Virtual Embodiment

Virtual Embodiment

Posted by Magellan Egoyan on Embodied Research Group blog December 9, 2007

The notion of "virtual embodiment" requires a little thought since to many people it sounds like a contradiction in terms. The concept of virtual embodiment derives from our ability to separate "embodiment as performance" from "embodiment as (proprioceptive) sensation". In today's world, our experience of direct bodily sensation (called "proprioception") is mostly the result of our encounter with the physical world and not with virtual environments, although certain technologies currently under development contain the potential of modifying this. On the other hand, our embodied experience of the world also includes the ways in which our actions bring about changes in our understanding of ourselves, our emotional makeup, and our conscious and unconscious behaviours. The performative characteristic of embodied experience is not necessarily associated with our physical body. If we act within virtual spaces, especially in a way that is mediated by a virtual body, then we may have a variety of experiences that are experienced as embodied. Hence we can meaningfully talk about "virtual embodiment" in this way.

What do we know about embodiment in virtual worlds? First of all, our performative definition of embodiment implies that it is how we act that determines our embodied experience. While each of us may act differently as individuals, resulting in a rather different embodied experience for each of us, we can generate a list of the types of actions one can perform in any given virtual world, and hence generate a common portrait of embodiment. Note that our possible actions derive not just from our (virtual) body's capabilities, but also from the actions that are supported by the (virtual) environment.

Let us form a list of possible actions, using Second Life as a case example. We shall separate the list into actions that are shared with embodiment in the real, physical world (that is, between our physical bodies and the physical world) and actions that are unique or distinct in the virtual world (that is, between our virtual body and the virtual world).

Embodied actions common to both physical and virtual worlds:

(1) We can change how we move and our overall body posture;

(2) We can change clothes and accessories;

(3) We can communicate by voice with other people or machines;

(4) We can change the social networks with which we are engaged ;

(5) We can construct mobile, changing, communicating objects (albeit not so easily in the physical world);

(6) We can change our modes of communication and the forms of expression;

(7) We can go through the motions of eating, sleeping, and sexual activity;

(8) We can form binding emotional relationships with other people;

(9) We can access information in a vast variety of forms and

(10)We can work and earn a living.

Embodied actions that are only possible in the virtual world :

(11) We can change our basic body structure and avatar appearance (e.g. from a human to an animal, a robot, a box, etc.);

(12) We can change our avatar's gender and hence modify the gender expectations of others;

(13) We can change and/or multiply our virtual identity (e.g. have several different avatar bodies);

(14) We can readily change or modify or construct major parts of the environment;

(15) We can examine the world from a viewpoint that is semi-independent from our avatar's position;

(16) We can act and communicate with much less fear for our safety;

Embodied actions that are only possible in the physical world (as of today) :

(17) When we engage in activities with our bodies, these actions change our physical states (hunger, thirst, sexual appetite, fatigue, muscle tone, body structure, get pregnant and give birth);

(18) We can lose body function or have it degrade over time, injure it, and so forth - hence safety is a constant preoccupation;

(19) We can have physical and physically proximal contact with other persons/bodies;

(20) We grow and change physically and are subject to bodily rhythms and cycles;

(21) We have access to the full sensory input of which our bodies are capable;

(22) We can die, and hence must take care of our physical survival and well-being.

So our next question is, so what? What, if any, effects does virtual embodiment have on our everyday behaviour?

Here, then, is another list of the effects or impacts of virtual embodiment:

(1) Can generate a sense of physical and/or social empowerment - this derives from the observation that we can do a variety of things within virtual environments that are difficult for us to do or to explore in real environments;

(2) We may learn new movements and postures via the engagement of mirror neurons, motor imagery and mental practice;

(3) We can improve our overall ability to learn using embodied forms of learning;

(4) We can affect our unconscious attitudes and behaviours;

(5) We can affect the unconscious attitudes and behaviours of other people;

(6) We can modify the way we understand and enter into social engagements;

(7) We can change how we understand and interact with real (physical) environments;

(8) We can modify how we access information in the real world;

(9) We can change our relationship to our own creativity;

(10) We can distract from or endanger our own physical survival;

(11) We can overcome phobias and other emotional barriers to certain forms of behaviour;

(12) We can explore the nature of the self and our identity in a relatively safe environment;

(13) We can exacerbate access to and use of inappropriate behaviour (e.g. certain forms of griefing);

(14) Virtual embodiment may exacerbate tensions or strengthen power inequalities between social groups in real life;

(15) Virtual embodiment may promote certain forms of violence.

