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Bernstein believes that it is this interaction between the periphery and the centre
that allows the coordination of expressive movement to occur. Commenting on
the use of practice to solve motor skill problems, Bernstein states that the
solution is not in the repetition, but in the perfection of techniques required to
improve:
… Even in the case of such uniformly repetitive acts the variability in the motor picture
and in the range of initial conditions may at first be very great, and a more or less fixed
program develops depending on the extent to which a motion is practised, and by no
means at the first attempt. The process of practice continues towards the achievement of
new motor habits essentially consists in the gradual success of a search for optimal
motor solutions to the appropriate problems. Because of this, practice, when properly
undertaken, does not consist in repeating the means of solution of a motor problem time
after time, but in the process of solving this problem again and again by techniques
which we changed and perfected from repetition to repetition (Bernstein 1967:134).

Bernstein noticed that when practice was effective, subsequent repetitions

stripped away inefficient and redundant movements. From this statement, an
important consideration for conductors is that blind repetition will not facilitate
expressive movement without some form of modification occurring from
repetition to repetition. Without this modification, no improvement in expressive
movement can be made.
As movement pathways are developed and practised, a refinement of fine motor
skills needs to occur. Maintenance of awareness between the mind and the body
is essential for this to happen, so that the body does not engage in ‘mindless’
repetition.
Additionally, in a 1984 reassessment of Bernstein’s work which supports
Bernstein’s criticism of Descartes’ theory, Turvey and Kugler criticise the
Cartesian influence on scientific thinking, claiming that the Cartesian program ‘is
not a scientifically tractable program’:
We believe that the Cartesian program must be abandoned if a scientifically acceptable
account is to be provided of the perceptual objectivity that Bernstein regards as the sine
qua non of action. To ease the break with tradition, it may help to remember that
Descartes built his perceptual theory around thought, not action (Turvey and Kugler
1984:381).

The essence of Bernstein’s theory is therefore that dynamic kinaesthetic

movement, involving both mind and body, is the optimum vehicle for learning
coordinated expressive movement.
The work of Bernstein provided an important step in the study of motor skills as
the motor behaviourist Beverley Ulrich (1997) began to adopt a dynamic systems
approach, and by the early 1980s she began to recognise that human organisms