Kinesis, Inc

Vision:

‘Kinesis’ is coined from the Greek, meaning ‘guided movement.’ Our modern world has led to a rapid and relatively unnoticed impoverishment of a potentially rich source of information – the wisdom contained within our body. Proper use of the body, which includes the ability to listen to its messages, not only reduces structural pain and degenerative suffering, and prolongs active participation in life for our aging population, it also deepens the wellsprings of intuition in the young and encourages autonomous, true maturity, providing the basis for a ‘biology of democracy.’

In an increasingly somatically alienated world, in a world where the surfaces, interfaces, and social constructs are ever more man-made, orthogonal, conceptual, sedentary, voyeuristic, and artificial, the whispered pleas of the body are increasingly drowned out by the squawkings of the collective ‘monkey mind.’ Kinesis celebrates the wisdom of the body moving. Kinesis seeks answers to the living question: How do we balance and honor the essentially ‘neolithic’ soft animal of our body in an excitingly electronic, speed-of-light, ‘Spaceship Earth’ world? Our body is our most proximate and valuable tool – how can we best employ it in this world that is now much of our own making?

Kinesis is dedicated to providing opportunities for such deeper exploration of the inherent somatic wisdom that is our birthright, and avenues for both therapeutic and educational processes to support the social trend back toward reliance on inner feeling. We see four major opportunities to change minds, hearts, and bodies within our social world:

1) Birthing and parenting

We see a rich opportunity to transform how parents relate to children via reforming the birthing environment, since critical hormonal and psychological factors are set up during birth and early life for later social and self-relationships.

During the first, pre-verbal year of life, kinesthetic learning predominates over visual imitation and verbal instruction. We have the opportunity to teach parents (via those who work with new parents) to recognize, understand, and participate in the non-verbal language the newborn uses to communicate.

2) Physical education
Physical education is on the decline in most school systems. This reflects priorities and funding levels; it also reflects relevance. Physical education needs to be revamped for the 21st century, which means moving away from industrial forms of physically preparing students only for repetitive and competitive tasks, but preparing instead for the physical challenges inherent in a post-industrial world – individual creativity, inherent strength, suppleness for the coming changes, resilience and tolerance, and, most importantly, sensitivity.

3) Exercise
The myriad forms of exercise and the mania for ‘working out’ as an antidote to the artificiality of the environment in which we currently live, provide another avenue of opportunity to educate the public, as well as the teachers, coaches and personal trainers who work with them, about the importance of kinesthetic self-appreciation while exercising. Each person who lives in a body, whether abled or disabled, old or young, farmer, office worker or professional athlete, has a unique set of kinesthetic talents and needs.

4) Therapy
The current renaissance of somatically-based therapies – massage, chiropractic, Alexander, Feldenkrais, structural work, deep tissue, acupressure, shiatsu, yoga, Pilates, personal training, etc, etc – provides a rich opportunity to educate therapists (and thus affect a larger number of people) to the joys and subtleties of the kinesthetic experience and somatic wisdom. Expanding the knowledge of new-paradigm anatomy, other methods, and breadth and depth of possibilities all contribute to the enrichment of a field which is, as yet, not too well-educated, and often blindly attached to one point-of-view concerning therapy or somatic education.

In a world where the kinesthetic sense has regained its rightful place, the relation between the individual, the social fabric, and the natural world will be largely restored.

Mission:

In order to support the four opportunities outlined in our Vision statement, our mission is to provide quality courses and educational materials for hands-on therapists and movement educators of all types that will improve the completeness of their vision, and allow them to build on systems-oriented (as opposed to reductionistic and mechanical) views of the body and its inner workings.

We aim to expand the perception of value in honoring our innate wisdom both before the fact (educationally) and after the fact (therapeutically). Toward this end, Kinesis offers courses, produces books, videos, and other learning products, and seeks opportunities to share and exchange our ideas that promote somatic and kinesthetic sensitivity through speaking and teaching engagements worldwide.