Many of these points are supported by research results, albeit still rather partial at this point in time. A great deal of work remains to be done to determine not just that we can modify behaviours, but exactly how and under what circumstances such modification may take place. Furthermore, much of this list presents benefits - only a few items clearly present forms of danger. However, it is likely that there are more dangers to virtual embodiment than are presented here. Research needs to be undertaken to determine more precisely what these dangers are.

Finally, we may ask, given the list of effects and impacts, what actions might we take to enhance the positive benefits of virtual embodiment?

Here's a short list of possible actions :

(1) Increase the range of movements and animations available or used within the virtual world ;

(2) Increase awareness of the benefits (and dangers) of virtual embodiment ;

(3) Develop virtual learning environment that take more full advantage of virtual embodiment ;

(4) Improve our understanding of virtual embodiment and its benefits and dangers ;

(5) Develop more mixed reality events ensuring a stronger transfer of benefits from virtual experience to everyday life.

The embodied nature of meaning and metaphor

BODY AWARENESS by Penny Tompkins and James Lawley

Extract from notes first presented at The Developing Group, 25 September 2004

6. The embodied nature of meaning and metaphor

Mark Johnson in The Body in the Mind makes the case that:

"The centrality of human embodiment directly influences what and how things can be meaningful for us, the ways in which these meanings can be developed and articulated, the ways we are able to comprehend and reason about our experience, and the actions we take. Our reality is shaped by the patterns of our bodily movements, the contours of our spatial and temporal orientation, and the forms of our interactions with objects. It is never merely a matter of abstract conceptualizations and propositional judgements.

Human bodily movement, manipulation of objects, and perceptual interactions involve recurring patterns without which our experience would be chaotic and incomprehensible. They are gestalt structures, consisting of parts standing in relations and organized into unified wholes, by means of which our experience manifests discernible order. When we seek to comprehend this order and to reason about it, such bodily based schema play a central role." (p. xix)

Thus,
"Through metaphor, we make use of patterns that obtain in our physical experience to organise our more abstract understanding. Understanding via metaphorical projection from the concrete to the abstract makes use of physical experience in two ways. First, our bodily movements and interactions are structured, and that structure can be projected by metaphor onto abstract domains. Second, metaphorical understanding is not merely a matter of arbitrary fanciful projection from anything to anything with no constraints. Concrete bodily experience not only contrails the "inputs" to the metaphorical projections but also the nature of the projections themselves, that is, the kinds of mappings that can occur across domains." (p. xv)

For example,
"Balancing is an activity we learn with our bodies and not by grasping a set of rules or concepts. First and foremost, balancing is something we do. The baby stands, wobbles, and drops to the floor. It tries again, and again, and again, until a new world opens up — the world of balanced erect posture.

We also come to know the meaning of balance through the closely related experience of bodily equilibrium, or loss of equilibrium. We understand the notion of systemic balance in the most immediate, preconceptual fashion through our bodily experience. There is too much acid in the stomach, the hands are too cold ... Things are felt as 'out of balance.' There is 'too much' or 'not enough' so that the healthy organization of forces, processes, and elements is upset " (pp. 74-75)

Outsourcing the mind

This review by Dan Lloyd, Professor of philosophy at Trinity College, Connecticut on two new books on the embodied mind appeared in the American Scientist.

SUPERSIZING THE MIND: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension. Andy Clark. xxx + 286 pp. Oxford University Press, 2008.

