Our kinesthetic system is our bodily sensations and feelings. These feelings are not the names we give to our sensations that we call emotion. Emotions are mostly evaluations of a set of sensations or learned responses, originating in our brains and translated into body sensations.
These sensations and feelings come from three things:
Proprioceptive Sensations
These are from our sensory receptors, in our muscles, tendons, joints, and the inner ear. They detect the motion or position of the body or a limb. They are responsible for our balance and our ability to move in our environment.
Visceral Sensations
Relate to our internal organs. We have receptors that let us know about the state of many of our organs, such as hunger, thirst, balance of minerals, hormonal fluctuations. We can become unaware of many of these sensations until they become painful.
Tactile sensations
These come from the nerves in our skin. They are our interface with the outside world and other beings. We notice texture, pressure, temperature and the location of the stimulus. We also register pain.
Kinesthetic System Processing
This kind of processing is much slower than visual system processing where a lot of information is available all at once. It is also slower than auditory system processing, where information is sequential and sometimes like a train on tracks.
Generally, it is one of our primitive types of processing, and can be simultaneous and conflicting. Having said all that, it can be very fast, for instance in emergencies. When there is a tiger nearby, it is more useful to pay attention to what your stomach is telling you and run like crazy.
Kinesthetic Words
People who are processing using the kinesthetic system use words such as:
Feel, touch, caress, handle, texture, feeling, hold, grip, cuddle, hug, rub, weighty, heavy, burden, oppressive, stifling, sticky, uncomfortable, pressure.
Kinesthetic Clues
- They pay attention to their bodies and feelings.
- They learn by doing, and so have difficulty with traditional education methods
- They like to touch things and people
- They will want to wear comfortable clothes and shoes rather than what looks good.
- They tend to speak more slowly. Feelings take a lot more time to process than pictures.
- They will make decisions based on how they feel.
Kinesthetic Processing Eye Patterns
A preference for kinesthetic processing show eyes moving down right (for most right-handed people). They may not make eye contact because that stops them being able to feel.