Mirror Neurons

Bess Ogden

WARRIOR Master Trainer

We’ve been exploring the theme of “reflection” during our Friday evening WARRIOR Rhythm class lately. Last night I invited my people to consider how we mirror each other’s movements - they reflect me and I reflect them as we flow through the choreography. I asked each person to think about how we also reflect the qualities of the people with whom we spend our time, and perhaps to identify the people who help us reflect brighter and beautifully.

One of the class members excitedly shared with us that this is related to a scientific phenomenon called “mirror neurons”.

I looked it up. 

Here is the article link if you are curious: 
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3510904/

In a nutshell, mirror neurons have been proven to exist through numerous studies in the past couple decades. Not only are they activated during mirrored movement, but even watching another being move! It’s postulated that mirror neurons allow us and other species to learn as infants to understand the intentions of others, even allowing us to predict their future actions.

That feeling you get when you sync up with the others in your WARRIOR Rhythm class?… Yeah, that’s your mirror neurons firing up! Cool, huh?!