I originally wrote this article in 1994. Some of it is outdated, but it is still very relevant.
The kinesthetic sense may well be called the forgotten sense. Ask most anyone how many senses we have, they'll tell you five. What are they? Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. These five senses tell us about the world outside ourselves, the external world. We have many more senses than these: a sense of rhythm, a sense of timing, the kinesthetic sense. However, these are senses that inform us of our internal worlds. In our society, we have placed more value on information received from the external world than from the internal one.
What is the kinesthetic sense? The kinesthetic sense is our internal muscle sense (also called the proprioceptive sense). Close your eyes and lift your right arm. Hold it there with your eyes still closed. How do you know if your arm is lifted? It is your kinesthetic sense which tells you.
When we pay attention to our bodies' messages (these I now know to be the interoceptive sense), we will know when we are hungry, when we have to eliminate, when we're tired, when we're in pain. Often we ignore these messages, because we would rather play, or we have more important things to do, like go to meetings. Our bodies also inform us of our emotions. We may cry when we are sad, or we may clench our jaws, hold our breath, and push the sadness down.
Each person, as part of their perspective, is more grounded in one or another of the senses. Some of us are more tuned into sounds or our visual environments, some are more sensitive to smells. And some are more rooted in the kinesthetic sense. We all have our preferences as to senses, but to be truly balanced, and to have more options available, we all need some exposure to all of the senses.
In our society, the kinesthetic sense has been sadly ignored. Our bodies have long been a source of shame. We are taught at a very young age to stop moving, sit still, listen to others, and to learn. For those of us more strongly anchored in the kinesthetic sense, we are handicapped by not using our natural strengths. Additionally, we all learn from this that truth is an external reality. We learn not to value what we learn from our own senses, but rather what others tell us. And gradually our self-esteem is eroded.
I propose that the kinesthetic sense is vital to our learning. At this point in history, when it is crucial that we learn how to keep peace with one another and that we learn to take better care of our planet, that we begin by taking better care of our first homes, our bodies. I propose that we begin teaching young children health from the inside, by using our own bodies and experiences as laboratories. I propose that we make self-esteem our core curriculum.
In the past 130 years since the industrial revolution, we have all become specialists. Our lives are segmentalized. Schools are places for the nurturing of minds, and maybe our bodies a little bit. For young children, feelings may be nurtured as well. Our spirits have been excluded from public education, due to separation of church and state. Can we have spirit without church?
I feel the way to heal our world is to make wholeness a national priority. That means valuing all of our parts. Valuing that about us which is the same, and that which is different: colors, languages, religions, sexual preferences, morality. I know of no other way more beneficial to the process of exploring and containing differences than through the arts. From the arts we can learn the many relationships which opposites can have. Differences needn't be polarized. They can be in harmony or in discord. They can be in synchrony or not. Without the negative space in art, there is chaos. Without stillness, there is no music. In art, our sense of aesthetics can be satisfied by our exploration of polarities. And we can take that learning into our understanding of the world.
I propose that the arts are core curriculum, that there is nothing we are teaching that is more important than respect for self and others, same and different. I was taught that history was important, so that we could learn from past mistakes. So far, we have not learned from studying past wars how to live in harmony. Perhaps, we could study the music, the dance, the art, the poetry, the drama of all the peoples of the world to learn to live with each other, instead of against each other.
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