cues, diminished integration of body-mind, less intuitive wisdom, and so on. (please check out a 2016 study by Fernandes, Ribeiro, Melo, et. al re: motor coordination and cognitive functioning in school aged children.) Don Campbell, The Mozart Effect® for Children states, “Movement grows the brain. It is a vital key to neural development, especially in the areas of memory and higher cognitive function.”
So how do we boost our Kq? Is it a matter of ‘hittin’ the gym 4 days/week’? No! While ‘staying active’ is important, research also shows that how we engage in physical activity is key. In fact this begins at birth (ATTENTION parents with young infants/children!). Beverly Stokes, author of Amazing Babies Moving and Your Self-Motivated Baby: enhance your baby’s social and cognitive development in the first 6 months through movement has collaborated with pediatric physicians, child development psychologists, dance-movement therapists, and many more in the field of Body-Mind Centering®, and Laban movement analysis and more. She offers simple yet profound ways to enhance your AND your infant/toddler’s Kq so that they form secure relationships with caregivers, grow in emotional and cognitive skills, and develop autonomy in play-exploration. “But I’m 62 years old and I don’t bend well” you say. Consider the work of Rudolph Von Laban, Warren Lamb, Imgaard Bartenieff, and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen (founder of Body-Mind Centering®). Laban (1879-1958) was a genius-pioneer in the world of movement. He examined movement in people across the globe, developing his Effort-Shape theory of movement. (This theory was further developed into Body-Effort-Shape-Space). Laban was literally looking at movement as an expression of one’s humanness. It is not about working out; it’s about exploring the nuances in movement in the what, where, and the how in a person’s interaction with themselves… with others… and with the environment. Laban’s colleague, Warren Lamb (1923-2014) taught me (!) when he was in his mid 80s (!), gliding across the room with ease and grace as he offered various movement scales. Bartenieff (Laban’s student), and Bonnie (Irmgaard’s student) further develop Laban’s work, making explicit the nuances and sensations and Kq (my description, not theirs) that ANYONE can learn. It is never too late!Why do I offer all this lineage? Because in my classes you will always explore and develop your Kq. My approach to any movement is intentionally thru these fundamentally rich lenses; without the Kq offered by this lineage, we develop Kq by default, if at all. Let’s be intentional in boosting our Kinesthetic intelligence!