OUT OF OUR HEADS: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness. Alva Noë. xvi + 214 pp. Hill and Wang, 2009.

Sum res cogitans. “I am thinking substance.” With these words, written in about 1640, René Descartes simultaneously created the modern mind and gave it a huge philosophical headache. Cartesian dualism opened an abyss between mind and matter, which was good news for mechanistic physics. But “thinking substance” was thereby expelled from nature, and psychology has labored ever since to bring the mind back into the scientific fold—an effort that has culminated with the rise of cognitive neuroscience. A modern-day Descartes would perhaps say, “I am synaptic substance,” or, to be more accurate, “I am the information transmitted across neural networks.” Sum cerebrum.

Swapping brain for mind bridges the metaphysical gulf, but lesser dualisms still haunt cognitive science. The popular thought experiment of a “brain in a vat” captures the intuition that cognition and consciousness depend exclusively on the machinery between our ears. In the standard vat tale, one is asked to imagine that one’s brain has been removed from one’s body and placed in a vat of nutrient fluids, and that all of its normal neural inputs and outputs are being simulated by a supercomputer. The brain has no way of knowing whether it is in a skull or in a vat. Can we be sure that this is not our current situation? How do we know that anything beyond our brains is real rather than virtual? The moral of the thought experiment seems to be that the neural representations of body and world are only indirectly related to real external things. Is this state of affairs an anachronistic “Cartesian materialism,” with a neural computer on one side, and the body and world on the other?

A contemporary movement in cognitive science looks beyond this lingering dualism, promoting “extended cognition” and “embodiment” as crucial components of the science of mind. Andy Clark, author of Supersizing the Mind, and Alva Noë, author of Out of Our Heads, are preeminent expositors of extended and embodied cognition, and their two books represent the state of the movement, complete with its internal tensions.

Clark critiques what he calls the “brainbound” model, which depicts the mind “as essentially inner and, in our case, always and everywhere neurally realized.” He puts forth a contrasting model, which he refers to as EXTENDED, “according to which thinking and cognizing may (at times) depend directly and noninstrumentally upon the ongoing work of the body and/or the extraorganismic environment.” He further characterizes this model as follows:

According to EXTENDED, the actual local operations that realize certain forms of human cognizing include inextricable tangles of feedback, feed-forward, and feed-around loops: loops that promiscuously criss-cross the boundaries of brain, body, and world. The local mechanisms of mind, if this is correct, are not all in the head. Cognition leaks out into body and world.

The first section of Supersizing the Mind surveys work in which considerations of embodiment and extended informational resources have transformed theories of perception, cognition and motor control. Consider the problem of walking—easy for us, but a challenge for robots, especially if their walking is highly engineered via exact mechanical control of every joint, precalculated in a central controller. Such highly motorized and micromanaged movement is inefficient both physically and computationally. Biological walking, in contrast, exploits the “passive dynamics” of the material body. We ride on springy, free-swinging limbs. Once set in motion, animal bodies like ours saunter on their way with minimal shoving and shaping from the brain.

Our bodies lighten the load for our brains in many other ways as well. Expressive gestures, including words, Clark observes, are not merely communicative output but may also “function as part of the actual process of thinking.” Gestural information can interact with language. As we talk (to others and to ourselves), we also listen, using our bodies and words as reminders and abbreviations. Outsourcing is truly powerful, however, when we exploit the myriad cognitive scaffolds of the world around us, particularly the world of artifacts. In general, when information is available in the environment, we will use it instead of framing a “brainbound” thought. For example, to play the video game Tetris, one must anticipate whether moving shapes will fit together. To test for a match, one can manipulate the shapes mentally or try out the rotations on screen. Skilled players use on-screen manipulation rather than tax their minds.

