Isbister, a professor of computational media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, believes that the social disapproval directed at fidgeting is misplaced. Though we imagine that we can manage our mental activity from within our heads, it’s often more effective to employ the movements of our bodies for that purpose—to engage in what she calls “embodied self-regulation.” Isbister would reverse the usual chain of command in which the brain tells the body what to do. “Changing what the body does,” she notes, “can change our feelings, perceptions, and thoughts.”
