Summary of the Interview

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The first two pages see DM making connections between his reading in books on neurophysiology and WL’s MPA. From thereon in the conversation is about Laban and Lamb. It begins with a discussion of Bill Carpenter whose work with Laban influenced Yat Malmgren who argues that they created a movement psychology. WL doubts anything of value resulted from their discussions. Then follows a discussion of the possible content of a second edition of An Eye for Movement (2006). DM argues that he hadn’t fully understood WL’s thinking when it was being written. The conversation is wide-ranging. DM argues that the main problem with MPA is its principal contention: that there is a correlation between a person’s movement pattern and the way they make decisions.  There follows a discussion of passages from books on neurophysiology that DM had sent to WL in advance of their meeting.

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The Interview

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Sensory-Motor Connection

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DM: You have just been telling me that robots built by MIT no longer move through programmes but through sensory correction. Because they are putting sensors in limbs and its external structure they become sensory creatures.

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WL: Yes, and I think they may also have more integration! More PGM. 

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I got really interested in Attention, the sense of indirecting or direction. I wonder if this has any correspondence with neural functions, and maybe even the function of memory. There is a chapter in Eric Kandel’s In Search of Memory entitled Attention Must Be Paid, where he argues that if you don’t pay attention to something then you will not remember it. 

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DM then reads a passage from Kandel’s In Search of Memory on the subject of visual attention.

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Studies with monkeys show that many cells in the rear parietal lobe only fire during reaches towards an object. These cells may code information needed to act upon objects rather than to perceive them. The lower pathways is responsible for conscious visual processing; the upper stream is responsible for visually guided action which is largely unconscious. 

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The notion of being guided or directed, seems to be correlate to directedness and to Attention. 

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[There follows a personal conversation about Geraldine’s Stephenson’s increasing dementia. One point of interest was DM’s observation that if you can no longer remember then you can no longer learn, which means you cannot adapt to the immediate environment. All your responses are predicated upon previous learning.]

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While many animals make a movement to orientate themselves towards something of interest, with humans attention can become a purely mental act. We are capable of attending away from our fixation point, i.e. where we stand. This may be the origin of our ability to deceive and also dwell in the imagination on selected memories or possible futures. [Elkonon Goldberg, The Executive Brain.]

DM: Here is a direct correlation between the physical act of directing our attention towards a goal out there and organising ourselves to act upon it. And then it becomes something to do with imaginative activity, or modelling. So there is a correlation between movement patterns or uses of the self in movement and in mental activity. The big step that we have to make – between movement patterns and decision making – has been made by thinkers like Kandel and Goldberg. If you agree with this then we are starting to lay the foundations for some significant conversations with practitioners, like you meeting Berthoz. I think you might find that Berthoz would love to come. Or a convention in three years’ time? 

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DM: Merleau-Ponty describes the act of looking as one of touching at a distance [Le regard c’est le toucher à distance]. So looking (a perceptual activity) is the imagined touching of a distant object (a motor activity). One can also think of the role of metaphor which brings together motor and mental activity: we talk about grasping an idea, or even holding things in mind. And motor activity is implied in many perceptual activities. If you look at a glass then that act of interrogation establishes the distance of the glass, the necessary amplitude of grip to grasp it, and strength to lift it. So if you wanted to pick up the glass you could act with ease, since the motor circuits had already been enabled. The preparatory shaping is controlled unconsciously. Over the next three years we may be able to make some claims that neurophysiologists could then set to exploring what they mean Attention and what you mean. It could be that your seemingly outlandish claim of the connection between movement patterns and decision making might not be so outlandish. 

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Movement Rituals

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DM: You wrote so much about movement rituals in your early work I thought you might like to talk about movement rituals in a broader context. Here is the behaviourist Skinner’s account of a movement ritual. This is one of his behaviour-modification experiments on a pigeon. 

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A hungry pigeon was put into the Skinner box and food was put into the box at regular intervals with no reference to the bird’s behaviour. After a short time the pigeon was seen repeatedly performing some arbitrary action. The pigeons had learned to repeat whatever action they were performing just before the appearance of the food. Skinner called this ‘superstitious’ behaviour because the pigeons acted as if their behaviour caused the food to appear when this was not the case. He suggested that superstitious behaviour can arise in humans in just the same way.