The picture of mind that emerges in Clark’s treatment, although not “brainbound,” remains neurocentric. He portrays the brain as a lazy genius at the center of a loose confederacy of tricks and tweaks. Some of the outsourcing involves symbol manipulation and some involves shortcuts that eliminate the need for language (or other symbols) altogether. Clark’s vision loosens up cognitive science itself: Good old-fashioned computational models still have a place, albeit a diminished one. We need to be alert to every kind of computation (including dynamical systems of distributed representations) and, more important, to the diversity of vehicles for computation, many of which are outside the head.

One consequence of the extended approach is a “hypothesis of cognitive impartiality”:

Our problem-solving performances take shape according to some cost function or functions that, in the typical course of events, accord no special status or privilege to specific types of operation (motoric, perceptual, introspective) or modes of encoding (in the head or in the world).

Cognition doesn’t care how or where it occurs! Extended theorizing in the spirit of this hypothesis could reshape cognitive science, embedding embodied human life in an ecology of useful and symbolic objects, a flow in which neural activity is one eddy among many.

Extended cognition entails a supersized mind, and much of the second part of Clark’s book defends the philosophical idea that mind itself leaks into the world. The core argument is really “Well, why not?” Worldly activity with cognitive scaffolding accomplishes many of the same ends as neural computation and evidently saves the brain a lot of bother, so why not let the mind be where the work is done? In particular, philosophical views about beliefs, regarding both what they are and how they fit in the life of the mind, seem neutral about where a belief is located. It might be spread among the synapses, or on a microchip hardwired into the brain, or in a handy notebook—any of those media could preserve all the features of the belief. Critics search for some “mark of the mental” that will keep thinking inside the skull, but Clark counters that in some cases these lines in the sand are the result of mistaken analyses of the mental, and in other instances, they are lines easily crossed by extended minds.

Alva Noë’s target is consciousness, and in broad terms his position is compatible with Clark’s. Noë writes that in Out of Our Heads his central claim is that to understand consciousness—the fact that we think and feel and that a world shows up for us—we need to look at a larger system of which the brain is only one element. Consciousness is not something the brain achieves on its own. Consciousness requires the joint operation of brain, body, and world. Indeed, consciousness is an achievement of the whole animal in its environmental context. I deny, in short, that you are your brain.

Even in this passage we see an ambiguity that runs throughout the book. (Unlike Noë’s thoughtful and thorough Action in Perception [The MIT Press, 2004], Out of Our Heads is a manifesto of hyperbolic claims resting on sketches of argument.) Is it that we are not merely our brains (which is Clark’s view as well), or that we are not our brains at all? How completely “out of our heads” are we? The radical possibility runs through passages like this one, in which Noë describes what he refers to as a “sensorimotor, enactive, or actionist approach”:

Seeing is not something that happens in us. It is not something that happens to us or in our brains. It is something we do. It is an activity of exploring the world making use of our practical familiarity with the ways in which our own movement drives and modulates our sensory encounter with the world. Seeing is a kind of skillful activity.

This theory of perception has strong echoes of J. J. Gibson’s “ecological approach” to perception, along with the embodied phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Seeing is certainly skillful activity, but is that activity mediated by anything like an inner representation, or by a state of conscious awareness that either guides the activity or results from it? Noë repeatedly edges toward elimination of inner states, only to hedge:

We ourselves are distributed, dynamically spread-out, world-involving beings. We are not world representers. We have no need for that idea. To put the point in a provocative way, we are, in Merleau-Ponty’s memorable phrase, “empty heads turned toward the world.” And as a result of this, our worlds are not confined to what is inside us, memorized, represented. Much more is present to us than is immediately present. We live in extended worlds where much is present virtually, thanks to our skills and to technology.

We have no need for representation—at all? Or is it that our worlds are not confined to what is inside us, those innards nonetheless enacting cognitive, computational and conscious processes?

There is much to be gained by recognizing the intricate embedding of consciousness in the body and the world. Cognitive science (including the study of consciousness) has been shackling itself with its brainbound assumptions. Consciousness depends on its embodied embedding, but should it be identified entirely with the myriad couplings and loops the brain surely exploits?

