KAnscious™ Sports: Movement and Motion to Metaphor ™

 

KAnscious™ Sports

- Movement and Motion to Metaphor ™ -

 

PART 1

“I'm going to argue…against the traditional view and I'm going to suggest to you that human bodily experience…is very richly metaphorical…Metaphor may be everywhere in our experience,” (Gibbs, 2022).

During my tenure of study within of the college institutions I attended, I vividly recall one of my professor’s telling students, us mental health professionals have to start looking outside of evidence-based programs and practices in our work to help heal people. I can still remember the elevated focus and stare I gave her when the comment was made.  I did not expect a middle-aged European person with advanced degrees to be, in essence, deviating from traditional philosophies of the collegiate pedagogy, to champion Eastern philosophy and styles of healing that many in the Western world would call crazy or weird.  Why did she say that?  I was puzzled.  Not because I did not understand her.  I was puzzled because I intensely agreed with her.  I was thinking like that well before I entered into the program.   

I had already been investing in and developing the idea and programming of Therapeutic Boxing™, an unconventional form of trauma-informed mindfulness that reveals a person’s behavior patterns and helps them increase their quality of life.  In my book KAnscious Sports, I elaborate on the connections and correlations of what my company, PerspectVe, now refers to as Movement and Motion to Metaphor™ (MAMTM).  MAMTM is wellbeing coaching services in the field of mind and body education through movement and awareness for personal development.  Social media influencer and Muay Thai fighter Alex Esrawee said, “[Sports] is the greatest form of self-discovery.  It is the ultimate mirror…the ultimate teller of truth…Nothing will REVEAL [more] of the truth about yourself…When the pressure is on, [the sport] will tell you so much about your character.  And it acts as data points that you can then analyze and IMPROVE on.”  Can someone press the virtual meeting emoji clap for Alex!?!?  That type of language and thinking is directly in alignment with the paradigms we use at PerspectVe.  When people ask me what I do for a living and I start talking about this stuff, they usually say things like “Oh, you probably give the kiddos a lot of discipline,” or “Exercise is great to mental health.  When ya feel better ya do better.”  KAnscious™ Sports (KS) is not a traditional sports entity.  “Athletic programs are frequently organized around performance metrics,” (Dr. Reginald Hagood James, 2026).  KAnscious ™ Sports is much deeper than that.  KS not just about tapping into discipline, ‘getting one’s anger out’, and/or sports analytics.  It is tapping into your soul, acutely increasing your awareness of self, and connecting with who you are authentically supposed to self-actualize to be.  It’s about being actively mindful in order to increase your healthy Wellbeing, Enlightenment, Soul-development, and Self-discovery™ - in a KAnscious™ way through sport and aerobic/kinesthetic movement.  KS is REAL development.  Though…“efficiency feels productive…development requires something different.  Development requires clarity, patience, repetition, emotional regulation, and skill building…Development solves confusion,” (Dr. Reginald Hagood James, 2026).  Furthermore, as Kelvin W. Nathan, once stated: “Clarity rarely comes before movement. It comes through MOVEMENT. You begin. You stumble. You learn. You ADJUST. And that process reveals what no amount of thinking ever could.”  Notice how multiple people from different walks of life and professions are finding a confluence within the idea of Movement and Motion to Metaphor.  The KS Sports metaphor encompasses a digital ripple that symbolizes how who are within a kinesthetic and aerobic capacity can ‘ripple’ into other areas of our lives.  It is a fancy illustration of the idea that how you anything (or most things) is how you do EVERYTHING.

I want to be clear.  I do not abhor or ignore Eurocentric psychology or the medical model.  I have a tremendous amount of respect for them both; and some of my favorite practitioners to learn from have come from those disciplines.  In continued transparency, some of them also acknowledge the limitations and contradictive nature of those [and other] disciplines.  People like Carl Jung, James Hilman, Dr. Frances Welsing, and even Dr. Gabor Mate to name a few.  Clinical hypnotist James Mapes has brilliantly written about how Quantum Leap Thinking allows multiple truths to occur at the same time.  A thing…can be great and not so good in some capacity at the same time.  Thus, the medical model and evidence-based tools can be lovely…and lousy.  I have sat in countless case conceptualization meetings and listened to one counselor/psychologist after another rave about how great cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is.  It can be great.  Cheers to Aaron Beck.  However, in my opinion it has become the ibuprofen of mental health.

Three authors, two of whom appear to be medical practitioners in the field of cardiovascular health, contributed to an article where the following idea was expressed about the idea of medicine vs. art:

“Medicine has always been about precision and logic – a field fundamentally rooted in the disciplined application of science for the study of human health. As a vocation, it routinely caters to analytical minds, and its rich history is represented by some of the world’s most decorated left-brain thinkers…In science, as opposed to art, there is often little room for the abstract and great skepticism aimed at those who seek to color outside of the lines.  This is, of course, consistent with how we routinely practice and deliver contemporary healthcare. On the wards and in the intensive care units of many of today’s teaching hospitals, learners will frequently be asked to defend their differential diagnoses and therapeutic agenda with incontrovertible data and an arsenal of supportive evidence gleaned from the literature. On occasion, we may choose instead to invoke the “art of medicine,” but often only in instances where there is insufficient evidence to rationalize our decision making; art – in this manner – is exploited only where science cannot be leveraged or when it fails to explain a patient’s tumultuous clinical course…Art, however, should not be considered the antithesis of science when it comes to the practice of medicine…art connects us to the human experience and has allowed us to personalize our approach to patient care. 

