Proprioception, otherwise known as kinesthesia, is your body’s ability to sense movement, action, and location. It’s present in every muscle movement you have. … Proprioception allows you to walk without consciously thinking about where to place your foot next. It lets you touch your elbow with your eyes closed. WebMD

You’re walking
And you don’t always realize it
But you’re always falling
With each step, you fall forward slightly
And then catch yourself from falling
Over and over, you’re falling
And then catching yourself from falling…Walking & Falling, Song by Laurie Anderson

Proprioception is a word I hadn’t known even existed three weeks ago. That’s too bad because for most of my life I’ve had pretty good proprioception and it would have been nice to know the word when I could have used it in a positive – read subtle bragging – way, but now, my spacial awareness is one of the casualties of getting older. Now, I’ll be walking down a sidewalk and catch one of my feet – one of my shoes? – on, uhh…seemingly nothing. Now, I’ll grab a glass and, while lifting it, knock over a neighboring glass unless I’m specifically paying attention which I almost never am.

Specifically paying attention to the mechanics of walking, however, is almost impossible. Walking is something that most of us have been doing since we were somewhere around one year old, and now walking is entirely unconscious. I’ll trip on a rug on the hardwood floor and tell myself, “Be more conscience.” but it is not about being conscience, it is about my deteriorating proprioception. Knowing that it’s normal to lose my sense of balance as I get older is not as much of a comfort as it might, at first, seem.

In my case, maybe it is karmic punishment for not being very sympathetic when old people complained about their arthritis or I was told of some old person – maybe a mother or, usually, a grandmother – falling over and breaking her hip. I thought they would have solved the problem by just paying attention, I thought they should be more conscious and, of course, that isn’t really the problem. the problem is deteriorating proprioception.

Speaking of proprioception, Michele and I have been watching the Olympics for the last two weeks and, along with their extraordinary athleticism, the Olympians are a group of people who always know where their body is in space. Especially the athletes who are competing in sports like figure skating and are performing aerial tricks. In these sports, in which the competitor is spinning or somersaulting or, as improbable as it seems, both at the same time, superb proprioception is mandatory. And in these sports, East Asians dominate the medals. By East Asian, I mean people whose heritage is Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, even if they are now from Europe or the USA.

There are lots of reasons why East Asians dominate these sports but, it seems to me, that the paramount reason is that East Asians just have a better sense of where they are as they are spinning and tumbling. In other words, Nathan Chin, Chloe Kim, Ayumu Hirano, and their ilk just have better proprioception.