Category Archives: Kinesthetic

Body movements

Knock on Wood

GESTURE: Knocking on wood when speaking of one’s good fortune

INFORMANT DESCRIPTION: Female, 60, Mexican

CONTEXT: This woman was saying how happy she was and how lucky she felt and immediately knocked on a wood surface next to her. She says she learned this gesture from her family. Whenever you speak of something good in your life or something positive you want to happen you must knock on wood.

ANALYSIS: This traces back to Jesus who she says was the step son of a carpenter, Joseph. Also Jesus was crucified on a wooden cross, she says when we knock on wood we are saying “God help us” or “God willing.” It is an anti-jinx mechanism that is supposed to prevent you from bad luck.

THOUGHTS: I learned this when I was a baby and have always practiced this gesture. Every single time I am grateful out loud I knock on wood or anytime I say something that I want to happen/come true. For me the wood symbolism doesn’t really matter, but the act of doing it unconsciously makes me feel like I have anti-jinxed myself.

Cemetery Gesture

DESCRIPTION OF GESTURE: When you see, come across, or pass a cemetery you must immediately touch your hair with your hands.

INFORMANT DESCRIPTION: Female, 54, Finnish

CONTEXT: This gesture was taught to her by her grandmother who was from Finland. She never knew where she learned it from but employed it her whole life. She said it meant you were adverting death. A way to not call death upon yourself, sort of like the evil eye. She said if you would see the dead they would come for you and since your hair was already dead it is a way to come into contact and save yourself.

THOUGHTS: I do think this gesture is very unique and seems to be very specific. I find the part about our hair already being dead fascinating and seems to make a little more sense to me. 

Spanish Fruit Eating Dance

DESCRIPTION OF PERFORMANCE: Spanish music was playing. She was standing, swaying her hips back and forth. She took her right hands and gestured it upward as if grabbing something out of a tree. She twisted her hand like pulling it out and pretended to take a bite out of the imaginary object. She then pretended to wipe the object all over her body until she reached her left hip and then it a swift movement, pretended to throw the object onto the floor. 

INFORMANT DESCRIPTION: Female, 72, Spanish

CONTEXT: This dance is supposed to symbolize taking an apple or fruit from a tree, eating it and then throwing it away. She learned it in a dance bar in Spain growing up in the 50s. It was a somewhat known dance that she said was very sensual and attractive. It involved the hip movement of her culture’s dance and incorporated themes of Adam and Eve and the countryside. She always loved this dance and would do it constantly to different music. To her it represented femininity and her country’s beautiful dance culture. 

THOUGHTS: When I saw this dance in person I was mesmerized. I had never seen anything like it and it was interesting because I could immediately understand that she was picking a fruit from a tree, the movements were very clear yet melodic.

The Cleansing of the egg- Religious/ Spiritual ritual

Description (From Transcript): “Okay so for this one it’s the curing of the egg! I don’t know how the other person you got it from told you this, but my mom, she gets an egg, and she rubs it with either alcohol or agua bendita (holy water). We get our agua bendita from church, or sometimes in a tiny bottle. We have like a little bottle here at home, and what she does is she puts agua bendita or alcohol, or both sometimes, and she does a cross on our body. But that cross is a small cross on our forehead, which is 1, 2, 3, 4, (*does a cross motion*) and then a small cross on our heart, in the small crossing our legs and then a cross behind our head. She rubs that egg all around our body,  starting with the back of our head, which is the most important part. My mom says that’s the most important part because that’s where it’s in the middle. Medically, if you hit your head right there, you’re probably going to die. That’s the most important part that you have to protect, and that’s where she rubs us and especially when I had problems with stress, she does this to me, and as well. She does it through the head, first in the back of the head and then on top of the head, and then she moves towards the shoulders and hands, the front of the heart, and then she moves to the back, and then at the end towards the bottom, and then she brings all that energy into the top, and she rubs the head again. Then she goes to the restroom. She opens the egg, and she throws it in the toilet, not in the back. I know a lot of people throw it in the backyard or they throw it in the trash.But she does it in the toilet. She’s like “don’t come with me because you’re going to get that bad energy, and I have to do it by myself”. 

She goes to the toilet, she closes the door, and she flushed it. Then, she throws the shell in the trash can outside. 

Context: The informant, VA, is a first generation student at USC. She has one sibling and her family is from Puebla, Mexico. She got this tradition from her mother, who learned it from her own mother. As for how to do it, her mother saw it on an online video on facebook. However, she first learned of it from her mother. The informant explained that this practice shows how, even if you don’t believe in it, seeing how much her parents care for her, or the extent to which they care that they would do it, makes her feel important. She emphasized how seeing her mom do this small ritual for her when she feels bad or because of schoolwork, she feels a lot better. 

My interpretation: Unlike the other informant who explained this ritual, VA utilizes many religious aspects, including holy water and the crosses made on her body. To me, this reveals how the act is not only a demonstration of religion, but also a way for her to connect to her family and her culture. Additionally, her explanation of the head being the most important body part demonstrates how physical well being and spiritual well being are directly connected, and more specifically, how negative energies can be physically removed from a person’s body even if they are not visible or tangible. Flushing the bad energy down the toilet demonstrates how it’s seen as a particularly putrid agent that must be disposed of the way waste or toxic chemicals might be disposed of. I found it interesting how her mother relearned the ritual through social media videos. 

Bracelet Against Evil Eye

Informant: My informant is a current sophomore at the University of Southern California. Her parents are from Jalisco, Mexico. However, she grew up in Denver, Colorado.

Context: The following is a conversation that my informant and I had over zoom. During the zoom we were discussing some of the lore that we share. The following is an excerpt of our conversation and my informant explanation of her bracelet charm against evil eye.

Text: “I wear this bracelet as a protection amulet for myself. The reason that I wear it is that it’s a custom that has been present for many years now. I don’t think these customs come from Catholicism, even though my parents are religious, but I think it has to do a lot with indigenous roots. The evil eye is negative energy such as bad vibes, and jealousy and to keep that away we wear a bracelet with an eye on it. [The informant takes her bracelet off and hands it over to me]. Usually, these are red, but mine on here is a colorful number of beads and if you look at the middle it has like a hand with an eyeball in the center it has a little like eyeball, and it’s not super detailed or anything, but it’s just a circle, and the like outer part is red and then the inner part is completely white with like a singular black dot. And basically, I wear this all the time, because at some point I really did just start believing that it was a positive energy that protects you from other people’s bad glares. Even my little cousins wear this. My mom and dad always told us to wear these-slash- they put them on us as babies to protect us from evil.” 

Analysis: Hearing of the evil eye from another person who practices it was very interesting indeed. I for one also wear these kinds of bracelets because as a small child my mom taught me that these bracelets work as small amulets to keep me safe. Seeing how my informant and I learned these customs, superstitions, and myths from our family show how much one relies on our culture rather and on professionals or science to believe whether something is necessarily real. Some might argue that this is the placebo effect, our minds are playing games to make us believe that this is truly a protection. However, whether it is placebo effect or not, these charms have demonstrated to play a big role in developing our beliefs in practices towards our future generation: our children.

One of the bracelet charms against evil eye that informant showed during zoom share.