KEEPING FIT : Right Moves Might Change Your Mind : A professor of applied social science believes that exercise can affect your personality.

Exercise can bring more changes to your life than just engorged biceps, slab-sided thighs and a washboard abdomen. The right movements--done properly and consistently--could change your personality, says James Gavin Ph.D., a professor of applied social science at Concordia University in Montreal.

He calls this “Movement Therapy.”

“Change the way you move, and you change your personality,” Gavin says.

“I don’t think the mind and body are neatly separated. If you are involved in a sport an hour or two a day, it can’t help but translate into how you interact with the world.”

Gavin says that “the right moves are those that not only condition our bodies but also help develop our personalities.”

By selecting a noncompetitive form of exercise, Gavin says, a person with a Type-A personality could interrupt his or her usual pattern of rigid, aggressive movements by consciously replacing them with slow and wide-ranging movements, such as those found in yoga.

Gavin teaches a class in what he calls an Americanized yoga, full of slow, rounded movements. It’s a strenuous class, but the movement qualities are different from what many hard-charging people are accustomed to doing.

Type-A men who take the class tell him it’s wonderful, but they often don’t return.

“They feel exposed and uncomfortable,” Gavin says. “The other (problem) is it’s too incompatible with their lifestyles.”

At the opposite end of the movement spectrum are people who are too unsystematic in their lives. Exercises with a lot of variability, such as aerobics, only enforce their lack of discipline and focus, says Gavin.

“A lot of people who have been too entertained by life, who look for glitter, don’t have that paradigm within themselves for staying with discomfort,” Gavin says.

The treadmill--which demands driven, inflexible movement--could serve as a means of instilling discipline and focus to people who want those traits added to their life, he says.

“You have to beat down all those little voices that say, ‘This is horrible, boring.’ That will develop a sense of purpose, a willingness to stick to (a program) in spite of obstacles,” Gavin says.

In his book “Body Moves: The Psychology of Exercise” (Stackpole Books, $14.95), he says people choose a sport based on its initial appeal. “Left to our personal wisdom, we yield to our inclinations; we choose what reinforces our personal habits,” Gavin says.

Other sports psychologists note a similar influence of behavior on individual psychology. “We want to do the things we do well, so we don’t want to risk trying new movements,” says Richard Lister, a Costa Mesa clinical and sports psychologist.

Sometimes, though, people would be better off adopting a sport that takes them out of their usual range of movements, that doesn’t reinforce unappealing traits. Gavin calls such deliberate choices “strategically mismatched activities.”

In “Body Moves,” Gavin rates a variety of different sports and exercises based on seven psychosocial factors: sociability, spontaneity, disciple, aggressiveness, competitiveness, mental focus and risk taking.

Golf, for example, ranks high in sociability and competitiveness, and very low on discipline and spontaneousness. Yoga rates high on focus and discipline, and very low on aggressiveness and sociability.

Gavin traces movement therapy to the 1920s, when choreographer Rudolph Laban studied characteristic movement patterns in individuals.

Laban found that every individual constantly repeats certain movements, and that the repeated movements encompass his or her style. He also noted movement deficits, where his subjects didn’t make certain kinds of movements.

Laban used his observations as the basis for what he called dance and movement therapy, but his ideas never really penetrated the broader physical education sphere.

Gavin applied some of Laban’s observations to everyday choices. For instance, he explains that for many men, an aerobics class demands novel, unexpected kinds of movements with which they’re uncomfortable with at first.

“Men say, ‘I don’t like the way (the instructor) makes me move,’ ” Gavin says. “Implicitly, they’re saying it’s too feminine. The movements are too smooth, rounded.”

If a man sticks with an aerobics program, however, he will become more comfortable with it. “Men say they feel more spontaneous, have a greater range of feeling, of joy,” he says.

The step beyond aerobics is an improvisational dance class. “That’s a real big leap for most (men),” Gavin says.

While each sport has its required movements, a person participates at many levels of intensity. Altering the intensity will influence how the person moves.

For example, a 3-mile-a-day, moderately paced runner may want to become more assertive.

“The prescription would be to change the style of workout. Do some intervals or speed training,” Gavin says.

“The idea would be to encourage a feeling of forcefulness, of speed, of pushing. Occasionally forcing oneself to sprint, to go full out, will allow a person to open himself up to a greater feeling of power. Even being a little bit out of control may help a person feel a little more adventurous.”