- Consciousness (Merleau-Ponty)
- the body-subject as an
alternative to the Cartesian "cogito." Consciousness, the
world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately
intertwined and mutually engaged. (This is very
different from Butler, as we shall see).
- The world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena
in an ongoing becoming.
- This becoming process is the result of being-in-the-world,
which creates a tacit (unconscious, automatic) observation of objects
around us based on cumulative experiences.
- Phenomonology: the experience one has in their lived body.
- Rehabituation: how experience is changed when one learns new
ways of making sense of and using their bodies
- Kinestesia:
(Maxine Sheets Johnstone) not an object of consciousness or perception,
but more accurately a “felt unfolding dynamic” Knowing where your body is
in space all at once. Something that athletes possess. Movement and attention to movement can
produce a heightened sense of awareness and less stressed sense of
identity---a less rigid sense of self. What does lack of movement do therefore? Changing one’s
way of moving our bodies also has an impact on how we feel about ourselves
and the environment.
“…Depression
is often experienced in the body as a passive giving in to weight. The
slightest movement can diminish this. What is important is the indication of
participation, rather than passivity”
(Philip Zarelli).
Relational modes of experience. When we engage with our bodies, we can have more heightened levels
of experience in which we see ourselves as full human beings…the body connected to the mind in a dialectic
Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person
performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full
involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. Flow is
characterized by complete absorption in what one does. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.
According to
Csikszentmihalyi, flow is completely focused motivation. It is
a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate
experience in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and
learning. In flow, the emotions are not just contained
and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. To
be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be
barred from flow. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture,
while performing a task. although flow is also described
(below) as a deep focus on nothing but the activity – not even oneself or
one's emotions.
Emotions control the
body and 'corporealized'-experienced and processed physically. These emotional
responses are the way that human beings manage the meaning of their bodies in
relation to other objects and persons in the world. (Something we will speak
about later).
Flow has many of the
same characteristics as (the positive aspects of) hyper-focus (near
death experience/obsessive behavior). However, hyper-focus is not always
described in such universally glowing terms. For examples, some cases of
spending "too much" time playing video games, or of getting
side-tracked and pleasurably absorbed by one aspect of an assignment or task to
the detriment of the assignment in general. In some cases, hyper-focus can
"grab" a person, perhaps causing him or her to appear unfocused or to
start several projects but complete few.
Colloquial terms for
this or similar mental states include: to be in the moment, present, in
the zone, on a roll, wired in, in the
groove, on fire, in tune, centered,
or singularly focused.
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