This question is in play between Clark and Noë. Each disputes the other in passing. For Clark, one of the distinctive features of conscious awareness is the capacity to disengage from enacted specifics. Driving a car, for example, requires precise enactive sensorimotor coupling for beginners and experts alike, but for the practiced driver the details drop out of awareness. Noë’s view identifies consciousness with all the activities of the extended mind and thus implies that skilled enactors remain aware of everything engaged by their performance.

Clark also enlists clever experiments and reports of brain deficits that suggest a dissociation of awareness from sensorimotor knowledge. Familiar optical illusions make objects that are in fact identical look as though they differ in size, but when one reaches to grasp them, one’s fingers open to the same (correct) extent regardless of context. The eye-to-hand loop is not fooled by appearances, however things may seem to the conscious mind. Similarly, some brain lesions can impair the ability to describe a scene while sparing the capacity for fluent sensorimotor interaction, whereas other lesions have the opposite result. Thus there seem to be two partially distinct systems, one mediating fluent behavior and the other generating the model of the world available to consciousness.

From Noë’s point of view, to supersize the mind while leaving consciousness inside the head seems arbitrary, if not fainthearted. Any such distinction regards one fantastically complex information processing system as conscious, while declaring another, equally complex system, not. What’s the difference?

An expansive, totalized theory of consciousness like Noë’s solves the problem by dissolving it:

The problem of consciousness, then, is none other than the problem of life. What we need to understand is how life emerges in the natural world.

Descartes framed the modern mind with a sentence beginning “I am . . . ,” launching centuries of debate about how to complete the thought. But until now, that first-person grammatical form has been the eye of the storm, a nexus of subjectivity to which a world appears. In a truly post-Cartesian world of looping, evanescent, chattering, clattering networks, the problem of consciousness may simply disappear. The sum may turn out to be less than the whole of its parts.

Dan Lloyd is the Thomas C. Brownell Professor of Philosophy at Trinity College, Connecticut. He is the author of Radiant Cool: A Novel Theory of Consciousness (The MIT Press, 2004) and is currently working on a book-length philosophical dialogue titled Ghosts in the Machine.

Marthinus Versfeld - Die volheid van sy lewe

The article below celebrates the birth of South African philosopher Marthinus Versfeld one hundred years ago. It appeared in Die Burger of 10 Augustus 2009 and is written by Prof Anton Van Niekerk head of the department of philosophy and director of the Centre for Applied Ethics at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.

In the article Van Niekerk notes that Versfeld himself stated that his entire intellectual life was a reaction to the mind-body duality of Descartes. For Versfeld everything in nature was infused with spirit. True spirituality, he said, doesn’t require a rejection of everything to do with the body. Rather it is about discovering the extraordinary in ordinary things - a flower, a sunset, community and definitely good food and wine.

Van Niekerk writes that according to Versfeld, ones spiritual life is therefore not about ideas, philosophy or even ones prayer life. He who looks after the small, everyday things will discover in these things, eternity and the joy of the creation and the creator.

To speak about a person’s spirituality is to speak about his embodied being – the way he walks, the way he blows his nose, the way he looks after his dog and his garden. And also the way he eats.

Versfeld’s book Food for Thought, Van Niekerk feels, testifies to the philosophy that humans are what they eat. The food that we eat builds the body and therefore the soul indicating our state of embodiment.

(My summary and interpretation)

Die volheid van sy lewe

Artikel deur Prof Anton van Niekerk, dosent in en voorsitter van die departement filosofie en direkteur van die Sentrum vir Toegepaste Etiek aan die Universiteit van Stellenbosch.

Marthinus Versfeld is ­vandag presies 100 jaar ­gelede, op 11 Augustus 1909, gebore. Gedurende sy leeftyd, en nog steeds, was en bly hy een van Suid-Afrika se bekendste filosowe.

Die katalogus van die J.S. Gericke-­biblioteek in Stellenbosch dui 17 boeke van hom aan (daar is waarskynlik meer), waarvan die meeste in Afrikaans ­geskryf is, ten spyte van die feit dat hy vir sy hele professionele lewe professor aan die Universiteit van Kaapstad was.