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You have used the example of tennis players bouncing their balls before they serve.  

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There are examples from primitive behaviour – say the rain dance. If this doesn’t work then they blame themselves for having performed the dance correctly. 

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Isn’t it interesting that your ideas do have correlates in the field of human science? 

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[DM goes on to explain the function of Broca’s area in the brain. He argues that this area deals with verbs. Part of the adjoining temporal lobe deals with nouns.]

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Tests

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Many of your major disagreements with people have been about the conduct and the nature of tests. The writer here is looking at the faculty of memory, arguing that memory tests are not effective. 

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The decision about what to recall rests with the examiner and not with the subject. Memory is a much more personally motivated faculty. I myself have to decide which information is useful to me in the context of my ongoing activities at the moment. This ability to assess one’s information according to the needs of the moment is called ‘working memory’ and is guided by the frontal lobes. Goldberg.

DM: He takes a dynamic rather than a static approach to decision-making. It is about a living subject. This is a real-world situation rather than a laboratory. There is a chapter in his book called Different Lobes for Different Folks: Decision Making Styles (pp.87 – 104).  He is creating a series of tests that are related to their lived environment. What is our way of adapting to our environment other than a typical movement pattern? 

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A phrase comes to mind, and it is Irmgard Bartenieff’s ‘Coping with the Environment’.

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In future I’d like to hear your reaction to these ideas about Direction, Attention, and even the three planes of movement. 

WL: I’d rather refer to them as ‘zones’ rather than planes. They are zones which are relatively horizontally oriented, vertically oriented or forwards and backwards oriented. 

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DM: And these relate to relative orientation of semi-circular canals. 

WL: I mean, it’s not a two-dimensional thing, that’s what I am concerned with. 

DM: Would you be happy with a ‘planar orientation’?

WL: Yes. 

DM: It is a stage. I am fascinated by the implied timing of the Door Plane. One could think of the Door Frame as a threshold upon which one stands, from which one looks out and takes in the view. It is the preliminary stage in your decision-making sequence. This attentional moment is almost one of arrested time. If there wasn’t this moment of taking in, then there would be no possibility for know where to address your focused attention. I think that metaphorical richness of this stage makes me think how right your sequence is in decision-making. 

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We were talking about the influence of Laban on Kestenberg, and indeed we were talking about Jung and Laban. 

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WL: Bill Carpenter was a Jungian who certainly worked with Laban. They were friendly. Think what you make of this paper that I have left you. I think that it has relatively little merit. He talks about male and female according to some Jungian ideas, but they are very lame and old-fashioned now. They probably suited Laban’s chauvinism. While Bill Carpenter and Laban were certainly good friends, I doubt if the collaboration produced anything of any worth. Although there’s a suspicion that it did, nobody’s gone into it and what happened. And of course these were the last years of Laban’s life and I used to think that he was passed it. He was 75 or 76. He had been ill and he also had a minor car accident. Lisa Ullmann had been driving and the car turned over and he suffered concussion, and that didn’t do him any good. It was my impression, somewhat presumptuously, in the last two, three or four years of his life he wasn’t at his best, he wasn’t so sharp as he always had been previously. That’s just a personal opinion and I haven’t heard anyone else express that. I’m just offering it in the context of his work with Carpenter which is perhaps a reason why not much came of it. 

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DM: We were talking about Kestenberg and my feeling that she owes more to you than to Laban. 

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WL: I think that is the case because technically Laban did not recognise Shape Flow and any link between Shape-Flow and Effort-Flow and this is the basis of Kestenberg’s work. Right from the beginning she was looking at Shape-Flow and Effort-Flow, and sub-dividing them. She was introduced to the work by Irmgard Bartenieff who was my student. Irmgard had learned the framework that I use now, Effort and Shape, Shape-Flow and Effort-Flow and all the correlations that could be made. She, I think, did all of her work as a development of that beginning. 

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Second Edition of An Eye for Movement

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WL: Is it the case there is interest in getting the book published by Routledge and that we aim to have a major conference in two to three years: is that the idea? 

