- 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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