What is Physical Intelligence?

Everything we learn, everything we become, and everything we communicate requires our body’s participation.

Physical Intelligence is the set of physical capacities that allows us to learn and to express our thoughts and feelings. These capacities are located in our physical bodies. They provide us with information through sensory channels, and this information then becomes the foundation for our cognitive and emotional development.

After our ideas and emotions are constructed, they are expressed in various “languages” through an integrated set of physical behaviors. These language behaviors are expressed through our bodies’ sensory-motor potential for speech, gesture, and movement.

Physical Intelligence is thus the container and channel for both Cognitive Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence. It is through Physical Intelligence that ideas and emotions are both developed and expressed. Physical Intelligence serves as the “final common pathway” for understanding and expressing our unique, personal cognitive, emotional, and physical experience.

As well as a channel for communicating our other intelligences, our physical bodies are themselves a source of intelligence, of another way of knowing. We know and interpret our own personal identities, our bodies, and the world around us through physical messages that are encoded in the body’s internal, sensory language. These internal messages, our body’s wisdom, are interpreted both consciously and unconsciously. This is part of the mystery we are able to explore through Physical Intelligence.

Everyone is born with these Physical Intelligence capacities, and while some people have more innate Physical Intelligence than others, we all have the ability to expand our use of these capacities during our lives. We see a person displaying more Physical Intelligence when he or she is:
• Attending to a broader range of internal and external sensory motor messages, and
• Using a more expansive and sophisticated repertoire of physical behaviors to express ideas and feelings.

Peter Norlin, a highly regarded expert in the field of Organizational Development, and I have combined our skills. We design and guide professional retreats for organizational boards, management, leadership consulting and staff coaching. This aspect of our work supports mindfully using the skills of Physical Intelligence.

Different locations for learning are all possible. This includes onsite venues and off site small retreats for more intimate and personal attention.

For more information please contact Judith Fischer at judithfischer312@gmail.com or Peter Norlin at peter@peternorlin.com.