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DM: When I look at the book in hindsight, and my bits in particular … I had just got to grips with Laban’s thinking. And because you have elaborated his ideas more assiduously and logically, yours is the harder to understand. I think I could have explained your work much better. I think how I link your work with Laban is Okay, I think the links with later work need much more development. I think our more recent thinking about neuroscience could be of interest for both the book and the conference. To summarise: I’d like to rewrite my stuff because I think it was over-complicated. I’m happy with the links back into Laban’s work, but less so with the links going forward. 

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WL: I think that anyone who immerses themselves in Laban’s stuff and reads all his writings can’t help but be impressed by his breadth of mind, his wisdom, his sensitivity and understanding. You really get carried forward almost into the cosmos with his thinking. But to translate that into the sort of terms … I always look upon myself as having had to try to be practical on the basis of all these sayings of Laban. 

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I was looking again through Irmgard Bartenieff’s book before giving it to you and every chapter she has a quote from Laban, and these quotes makes you think that it seems to be from somebody of great guru-like, almost priest-like sayings. And then I started to think about how they related to the chapter that follows. It’s understandable that the problem you are saying you are having now has happened, it’s almost inevitable. 

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DM: Apart from wanting a glossary, a fuller index, those are trifles really. I have recently re-read Eden Davies’ Beyond Dance and it’s good, really good. We need to put a lot of blue water between Eden’s book and our book; that makes ours seem a completely different book, a completely different proposition. The only way I can see is by saying that these are Warren Lamb’s ‘last words’, that is, his final theoretical statement. I think it’s unavoidable – you have to be on the front cover. 

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WL: Yes, but not as co-author. I can get on the cover in a number of ways, but this must be seen as your book. You are the one who has devoted immense time over the last few years. You can bring to it something different, something new, indicated by your… what you are worrying over now. This is yours personally and it would be quite wrong to bring my name into it as though I have been involved in the intellectual work of producing the book. I think that if there’s no ambiguity about that then this can be of value to you. It will give you more of a name, and recognition. Get my name on the cover in some way but definitely not as co-author. I think co-authorships in general are not a good idea. Body Code with Elizabeth Watson worked out. I do respect her and she did a good job. The other was nonsense. I was trying to encourage him and he didn’t really take the opportunity. I am somebody who should be retired, and that’s another reason that I shouldn’t be dragged in as co-author. A third reason is that I am not going to do, am not capable of doing anything that would deserve being co-author in any sense of accuracy. 

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… [The conversation had already begun before recording started. He is talking about a correspondence with some scientist who was clearly interested in WL’s Decision-Making framework but ultimately felt that it lacked methodological rigour.]

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WL: The framework of attention, intention and decision, in the sense of making a commitment, is not particularly distinctive and lots and lots of similar processes of attention, intention and commitment. Perhaps the intention goes into the planning, research goes into planning then into several stages of the commitment. But he said, ‘Oh that’s very commonplace. What really attracts me is that you’re deriving this from movement.’ So, I then tried to find out later – I never got to meet him again – he had gone any further because he said, ‘I found it too esoteric – the movement observations that you were talking about’. But he still had respect that this could be done, and I think this is very commonplace over the decades. They say, ‘There is something here but I can’t just take these posture-gesture-mergings… I think I can see somebody’s … It’s just difficult unless I take a long course.’ This relates to something you said in your seven-page notes, that I would like to think that I have not and never said, ‘Oh you can’t do this or learn anything from it unless you take a very long course and learn how to observe.’ Of course, that does exist but it’s been something that I addressed years ago with regard to what we call the Three Day Introductory Course. Of course, that still happens. I wanted to change it to a ‘basic course’. They happen fewer and further between now. This distresses me although James is keen to get more going. The prospect for getting people trained is not very bright. However, I have always said to the people coming to the introductory course that we are not putting any pressure on you at all. It’s called an ‘Introductory Course’ but there’s no pressure to go on to advanced training. You would do that only if you wanted to be a professional practitioner of MPA. But you can use the concepts, many of you (as you mentioned in your notes) will have a keen kinaesthetic sense and already have an intuitive sense for movement. And if you try to become more sensitive to movement, and I can suggest some ways in which that can be done in a general context, then perhaps you would begin to look at people with new eyes. The feedback that I have got from people on the Introductory Course who have not gone onto the Advanced Course, which very few people do anyway, that they got value from the training. I haven’t met anybody who said, no, they were disappointed. They all feel that it opened their eyes when looking at people and some of them at our seminar in Minneapolis last summer… one woman who had been on an Introductory Course, gave a paper on how she uses it with her dance group to develop their creativity and it has been very effective in that way.  I say there are two courses: You can take the Advanced Course and become a professional practitioner, or, you can have a go and incorporate it into the perceptions and practices that you already have. That was not the case with Pamela Ramsden, another reason why those people I think made Action Profiling tainted in many ways. Pamela Ramsden took on people who she just kept on failing and having to pay more. It was unethical in my opinion. 