 An appreciation of art – in its many forms – can also make us better diagnosticians. Have you ever forced yourself to sit and truly stare at a painting or sculpture? Have you listened with your eyes closed during an orchestral performance or musical concert? Have you carefully watched choreographed dancers tell a story with just their bodies? If you haven’t, we encourage you to do so. Resist the urge to talk or act; instead, sit in silence and observe from multiple angles. Force yourself to slow down, become more intentional, and try to pick up on details that may easily be missed. Afterwards, reflect on these experiences the next time you care for a patient. If the situation permits, watch how they breathe, scrutinize their color, notice how they move, feel the texture and temperature of their skin, and observe where their eyes may lead you. Much can be elucidated from these simple steps. Attempt also to find meaning and even melody in the cacophony of alarms that accompany your patient – a sudden variance in the pattern of bedside waveforms or ventilator signals, as an example, may disclose an imminent threat to their stability. Finding meaning in clinical signs or symptoms can be akin to finding richness in an uncommon color upon an artist’s palette or noting the subtlety of a dancer’s movement.” (KATZ, KATZ, and REZA, 2026).

Like in Dr. Gabor Mate, in this piece of literature we find classically trained [medical] scholars engaging in a philosophical way to acknowledge and validate a poetic and unconventional [PerspectVe] of healing.  The paper goes on to say, “…visual arts have been incorporated into medical education and may be a useful pedagogical method for enhancing the trainee experience,” (KATZ, KATZ, and REZA, 2026).  Newer readers of my work or newcomers of this quantum style of thinking may find it surprising that various scholars align with this viewpoint.  However, other scholars like myself are aware that “…it's not surprising [that] academics actually study abstract topics…Academic discourse is by far…the highest of in terms of metaphoricity.  So even scientific language and theories are fundamentally metaphorical in many ways,” (Gibbs, 2022).

PART 2
As a reminder, KAnscious Sports™ utilizes aerobic drills and sports situations within a trauma-informed framework. By incorporating depth-oriented discussion, it fosters self-awareness, intrapersonal intelligence, and overall well-being.

The Following are Brief Examples of KAnscious™ Sports and MAMTM™:

Figure 1.0

 

For 19 years, I have been working with families with kids who have some of conflict with their parents.  Some of the children have chronically run away from home, from placement, from a juvenile delinquent center, etc..  Figure 1.0 shows an image of a boy in the left side of the picture who appears to be running from and/or running back to home.  In the right side, he’s playing baseball and appears to be coming around third, on his way back home.  As a self-proclaimed existential phenomenologist, I can derive many symbolic lessons and metaphors from this picture.  The shapes, rules, and other elements of baseball have fascinated me in recent years regarding their applicability to daily human life.  One of the things that I believe this picture illustrates is the emblematic nature of how the game of baseball can represent ones journey from home and back to home; whether it be running away from ones family values that they grew up with – like I did earlier in life, only to come back home to them later in life, or our journey back to our Devine home with our Father in Heaven.  One of the things we find ourselves having to talk to some of the children who run away from home is the rules they break or create in their mind based on survival.  As soon as some of them run, similar to baseball, they begin to steal things.

Figure 2.0

 

Years ago, our company worked with a kid who played baseball.  In his personal life, he would run away to his girlfriend’s house, to a teammates house, sleep overnight at a park, etc.  He would insist that he’d be ok because his friend’s family said he could stay there as long as he wanted.  The problem was that he was another mouth to feed in the house of families who were already struggling to support their own kids.  Fascinatingly, as to the name of his main position on the baseball field, he continued to find that running away from home to another place – no matter how long he planned to be there – was a short stop.  There was a lot of work to be done with him and his family.  However, him having such a revealing piece of self-awareness through sports, genuinely interested him, and elevated his intrapersonal IQ to a point that gave us a conduit (or data point) that allowed us to analyze to help him improve.

That’s all for now…I just wanted to give you a little mini-spork sample of KAnscious ™ Sports!  For more, you can get a copy of the book on Amazon.  Feel free to leave an awesome review! 

 

Also, if you are interested in participating in any of our programs or having PerspectVe conduct KAnscious™ Sports and/or W.E.S.S Model oriented professional development workshops, please visit www.PerspectVe.com.

More content will be coming soon!  “…We hope that this will encourage you to take the time to challenge your assumptions and incorporate [movement and motion to metaphor] into both your professional and personal lives,” (KATZ, KATZ, and REZA, 2026).

 

© Shawn Coleman, MSPC March 20, 2026

References

Dr. Reginald Hagood James, J. (2026). Prepared Adults Raise Prepared Kids - Leadership, Systems Thinking, and Parenting for Growth.

Gibbs, D. R. (2022). filosficas-tube. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/live/Gcs-vG4e5ps?si=idTNBAFzkDBqHN0Y

JASON N KATZ, A. R. (2026). PubMed Central. Retrieved from National Library of Medicine: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12889138/