There are 3 levels of movement:

1. Instinctive movement
In the first level, the body simply acts. You don’t pay attention.

2. Goal-directed movement
The mind uses the body instrumentally, for example: exercise, jump higher, run faster, finish the marathon.

3. Conscious movement
In the highest level, movement itself becomes an object of awareness. The person starts to pay attention, without measuring, one can experience force, tension, relaxation, balance – only in this third level you become conscious of your own body, how you move.

Unfortunately, most technology turns movement into a competition. Metrics and beautiful charts make it easy to compete against benchmarks and peers.

But – if used consciously – I see in measurement technology much more.

A measurement can create initial awareness. It can wake you up to pay attention.

If technology is designed from a human-centric perspective, it can open the eyes to conscious movement.

Measurments used consciously allow you to link your own awareness of movement with physical reality.

This is important, because “Listen to your body” is usually insufficient simply because perception is biased by conditioning (iE fear, habit, identity, desire, mimesis, social conditioning).

Measurements allow you to filter which signals your own body is sending you are actually valid.

Not as a quantified-self, not used as performance technology; where you move from:

human -> measurement -> benchmark -> prescription

But as conscious awareness:

experience -> measurement -> perception -> experimentation -> better movement -> raised consciousness

Comparing metrics can be useful, but more interesting to me is the difference between what I thought I did and what I actually did. This increases awareness.

That is also why movement for me is not sports or exercise but life. Movement is ultimately a mirror of your own internal state. And measuring can train embodied knowing.