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What I am trying to do progressively is look at what bits of your MPA that actually are problematic for people. You agree with me that the Sequence is total common sense. People can’t disagree with the planes of movement. Nobody could disagree that Shape will have a Flow, nor that you can dissociate Effort from Shape. The problem is the connection between a movement pattern and a decision-making sequence.  

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I been saying, with wishful thinking, for decades ‘The time is coming when movement will be recognised.’ People have been saying to me that this is true. For example I gave a two-hour workshop for people at the Ministry of Defence. I was pleased that most of them, or at least 50% of them, were psychologists. And usually when I’ve lectured to psychologists over the years, they have listened politely and think there might be something in it, but the questions have mostly been challenging and attacking. ‘How has this been validated? What is the reliability?’ More those sorts of questions, and how are the observations taken, and so on. But the questions at the MoD in this occasion were, as I’ve said, very positive. Showing interest and asking how we can do more. If I had been able to announce a course next week, many of them would have wanted to enrol. It was the same experience at seminar that James McBride and I did at Trinity Laban, and similar experience at Dartington where there were a quite a few people outside the dance and movement profession. 

I am saying, look at all these people who recognise movement. There are all these people, neuroscientists saying… But do they really feel confident in using terms of movement which we have to do if we are going to be disciplined in doing anything with it? I think we need to have terms of movement and then we need to be able to use them so as to be able to get an understanding of movement, and movement as Laban has always said is Flux, and how you come to terms with Flux. Whereas formerly people used to say, ‘Oh he’s a bit mad’, now they are really accepting it, I think. 

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You know you said that you’d like to take Brian Day and David Wolfe out to supper to discuss our project. I wonder if Brian Day and John Rothwell might be co-sponsors of our conference. I think the best host-institution for the conference would be the University of London simply because they have so many researchers in the field. 

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I had a big association with University College Hospital back in the 1950s. This happened because my wife was expecting a baby and went to UCH and somehow I met the head of the Obstetrics department, W.C.W Nixon, and he had become an authority at that time on Natural Childbirth, and having husbands attend the birth, which many doctors at that time thought was most … And he wrote a book about it. We got on very well, we became quite good friends. He said, ‘The trouble with doctors is that they don’t observe. They just take the first view of what they think the condition is, they are struggling in their minds to find a word to apply. Can you teach my students to observe?’ My wife got involved in this too, so we did try. We had a few sessions. He and I got on very well and had a good understanding. He also asked would we teach the physiotherapists? And so we had one class, but they were absolutely against it. The medical students were fine, they were very interesting to work with. It could have developed but suddenly Professor Nixon died of a heart attack aged 56. He was very active and just dropped down dead and that killed everything. I am sure that Professor Nixon was a well-known figure and in the annals of UCH he would have a distinguished place. 

DM: I know Hubert Godard who, though trained as a dancer, teaches physiology to surgeons at the University of Milan. When removing a breast the surgeons used to cut through muscles unnecessarily. He has adapted some of your ideas. We have to think of the health dimension. We have to think what is the point of this conference? We have to establish the extent to which neurology, neurophysiology, neurobiology – the neurosciences – are helping prove your contention that there is a direct correlation between a person’s movement pattern or habits are related to their decision make habits or profile. I think if you take it into health then you take the focus away from that central question. 

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WL: How, briefly, could you frame the central question? 

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DM: I wouldn’t like to try it now, but will do it in writing. I’ll have a go. To what extent does research in the neurosciences validate Warren Lamb’s contention that there is a correlation between a person’s habitual movement patterns and the manner in which they make decisions? It’s something like that, isn’t it? 

