Evolution and importance of bodily-kinesthetic intelligence
Choreographers or dancers amusing their audience with their dance performance; actors or mime performers acting on stage; athletes well known for their amazing ability in quick ball game; inventors inventing new tools or devising new inventions are few examples of individuals having highly evolved bodily kinesthetic intelligence. Bodily Kinesthetic Intelligence?
Yes, you read it right, bodily kinesthetic intelligence as defined by the American development psychologist and the author of the book ‘frames of minds, the theory of multiple intelligences’, Howard Gardner, “the ability to use one’s body in highly differentiated and skilled ways, for expressive as well as goal directed purposes”.
It’s actually the capacity to work with objects with the help of movement of both fingers and hands as well overall movements of the body. In fact, bodily intelligence is the ability to handle and deal with objects effectively plus its an ability of effectively controlling one’s body motions
But most people in our culture don’t regard these physical activities as intelligence because according to them intelligence is merely a mental activity involving problem solving, drawing logical relationship, linguistic capacities and comprehension & application of symbolic systems.
So, can we say that activities of an athlete, dancer, musical instrumentalist, actor and inventor are ordinary and less important. No, not at all, actually one set of activities is reflective (mental activities) while other set of activities is active (Bodily Intelligence). But none of them is ordinary or less privileged, these are actually different forms of intelligence; and most intriguing thing is one intelligence type solely cannot make an exquisite performance, its actually the combination of different intelligences that contributes to well executed roles in any field. For instance, activities of an inventor involve both bodily kinesthetic and spatial intelligence; similarly, an actor does not solely depend upon bodily intelligence, rather his or her performance is successful because he holds personal, linguistic and in some cases musical intelligence.
Exquisite performance of kinesthetically intelligent people is not only the combination of more than one intelligence types but also the combination of usage or control of multiple bodily movements and handling of objects, like a master mime can mimic characters, create personalities, copy animals, reflect natural phenomenon and abstract concepts in his actions and exhibit all of these actions at once.
Kinesthetically intelligent people try for seeking harmony between mind and body, where mind is skilled to use the body appropriately and body is skilled to coordinate to expressive powers of the mind. Receptor receives signals or stimuli from the environment, combines these stimuli with the internal signal received from the body and makes as well as judges body movements. Its all about refined judgement of timing that contributes towards an exquisite performance specially in athletic activities
So, now we have the idea about what Kinesthetic Intelligence actually is, but to comprehend it further we need to study the evolution of cognitive processes involved in these bodily or mechanical capacities.
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