Physical Intelligence

One day, when we were downhill skiing, my brother said to me "Skiing is all about getting your upper body right. Once you move your upper body right, everything else just happens". I glared at him, as he easily beat me to the bottom of yet another run, in far superior style.

The problem is that my brother has a lot more physical intelligence than me. But most of that physical intelligence is in his lower body. So of course! When it came to skiing, his legs were already doing all the right things, and he just needed to work on his upper body. It was the same with dancing. When you watched him dancing from the waist down, you'd see chiselled movements of a well trained ballet dancer. (He was doing folk dancing, practicing once per week). When you watched him from the waist up, he was just your average guy doing spins, leaps and other dance moves. (Then he actually started working on his upper body, and those movements became beautiful too).

Each person has some level of physical intelligence, an ability to adapt to physical situations as they happen. And where physical intelligence is missing, good practice will make close to perfect. It appears that sections of our body can have various levels of physical intelligence too, as is apparent from my brother's example. In his case it was the upper body versus the lower body. But I presume it could be more refined than that. Possibly shoulders versus calves, or left versus right.