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WL: Yes. 

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DM: I think we really need to focus in on the specifics of the question. One way you can prove is to say, ‘Look, it works.’ 

WL: Yes, but one could equally say that Astrology works. 

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DM: Warren Lamb has done x thousand reports and worked with x hundred companies, some of them blue chip companies. And they have been found to be immensely useful. The people whom he profiled agreed that his MPA was right. The end-user is saying, ‘This is a truthful account of how things are.’ In Astrology there is nothing objective against which one can match one’s claims. The movements are observable, they are measured in terms of ratio. Although science demands measurement, your data is in terms of ratio, in terms of relative values. 

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WL: I really do think that the notes [prepared for the meeting] are fascinating and I really found myself surmising what would have happened if we had met twenty-five years ago! 

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DM: Sadly, at that time you would have found a person entirely devoid of movement intelligence. 

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WL: That is not the case now! 

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DM: Thinking of Lakoff and Johnson’s work on body and movement as a source of metaphor. It is still about use. It isn’t measurable, but they demonstrate how we use movement-based metaphors to make sense of affective and cognitive states and activities. The whole notion of taking the body as our frame of reference for mental experience… If the body is the frame of reference for experience, what is MPA if not using bodily movement as the framework for making decisions? 

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WL: Indeed, that’s a very good way of expressing it. That’s absolutely what it is. 

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DM: Actually there is a possibility for measurement. If one measures a person’s body, and you provide the ratios, then one could express them in actual measurements. Do you agree?

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WL: Oh, I do. The prospect, surely, is that we can have measurements of a number of factors running concurrently. That’s why I think that there will come a time when there will be sufficiently sensitive recording devices that can be harnessed together which will actually translate into a pattern which is shown on a computer. 

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DM: That’s why we need to meet Brian Day because he’s already doing that. Effectively he is measuring weight, shape and time. I am helping him with one experiment where people are measured whilst getting up and sitting down on a chair. Let me go one step further. If we agree with Lakoff and Johnson that we have to express our mental experience of the world in terms of bodily displacement, of movement – be it containment, our perception of distance, of height or depth, or such metaphors – what you do is actually one stage on from that. You are talking more specifically then they are, but even the words Attention, Intention, have a metaphorical dimension. They can be understand in terms of metaphor as well. Can one say, after the arguments of Damasio and Berthoz, that the same bits of brain that generate such movements as opening up, or taking weight, are used in the cognitive activity of taking a view of something or weighing up a problem, or grabbing the Bull by the Horns (to express the stage of commitment)? We should keep a note of all these everyday expressions which describe the three stages in the decision-making process. We should create a glossary of twenty or so everyday expressions for each of the stages, showing the nuances of expression, just as in Effort Laban and Lawrence gave examples of different Effort actions. If people saw all these movement-based metaphors they would get a feeling of the different mental states in the stages of the decision making process. You can’t think movement without going to the part of the brain that does movement. 

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WL: I’ve made some notes on your seven pages. 

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DM: Let’s go through them.

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WL: For a long time I have stated that it’s decision making preference which we can understand. I always say that you can’t predict a decision that someone will make on any one occasion because he or she may go against their preference. You’re suggesting it’s style and I understand that perhaps we should use the word ‘style’ but I’ve always been anxious about using ‘style’ because very often use the term as descriptive of something that is peripheral and not really significant, as in ‘That’s his style, but what’s the real content?’ 

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DM: You are right. I am very happy with preference. Actually, ‘style’ is too general a word. 

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WL: I agree that we should think about ratios rather than correlations. It does give us a little bit of scope to play with. 

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DM: We need to remember that all brains are structurally different because each one is formed through that person’s unique experience. So there would never be an exact correlation between a function and a part of the brain. One person’s area for a function would be different to another’s. All one can say that it is the same structures in the same way that you offer a general framework of correlation.

Correlation is not some convenient vagueness but is as far as one can state. 

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WL: You seem to write ‘metaphorical associations’ in a rather derogatory tone as if it is something that we must avoid. 

