[W]e are completely untrained in how to use [our bodies] to their full potential. In deep neglect of its ability to enlighten us individually and culturally – as it has throughout the history of our species – we overlook the significance of the very substance which defines us as human.

Here I will attempt a preliminary outline of my objectives for a philosophy of movement. This will undoubtedly change and evolve as the critique and critical analysis develops, however I think it is important to offer some clarity for the reader as to this current direction:

  1. To suggest a definition of ‘movement’ as it might be used for the purpose of a philosophy of movement; to trace the outlines for a field of analysis and critique.
  2. To argue that macro and micro movement ‘categories’ as they are establish today (from umbrella labels such as sport and exercise to specific disciplines, respectively) function to control human movement with innate restrictions on space and purpose. To show how these categories are dogmatic movement practices, ideologies which function as repressive and restrictive socialisation processes resulting in our limited understanding of human movement potential.
  3. To present the detrimental effects of these dogmatic movement categories (sport, exercise etc. and all the micro disciplines within them) and practices on the physical and psychological body and being of subjects of modern societies, those whose voluntary movement patterns are almost wholly directed and owned by them. Despite this, they are always seen as separate, or ‘other’ to our everyday movement (i.e. they exist as the ‘hour after work’, the ’20 minutes in the morning’, the ‘game on the weekend’, all restricted to a specific space and time); as for our everyday, ‘involuntary movement patterns’, we think very little, if at all, about them.
  4. To explain how one’s personal journey within a wider movement dogma, such as ‘movement training’, can develop an individuals ability to express and ‘articulate’ the true complexity of individual movement and, as a consequence, alleviate the restrictions and repressions of such heavily-dogmatic categories and practices on both one’s physical and mental state, and to help re-/realise the inseparable connection between the two.
  5. To propose the individual and collective shift in cultural mentality toward human movement that must take place so that a psychological, physical, and even spiritual (re-)connection with our bodies can develop, and, ultimately, a re-alignment/centering of our mental experience as experienced through the inextricable medium of our corporeal entity – the human body.

If you have any thoughts or input, I would greatly appreciate their addition as this is an ongoing effort, and my ideas are completely limited to my own experience.

Da Vinci’s depiction of the  ‘Vitruvian Man’ marked a significant cultural shift in attitudes toward the human body; from repressive abhorrence during the Dark Ages to a harmonic depiction of geometric and corporeal unity. However, whilst we may have ‘re-discovered’ our bodies under the scope of science, we are completely untrained in how to use them to their full potential and, as a result, forgo an essential element of our existence. In deep neglect of its ability to enlighten us individually and culturally – as it has throughout the history of our species –  we overlook the significance of the very substance which defines us as human: our bodies.