What are movement teams?
The term “movement teams” refer to something far more intricate than the mere idea of coordination. It refers to all the ways that all the involved muscles, bones, tissues, and nerves can accomplish a given movement/behavior with the minimum consumption of resource and expenditure of energy.
When we speak of movements teams, we are speaking of the ways in which specific sets of body parts move together supportively either in the same plane at the same time, or in opposite planes at the same time.
Your nervous system and physical body are designed to be able to do their work together with minimum friction, resistance, or obstruction - to generate optimum qualities of ease, grace, and beauty. You instinctively evaluate a dancer’s performance by how little effort it appears the dancer makes. You give the highest marks to effortless and graceful movement. You know instinctively that it reveals not only mechanical skill, well polished by practice, but also a lack of internal conflict - the presence of only one dominant motive or intention in the consciousness of the dancer, which is the dance itself. In fact, dancers generally dance in order to get into a state where that is all there is for them to do.
So we might say that when movement is easy, you are in line with or “in congruence with” the way your body is designed, and when movement is difficult, something in you creates conflict with or renders you insensitive to the design. In other words, lack of internal struggle makes movement easier; what makes it harder is the personal issue around which you yourself are organized.
Example: The head, eyes and shoulders are perhaps the easiest movement team to see and experience. In the absence of rule, judgment, or fear, the orientation of the head in space, the direction of interest of the eyes, and the organization of the shoulders will be parallel, each one actively supporting the other in its task.
The movement of the eyes precedes the ability to move the head and there are similar sequencing hierarchies for each movement team.
Try it: When you turn your head to the right, what is the most helpful direction in which you can turn your eyes and shoulders to support the ease and grace of the head movement? If you’re looking to the left while trying to move your head to the right, do you find yourself more blocked then if you let your eyes be turned in the same direction? If the shoulders also move in parallel, the movement will be even easier and larger.