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DM: No. But I think we ought to be wary, though. In Cultural Studies one finds a lot of rather tenuous metaphors, where the correlate is something of which the writer has no knowledge – for example the use of the adjective Quantum. I think when we use metaphor we must show that these correlations are grounded rather than hypothetical. 

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WL: Are they already embedded in much of my work? 

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DM: I would say yes, absolutely. I am proposing that we gather metaphors to show that that is the structure of thinking. 

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WL: But we have to be careful how we use them.

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DM: In PGM what you are talking about is proof of a cognitive style of expression that is rooted in bodily action. What I am opposed to is the indiscriminate use of terms like Quantum and Relativity when the writer has no understanding of the meaning of the terms, other than that they are difficult. They don’t understand the science. 

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WL: All we are saying is that all thought happens in the brain and all movement is initiated and monitored by the brain and that there is probably a connection between the sensori-motoric and the cognitive. I say something like, ‘Mind-Body is now out of date because all we have is a body.’ In the Introducing Mind and Brain Angus Gellatly states that the brain is all that there is. You can’t go any further. I hope that I have never stated that the untrained eye can’t do anything with movement. On the contrary everybody is observing movement to some degree. And yet without really knowing the nature of the movement. My popular theme is that we lack terms of movement and this is one of the great achievements of Laban that he has created terms which seem to be viable. There are many parts of brain that have been proved to have specific functions? It’s not like nine or ten, isn’t it hundreds? 

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DM: I think that they are now finding that functions are more a result of the coordination of different parts of the brain, rather than specific parts. The sectoral concept of brain function is being downplayed, while the brain as a system is being brought to the fore. 

[Discussion of the paper edited by DM and prepared for the Summer ’08 meeting.]

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WL: [It seems from your paper] The big question, and I think it’s fascinating and I’ve never thought of anything like this before, but there may be a relationship with my view that range of Flow diminishes during childhood growth. It has, certainly in Effort-Flow, in order to exert control. For a young child to learn how to stand up, to exert sufficient control in order to pick something up, all probably involves a diminution of the range of Flow. By saying this what are we really learning? Is it going to be of interest in the neuroscience that we can explain that the inhibitory functions of the brain are influenced by a child’s development in respect to Effort-Flow and Shape-Flow?

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DM: You are talking about the correlation between neural development and how this is expressed in movement terms. Do you talk about movement factors? 

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WL: I usually talk about movement components. At an MPA conference I appeared to suggest that it was desirable to retain as much Flow as possible, but also to build as a big a range of  Effort and Shape as possible. In other words, something that I’ve been saying for donkey’s years, not to obtain an Effort-Shape range at the cost of Flow. Jean Bolton, at that conference, disagreed. She was really saying that if you retain too much Flow then you tend to be too spontaneous, you get involved in everything, you can’t detach in order to be grown up. In order to be in control of things you need to detach. That’s her point of view. On the other hand, you can surely be objective and still have retained, relatively, a lot of Flow. So, we’re really talking about two things. The interest in the correlation just for itself or the things that may flow from it. And one can consider what is desirable when becoming an adult, and I suppose that will depend on the context in which you grow up, whether in Western or Eastern society, in the developed or in the third world. 

DM: This is where a Kestenburg perspective would be interesting. The whole question of Flow is an interesting area, and whether the mastery of inhibition in the cerebellum of the growing child is related to a diminution of Flow. I would guess that Flow might be related to the more emotional part of the brain, that is, in the subcortical limbic structures. I think Flow is to do with that more emotional part of ourselves. However I don’t think we should follow Jean by making judgements about whether it is desirable or not. 

WL: No, I agree entirely. We don’t want to make those sorts of assertions. Over the last year or two I’ve devoted more thought to, and brought it more into my lectures, to do with Flow. Partly because I think it’s misunderstood by a lot of movement people. For example, I don’t think the people at LIMS understand much about Flow. I don’t think that Valerie Preston-Dunlop understands anything much about Flow. Partly she and Marion North don’t recognise anything like Shape-Flow exists. 

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DM: It’s interesting that when Daniel Stern talks about Vitality Affects, he references Kestenberg. If we gave him some pages on Flow written by you and I, I think his response would be most interesting. I feel you are right in stating that there is a flow of shape, secondly, even in our earliest conversations you stated that Flow is a very difficult thing to pin down. The fact that the Feldenkrais community has picked up the work of Daniel Stern seems to indicate that your ideas about Flow mark a very interesting field of reflection. 