Die begrip “filosoof” ontgin ­egter nie naastenby die spektrum van ­beskrywings wat ewe goed op hom gepas het nie: Afrikaner, Christen, Rooms-Katoliek, ­kenner en ­bewonderaar van die Oosterse mistiek, natuurlief­hebber en -kenner, tuinier, en, les bes, bobaas kok.

Die mens ­Versfeld is ’n mengsel van komponente wat, in kombinasie, so ­onwaarskynlik, maar ook so ­­ver­ras­send lyk soos sommige van die disse waaroor hy met soveel entoesiasme geskryf het.

Dit is ’n onbegonne taak om in hierdie beperkte ruimte reg te laat geskied aan die rykdom van idees wat in sy werke na vore kom.

Een deurlopende tema verdien egter spesiale vermelding.

Dit is sy insigtelike waardering van die feit dat die onderskeiding tussen goed en kwaad nie saamval met die ­onderskeid tussen materie en gees, of tussen liggaamlikheid en spiritualiteit nie.

Die verskil ­tussen ’n goeie en ’n slegte mens lê nie in die feit dat die een meer ­sensueel ingestel is of meer goed het as die ander nie.

Die slegte mens is egter die een wat nie sy goed besit nie, maar deur sy goed besit word, en daarom nie in staat is om ’n broodkorsie met sy ­mede- mens te deel nie.

Die goeie mens daarenteen loop, omdat hy ’n ­pelgrim is, altyd gevaar om sy goed te verloor – en, paradoksaal genoeg, besit hy daarom sy goed op ’n meer betroubare manier as die slegte mens.

Wie sy lewe, en sy goed, ten alle koste wil behou, sal dit verloor, en wie bereid is om sy lewe te ­verloor, sal dit red, of ­liewer, sal ­gered word.

Een van Versfeld se belangrikste insigte was in die aard van ­spiritualiteit.

Hy skryf dat sy ganse intellektuele lewe op­gegaan het in ’n verset teen ­Descartes, die denker wat ons wou wysmaak dat liggaam en siel, gees en materie, skeibaar is.

Vir ­Versfeld, daarenteen, is die ganse natuur deurspek met gees.

Hy het ons bewus gemaak van die geestelikheid van klippe, ­berge en bome.

Ware spiritualiteit beteken nie om af te sien of weg te draai van ­alles wat liggaamlik en aards is nie.

Een van die min ­“suiwer geeste” waarvan ons weet, is immers die duiwel self.

Ware spiritualiteit ­beteken om die ongewone te ontdek in die ­gewone, om genade raak te sien in ’n lenteblom of ’n sons­ondergang, om onderlinge gemeenskap te ­beleef in die genieting van goeie kos, om die persoon van Christus te ontdek in die konkrete, aardse tekens van brood en wyn.

’n Mens se geestelike lewe, skryf Versfeld, is daarom nie in die ­eerste plek hoe jy idealiseer, filosofeer of gestemd is in jou gebedslewe nie.

Om oor ’n mens se gees te praat, is om oor die volheid van sy lewe te praat, hoe hy loop, hoe hy sy neus blaas, hoe hy omsien na sy hond en sy tuin.

Hy wat getrou is in die klein, alledaagse dinge, ontdek in hier­die dinge die ewigheid en die vreugde van die skepping en die skepper.

Vir my bly Food for thought, Versfeld se ­“kookboek van ’n ­filosoof” steeds een van sy boeiendste ­geskrifte.

Die mens is wat hy eet.

Kosmaak is nie slegs die produk van idees nie, maar reflekteer idees en produseer idees.

Die kos wat ons eet, vorm die liggaam, en daarom die siel. Dat ons moet eet, is die tasbaarste herinnering aan hoe radikaal aards, liggaamlik en potensieel genotvol ons lewe in die wêreld is.

Kos verraai daarby ’n mens se herkoms en skep jou omgewing.

