SOM.Preface:1 - Problem frame and scope

A movement teacher or experienced practitioner may know the desired result while lacking a usable account of how to change the bodily action. A learner may understand an instruction, possess sufficient strength and remember the movement sequence, yet be unable to coordinate the actions required within that movement. This language helps relate the performer’s bodily experience and control to the required movement result, then construct a learning or correction attempt.

Its field is bodily modeling and learning within an already known movement practice. It covers relating felt change to action, acquiring a needed bodily distinction, regulating effort, combining changes and revising coordination through changes in support or load. Technique, suitable physical demands and that practice’s criteria come from the practitioner or teacher. A beginner uses the language with that support.

Somatic concerns the body as experienced and regulated from within. That account differs from what another person observes and from an anatomical explanation. They can inform the same correction, but one does not automatically supply the others. For example, a teacher can see that contact is lost while the performer reports no noticed change of effort. The difference is a reason to investigate their relation.

The language concerns human bodily learning. A robot can be assessed against some of the same movement results, but its sensing, controllers, learning procedure and actuators require their own methods. Human practice instructions do not supply that architecture.