08/09/2026
Body Intelligence
Through my study of Somatic and Dance/Movement Therapy, I’ve revisited how Go-Go, my years of training at the Studios of African Heritage and JACIRE, and even the beginnings of the Black Swans movement organized my development.
But it also created great confusion around choosing between body or mind—and even today, there can be a competition around what gets recognized and validated as intelligence.
I’ve had to understand and accept how I process my experiences and move through the world.
The validity of bodily intelligence does not exclude cognitive intelligence.
Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences gives us language for recognizing that intelligence is not expressed in only one way. His theory includes linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic intelligence, with existential intelligence proposed as a possible ninth.
And we don’t have to possess only one.
We can hold and access many intelligences at once.
When I look back at Go-Go, African dance, the studios where I trained, and the Black Swans, I recognize that I wasn’t simply learning movement.
My intelligence was being organized through rhythm, relationship, observation, repetition, space, memory, community, and participation.
I can access bodily-kinesthetic intelligence through movement, musical intelligence through rhythm, interpersonal intelligence through relationship, spatial intelligence through movement and orientation, and intrapersonal intelligence through attending to what is happening within me.
They do not have to compete.
My body wasn’t separate from my intelligence.
My body was one of the ways I entered into my intelligence.
So perhaps instead of being so quick to determine how intelligent someone is, we become curious about:
How do you enter into your intelligence?
What gives you access to what you know?
Movement? Sound? Language? Relationship? Stillness? Nature? Numbers? Images? Rhythm?
And then become curious about the people around you.
How do they enter into their intelligence?
Sometimes what we interpret as someone not knowing may actually mean we have not created the conditions through which their knowing becomes accessible.
There may be much more intelligence present than the ways we have learned to measure it allow us to see.