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[What follows is an explanation of passages in the text prepared for the meeting. DM explains 

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• Sensori-motor feed-forward and feedback 

• Simulation in track sports like motor racing, running and skiing

• Pressure (and pressure receptors in the skin)

• Symbols and notation. Creating frameworks for notating and analysing movement. Finding accurate terms. Metaphors are symbols of movement.]

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Your Movement Pattern can change after a traumatic event

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WL: A man had a bad car accident and was actually in hospital for a year before finally he was released. So it was that serious. I did have an MPA of him a few years before the accident so I was able to see him again and the MPA came out different. My answer to people who ask, ‘Can we change MPA?’ is normally, marginally. Much depends on the structure of the MPA, anyway, as to how much can happen. But also if you have some real traumatic experience then it could change. 

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DM: You have noticed that I press down a lot. Banging a table is emphatic weight. ‘Putting one’s foot down’ is a good everyday expression for this emphatic weight. 

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Animals don’t do PGMs, but they have a sense of flow

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WL: There is a comparison made between human and animals. Humans may deceive each other but animals don’t. Animals don’t really have PGMs, they have changes of posture and they have changes of gestures, they have lots and lots of gestures, a lot more developed than any human can do with gesture, but they don’t have PGMs is my conjecture, except possibly in respect of Flow. 

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DM: Which tallies with your observations about babies nearly of whose movements are about changes in Flow. 

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WL: That’s right. It’s just the same as babies – I hadn’t thought of that!

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DM: Are PGMs therefore to do with consciousness and isn’t the exercise of consciousness the taking of decisions? 

WL: The animal’s body is beautifully coordinated in terms of Flow, but when it sticks its head up, that’s really a Flow coordination. I try and steer clear of animals. I was just interested in … When human beings discover that they can deceive somebody then that may encourage them to practice deception. 

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DM: Or act? Acting is a kind of deception. It’s also about Symbolisation. One knows that a certain movement is associated with a certain mental and/or emotional state. 

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[Continuation of a broader conversation about how one can find neuroscientists who might be interested in WL’s work and establishing the research questions that might interest them. Daniel Stern, Alain Berthoz and Antonio Damasio were mentioned.]

WL: Two terms are very often applied to my research. I am just concerned about the matter of definition. ‘Goal’ is often talked about and is often used synonymously with ‘objective’: whether somebody has a goal or somebody has an objective. I tend to see objective related to time, not necessarily a particular date. ‘We can advance to so and so…’ Very often it is related to time or to some estimate of time. Whereas ‘goal’ is more a matter of principle: ‘My goal is to establish peace in the world.’ Or to advance the Christian religion. These are grand goals of course but you can also have a goal to get a better organisation, and this seems to be more of a goal, than ‘My objective’. They are different activities, the one and the other?

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DM: There is a certain

directedness towards a goal or an objective. It is something to do with focus, but beyond that I haven’t given it much attention. 

WL: It does come a lot into decision-making of one sort or another. People have often told me that they need to have a goal. 

DM: Do you think these terms are useful in terms of a discussion of MPA? 

[Muddled sentences not transcribed] 

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DM: A lot of reference is made to the word ‘intentional’ in the neuroscientific literature you have quoted. Is the word ‘intention’ used in this sense used in MPA? 

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WL: Yes this would be a decision to make a movement. That said, there is an awful lot of movement and activity that is unconscious – driving, walking or swimming. I would imagine that there is little conscious control in freely Flowing movements. You mentioned balance earlier and I am not balancing very well. I just hope that’s normal rather than that I am on the verge of some terrible health problem. Alexander people seem to limit Flow. Matthias Alexander always taught people to go through the ‘means whereby’. So in getting out of a chair I think of the means whereby. I lean forward, I begin to put some pressure through my feet, I feel that the lift from the chair is going to need an effort… Anyway, isn’t that limiting the Flow?

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DM: I would say. It’s controlling, isn’t it? I think maybe that a Feldenkrais person might think about a swing, you’d think more of space than weight. Of Shape.