Poise
n. the ability to adjust one’s bearing to meet forthcoming demands.
Poise is the entrainment of self with self. It requires an idealized vision/ anticipation of the near future and a skillfulness to self-nudge the performative body into the preferred state.
The person who cannot coordinate his actions, and is awkward, spends most of his movements in fighting himself.43 He cannot turn his attention to “foreign affairs” and to “defense” because he is the ruler of a hopelessly anarchic domestic society that does not carry out his orders. To deal effectively with objects around us, we must be able to anticipate them before we reach them, or they us, so that we can then be prepared at the actual moment of meeting to respond effectively. If we can act only with parts but not with the whole of our body, then the sets or anticipations of parts of our body are very likely to be blocked at the crucial moment of meeting by the unpreparedness of the rest of our body. (Todes, 2001, p. 46)
See Empathy