The Kinesthetic System
The kinesthetic system is that part of human physiology that provides each person with
sensory awareness of the position and movements of her or his body. It is by means of
the kinesthetic system that individuals are aware of posture and a whole repertory of
motor actions, from the raising of an arm, to walking, even to the turn of the eyeballs and
swallowing. For example, if the eyes are closed, and one raises an arm and moves it
around above one’s head, it is the kinesthetic system that tells one where the arm is
located and that it is moving.
The kinesthetic system is also referred to, somewhat inconsistently, as the
kinesthetic sense, or kinesthesis, and the proprioceptive sense or proprioception. The
various names combine the concepts of movement (Greek kinein “to move”) and
sensation (aesthesis), as well as the Latin proprius (“individual”, “one’s own”) and
perception.
The human kinesthetic system is believed to acquire sensory information from
two sources: proprioceptors, which are sense receptors distributed throughout the body,
and the inner ear. These are different from specific receptors for other sensory
experiences such as light, temperature, and sound.
Proprioceptors are specialized types of neurons that are responsive to stretching and
touch and so register kinesthetic sensations. As the body moves, they work in concert
with each other and with neurons in the brain (the somatosensory region of the cerebral
cortex) to keep track of body movement and position. One class of neurons lies in the
deep fatty tissue under the skin and responds to pressure. A second class surrounds the
internal organs, and a third acts as receptors in the muscles, tendons, and joints of the
body. As the muscles function when bodily parts move, various patterns of pressures on
these receptors provide essential information for guiding motor action. Kinesthesia also
allows assessment of the weight of an object. When one picks up an object, the change in
muscle tension generates signals that adjust one’s posture accordingly.
In addition, although sometimes distinguished as the vestibular system, the perception of
spatial movement and orientation of the body as a whole also involves a fluid-filled
receptor system located in the vestibules of the inner ear. More than body balance, this
structure provides the means by which one is aware of being tilted, shaken, or whirled
about, and how, most of the time, one knows “which way is up”. This is made possible
by three semicircular canals in the inner ear that contain fluid which, when moved,
stimulates sensitive hair cells. These cells send signals to the brain via the auditory
nerve. Also involved are two vestibular sacs in each ear, located between the cochlea and
the semicircular canals and filled with tiny crystals that also bend hair cells when moved.
The impulses generated in the inner ear in response to bodily movements contribute to
the sense of one’s position as well as providing information about the speed and direction
of body rotation and of gravitation as well as movement. Motion sickness originates
from excessive stimulation of these vestibular organs.
Without the kinesthetic system, it would be impossible to walk without watching
one’s feet or to walk in the dark without losing one’s balance. It would also be
impossible to learn how to drive because one could not steer or use the foot pedals while
looking at the road ahead. The neurologist Oliver Sacks reported the case of a young
woman who lost her entire sense of proprioception due to a viral infection of her spinal
cord. At first, she could not move properly at all or even control her tone of voice. She
relearned to walk by watching her feet and using her inner ears and had to judge her
voice modulation by actively using her hearing. She eventually recovered nearly normal
speech and many of her former basic movement skills, although her performance
remained rather stiff and slow. She could no longer judge the amount of effort required
to pick up objects, however, and would grip them painfully to be sure she did not drop
them. Sacks believed this to be the best possible recovery in the absence of her
kinesthetic sense.
Learning New Skills
The kinesthetic system works in conjunction with physical strength and flexibility to
produce skill. Learning any everyday physical skill, as well as developing athleticism in
bodily practices such as sports, dancing, or martial arts, involves stimulating, enhancing,
and “educating” the kinesthetic system to improve balance, coordination, alignment,
spatial awareness, and efficiency of action. Kinesthesia is thus a key component of
muscle memory and hand-eye coordination. For example, to catch a ball or execute a
triple-axel jump in figure skating requires a finely-tuned sense of the position of the joints
and limbs. Training can improve this kinesthetic sense, and the skill needs to become
automatic (out of awareness) for performers and athletes so that they can focus on other
aspects of performance, such as locating other people in the same space or
communicating pleasing, aesthetic factors.
Some primarily non-competitive movement practices, such as the Chinese martial
art Tai-Chi-Chuan and the Indian exercise practice of Yoga, focus especially on
developing kinesthetic awareness in the body, in contrast to most competitive sports,
where the focal emphasis is on the goal-directed results of action rather than the action
itself once skills have been acquired.
