How much do you trust feel?

cornutt

cornutt

Forum Master
Had a discussion with my instructor the other day... We were talking about learning styles. She's told me before that she's a kinesthetic learner. She learns by feel and trusts feel to let her know when she (or her student) is doing something right or wrong.

The discussion made me realize that, in general, I don't trust feel. I find that a lot of the time, proper technique doesn't feel "right" or "good" to me until I've practiced it, gotten comfortable with it, and developed the muscle memory. Conversely, a lot of the time, what feels "right" to me actually isn't.

Anybody else run into this? When you try something new, can you usually tell right away if you're doing it right, or do you need to verify it with an instructor first?
 
Well, all I could ever figure out was that I have about zero body awareness. It's not so much trusting or not trusting what I feel, it's that I usually don't feel a difference one way or the other. If something is terribly obvious, then there is a chance...but even then usually not. The only way I could ever start to feel a difference is if I was told beforehand what to feel for...but even then, while I could usually feel a difference in my teacher's body, it was nearly impossible to feel a difference in myself.
 
I am a kinesthetic learner, at least it is one of my primary styles...and, while I often fight against it for a variety of stupid reasons, I generally fare quite well when I allow it
 
cornutt said:
Had a discussion with my instructor the other day... We were talking about learning styles. She's told me before that she's a kinesthetic learner. She learns by feel and trusts feel to let her know when she (or her student) is doing something right or wrong.

The discussion made me realize that, in general, I don't trust feel. I find that a lot of the time, proper technique doesn't feel "right" or "good" to me until I've practiced it, gotten comfortable with it, and developed the muscle memory. Conversely, a lot of the time, what feels "right" to me actually isn't.

Anybody else run into this? When you try something new, can you usually tell right away if you're doing it right, or do you need to verify it with an instructor first?
Click to expand...

I tend to learn better that way, too. The trick is to do it with someone who can correct you and/or someone who does it right, rather than relying on what feels right to just you.

It isn't necessarily "doing it this way feels right, so I know it's right" - it's dancing with your coach so you can match what s/he's doing. For example, I've been having a hard time doing rise and fall with the correct timing and weight distribution. Dancing with someone who does it correctly helps me learn it, because I can feel what they're doing and match it. Often I can learn something that way, by feel, when watching it or having it explained does not work. "Wrong" still felt "right" to me, until I danced it with someone I knew was really "right".

I also find a lot of problems are easier to feel than to see... dance is all about illusion, after all :) But being able to correct it requires more understanding of the problem than just "this feels wrong" ... it's more of a diagnostic tool. Which is frustrating when something feels wrong, but I don't know why!
 
Great article, Larinda! Thanks for posting this!

Larinda McRaven said:
"You work your muscle memory in rehearsal so that when you get onstage it's only your brain and your emotions working," Corella said. "You don't think about what the body is doing anymore. When I go into the wings, I can't remember what I've done. I don't remember if my foot was pointed."

But not all dancers achieve this every time, he added: "They stay in the rehearsal period. You can see that they're thinking if their leg is in the right place."
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This explains so, so much...
 
I wouldn't equate "feeling right" necessarily with what goes on in kinesthetic learning--I'm overwhelmingly a kinesthetic learner, and can't learn a skill without doing it. (I nearly hit my boss with a frying pan because every time I asked how to do sautee dish she'd swoop in and do it herself, meaning I instantly forgot 99% of it. Also cannot stand rearranging my station as once my brain says something is a certain place that is where it is and reteaching myself to reach for something in a new place is more effort than it's usually worth. And no, it's not just me, learning to shut up, smile, nod, and stand back and then do it your way as soon as she's gone is pretty much a survival skill at this workplace.) It's not so much that I can tell I'm doing something RIGHT the first time, but that I have to do something before I can retain anything about it--there's very little point in talking to me about how to do a figure before walking me through it, and I can't learn from videos as it feels...fake, wrong, flat, and usually I have to spend a lot of effort rethinking it 'flipped' so it's the way I'd be doing it, not the camera's perspective. If I'm learning by watching someone, I stand behind them, not in front or to the side with the mirror as it messes up translating it to my head.

It also means I really need to learn something RIGHT, because while I learn physical moves quickly, if I learn them WRONG, unlearning it is a pain. (This has made some things about switching between Rhythm/Latin kind of a hassle as I spent the first year with NP doing Latin, and now when a figure is similar, he'll be whispering "Knee" because I'll be doing a straight Latin leg.) Sometimes not practicing is better than practicing unsupervised because if I ingrain an error undoing it is a hassle.

This really works with some teachers and is really bad with others. I'm not big on 'why' as it doesn't really help me learn anything (if I feel interesting 'why' something, I will ask.) Just a 'how', even if there's no VERBAL explanation, just "Feel this? Do that." You can talk all you want at me, but until I feel how to do something, it's just noise. Once I feel how it's supposed to work I can start trying to replicate it.
 
Kinesthetic learning: for me it is not simply having it feel right. When my teacher says I have done it right, I try to be very aware of what I felt, and recreate that. Also, there are times when doing a particular figure, or some technique, felt really good. I try to validate that what felt good looked good from the outside, and if it looked good, again, try to recreate that feeling.
 
That's how I work. I'm more likely to notice something is wrong because it doesn't feel right, rather than know that's not how a certain move is done (if that makes any sense). But I know that I can't always rely on that so I have to carefully listen to instruction and try remember how something should be, whether it feels right or not. I found myself several times saying something is wrong when in actuality it was right, because to me it felt wrong.
 
MissSongbird said:
I found myself several times saying something is wrong when in actuality it was right, because to me it felt wrong.
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That's what I run into sometimes. And as danceronice said, I have to make sure that I learn things the right way the first time, because if the wrong way gets into my muscle memory, it's hell to purge it.
 
I am a combination of both,kineasthetic and visual, and I use it for teaching...sometimes i lead the leaders so they feel what I am doing as much as see it. At least they get a clearer idea of what the movement feels like for the follower. Sometimes they get a surprise like when I led a 13 stone guy into a colgada ( I am 9 stone)..oh he said that felt smooth.

sorry I am bragging:rolleyes:
 
I am a very visual dancer. I need to see it and imitate it. Things that don't look right never feels right to me. That's when my teacher who is very articulate in technique plays an important role in improving my dancing.
 
When I think of whether or not a move "feels" right, I'm thinking of things like pull and release, how much tension I have in my arms, how "smooth" the move feels and etc., so I would constantly ask my instructiors how a certain move should or should not feel in addition to making sure it's being executed properly.
 
cornutt said:
Had a discussion with.... She's told me.... that she's a kinesthetic learner. She learns by feel and trusts..
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Hi cornutt, only want to warn you, that there are tremendous differences, whether you are talking of
kinesiology, kinaesiology, kinestetics, kinaesthetics, kinesthetics, and so forth.

Either of these words are valid translations of originally greek terms. But, one is a serious psychomotor concept while another at best simply is charlatanry.

Best was you acquaint yourself (f.i. at a local religious sects adviser).

Concerning empathy and intuition http://www.watchingdance.org/research/kinesthetic_empathy/index.php
 
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