’n Plek soos Kaapstad, Versfeld se tuiste, dank volgens hom sy ­ont­staan aan niks minder nie as ­groente en sop.

Die Kaap as ­woonplek het immers tot stand ­gekom vanweë die Hollanders se stigting van ’n verversingspos ten einde te voorkom dat hul matrose op die lang seevaarte na die Ooste skeurbuik kry.

Maar belangriker: Ons skep ’n omgewing, ’n gehumaniseerde omgewing, deur die ­pro­duksie van kos.

’n Mens hoef net ’n rit deur die Bolandse distrikte te onderneem om onder die ­indruk te kom van hoe die voorkoms van die wêreld waarin ons leef, beïnvloed is deur en vanweë die produksie van kos karakter kry.

Die Bolandse landskap is immers een van wingerde en boorde, soos die Mediterreense landskap ­geskep word deur olyfbome en die Ceylon-landskap deur teeplantasies.

Maar ons bou ook paaie, ontwikkel skeepsroetes, ontwerp voertuie, bou fabrieke en produseer voorwerpe ter wille van die voorbereiding en genieting van ’n goeie maaltyd.

Ons mag ­Versfeld en sy werk nie ­vergeet nie.

By min ander mense kon ons die ruimheid, die buigsaamheid om van ander te leer en daardeur verander te word, beter leer as by hom.

Ek het die voorreg gehad om sy begrafnis in 1995 te kon bywoon; ­seker die mees onkonvensionele “uitvaart” wat ek tot nog toe ­mee­gemaak het.

Op die eenvoudige touhandvatselkis was ’n pampoen en veldblomme.

Die diens was in Mowbray se Katolieke kerk; ­wierook het gebrand, en Boeddhistiese inkantasies was net soveel deel van die gebeure as die ­eucharistie.

Dis is die soort mens en die soort ruimheid wat ons sal kan laat oorleef in hierdie land.

Bron: Die Burger 10 Augustus 2009. Die volheid van sy lewe

The Green Fuse - Embodiment Resources

Dr Adrian Harris bedryf 'n interessante webwerf m.b.t. beliggaming of embodiment. The Green Fuse lys 'n klompie definisies van die konsep sowel as skakels en 'n uitgebreide bibliografie oor die onderwerp.

Sy eie navorsing handel oor beliggaming in eko-paganisme, 'n heedendaagse beweging wat hulle spiritualiteit uitleef deur omgewings aktivisme en rituele. Hy ondersoek ook beliggaming in religie en eko-teologie, filosofie en die natuurwetenskap.

Die moeite werd om te bekyk.

Dr Adrian Harris maintains a very interesting website that focuses on embodiment. The Green Fuse contains definitions of the concept as well as links and an extensive bibliography.

His own research looks at embodiment in eco-paganism, a contemporary movement in which pagans express their spirituality through environmental activism and rituals of resistance. He investigates embodiment in religion, ec0theologie, philosophy and science.

A site worth visiting.

Massage and Embodiment

Article by Keith Eric Grant, PhD, NCTMB in Massage Today June, 2006, Vol. 06, Issue 06

Grant reflects on touch and the two best known paradigms of massage in the U.S. context namely massage for relaxation and massage as health care. (Despite legislation in South Africa attempting to bring all types of massage under the same umbrella, the same distinction exists here - EK)

He then discusses a third paradigm of massage that has an impact on the quality of body-sense or embodiment of the person, an approach that has been largely ignored "by those looking at massage as tissue-specific health care".

According to Grant, practising massage as sensory re-framing has no lack for material to draw from. He points to the work of:

• Maurice Merleau-Ponty who sets out a philosophical framework more than a half century ago
  

• Deane Juhan, best known as the author of Job's Body: A Handbook for Bodywork and

• Donald Bakal who lays the same stress on developing body awareness as a path to healing in his book Minding the Body: Clinical Uses of Somatic Awareness.

Read the full article at: http://www.massagetoday.com/mpacms/mt/article.php?id=13431

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