Although researchers have found that the kinesthetic system is fully functional in
the first few months of life, little research has been done on age-related changes in
kinesthetic sensation and how aging affects the kinesthetic receptors. Indications suggest
that older adults experience some impairment in balance due to changes in the kinesthetic
receptors, and these changes might be more extreme in the lower limbs.
Kinesthesia and Perception
It is interesting to note that, as a human sensory capacity, kinesthesia has been excluded
from the Western classification of the “five senses” (sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch)
despite the fact that many scholars of perception all acknowledge body movement as the
unexamined ground of all sensory perception. Historically, traditional theories have
divided human perception into two parts that separate body from mind, reason from
feeling, and inside from outside. In contrast, James Gibson argued that, instead of
thinking of perception as the activity of a mind working like a computer within a body, it
should be considered as the exploratory activity of the whole organism within its
environmental setting, as active participation through practical, bodily engagement. This
view places kinesthesia and bodily actions at the heart of being-in-the-world and hence
critical subject matter for the social-scientific and cultural study of human movement and
the senses.
Research in neurophysiology during the 1980s and 1990s supported a unified
perspective of human perception that combines auditory, visual, kinesthetic, and spatialtemporal sensory modalities. This replaced an earlier model in which each sensory
system was seen as providing unique sensations that the developing infant has to learn to
integrate. The unified perspective is more consistent with Gibson’s ecological
perspective of perception and action.
Training Proprioception
Training the kinesthetic system in ways that engage both the body and mind of the mover
began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. One of the pioneers was Mabel Elsworth
Todd (1880-1956), who addressed the problems of poor posture and lack of general
coordination with new ideas about achieving balance in the skeletal structure rather than
imposing fixed ideas about what was correct or ideal. Victorian moral influences of the
time advocated maintaining a rigid verticality as a sign of uprightness of spirit. In
contrast, Todd stressed maintaining a finely-tuned balance of the structure and a stressfree readiness for action, absent any strain or holding. Todd’s student, Barbara Clark
(1889 -1982), continued this approach to training the kinesthetic sense. She considered
it to be a more natural use of the body and a counter to the faster pace of industrialized
life, which confused the kinesthetic sense with unnatural mechanized body movement or
lack of movement.
Todd also introduced the concept of using imagery – for example, concentrating
on a picture involving movement – to initiate changes in the neuromuscular system and
skeletal alignment. This was achieved by the student lying on a table in a rest position
and being taught to locate an image in his or her own body so as to assist the
understanding of the principle being discussed and to effect changes in alignment. The
student was assisted with sensations of touch and pressure from the teacher but also had a
sense of cooperating in the procedure. Visual imagery was suggested for practice during
rest or in simple movement as a way of maintaining balance in everyday life.
Lulu Sweigard (1895-1974) developed this work further, grounding it in her
formal training in the sciences of anatomy and bodily mechanics, as well as neurology
and physiology, and drawing on developments in psychology. Her approach has become
known as Ideokinesis. Sweigard identified a series of principles for increasing body
awareness relative to movement in order to help prevent injury, especially among
dancers. Sweigard’s insistence that movement imagined in the body can result in
changes in established patterns of neuromuscular co-ordination and that movement
resides in thinking, not muscle action, were, and remain, controversial because they run
contrary to the emphasis on activity in most approaches to physical education. Sweigard
insisted on bringing mind (imagination and imagery) into the education of the kinesthetic
system, understanding that it is subcortical controls in the nervous system, not voluntary
muscle actions, that determine postural habits, movement patterns, and neuromuscular
coordination.
Experiential techniques for re-educating the neuromuscular system are often referred
to as bodywork or somatic education and involve gently training the kinesthetic system in
more accurate sensing of the physical self, ease of movement, and freedom from tensions
and pain. Practitioners such as Frederic Mathias Alexander (1869-1955) and Moishe
Feldenkreis (1904-1984) developed additional techniques, their surnames identifying
each approach as well as opportunities for professional teacher certification in their
methods.
Brenda Farnell
Recommended Readings
Haywood, K. M., & Getchell, N. (2009). Life span motor development (5th ed.
Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Matt, P. (1993). A kinesthetic legacy: The life and works of Barbara Clark.
Tempe, AZ: CMT Press.
Sacks, O. (1985). The disembodied lady. In The man who mistook his wife for a hat
and other clinical tales (pp. 43-54). New York, NY: Perennial Library.
Sweigard, L. (1978). Human movement potential: Its ideokinetic facilitation. New
York, NY: Dodd, Mead.
Williams, Drid (2011). Teaching dance with ideokinetic principles. Champaign, IL:
University of Illinois Press.