Autism: Corporeity, Motor Activity and Sport

Abstract

Motor activity and sport can improve balance between body and mind, aiming at maintaining and developing skills and qualities, and allowing stimulating and strengthening individual resources that, over time, can become great strength and adaptation tools. Corporeity is a particular mediator between the individual and the environment, which grants particular privilege to the being. Corporeity is movement, and the latter, through the former, becomes a way of understanding the world; so the body movement itself is a way to communicate, make oneself understood, express one’s own thoughts and feelings, and, considering the characteristics and the problems of autism, these elements can represent valid support and help instruments. For a person with autism spectrum disorder, motor activity represents an important opportunity for the support and development of functional skills that, in some areas, are particularly compromised. The body and movement education through game, sport and motor activity provide the autistic sub- ject a concrete opportunity to effectively acquire the fundamental assumptions of the basic social rules, the most suitable behaviors in different contexts, and a greater control of their body and actions.