Why Do This?

The idea that cognition and learning are embodied activities first emerged in the late 19th century, when developmental psychologists observed babies and children making sense of the world through bodily interactions with their environments. Experiential approaches to education such as John Dewey’s learn-by-doing grew out of this work. Recent discoveries make clear that what these 19th century learning scientists observed in young people holds for people of all ages—and we now have a more detailed understanding of the myriad interactions between movement and cognition.

For example, it’s apparent that gestures are part of human thought and abstract reasoning (indeed, even blind individuals gesture), that the body can be an instrument for distributing or reducing cognitive load (think fingers in mathematical operations), and that priming learners with different kinds of movements (such as swinging versus stepping or fluid versus jagged drawing), nudges them towards different approaches to problem solving. It’s also been established that a wide variety of physical activities benefit memory, executive function, creativity, perceptual acuity, and problem solving, and that school-based exercise programs from martial arts to general physical education to walking breaks enhance student academic achievement.

Research in the humanities and social sciences backs these scientific findings. For example, linguists and philosophers have identified numerous abstract concepts rooted in bodily experience–from notions of “grasping” a concept and “digesting” an idea to conventions of understanding time as directional motion (forward= future/backwards=past). Sociologists’ and anthropologists’ observations of physical laborers reveal the embodied knowledge required for jobs like waiting tables, plumbing, and carpentry–mathematics, physics, and psychology mastered in action rather than from textbooks.

This new understanding of the body’s role in cognition has implications for the future of teaching and learning. The MIT Project on Embodied Education offers educators actionable ideas for bringing movement into classroom settings.

Accessible introductions for further reading include books by John Ratey, Guy Claxton, and Annie Paul.