beginnings

This blog is intended to give an ongoing look at what my interests are in somatics (the lived experience of a body), particularly my own personal somatic life. I sometimes realize that much of what I think about is unknown or at least not articulated for most.

The Western concept of ‘body as machine’ has so deeply permeated our consciousness that we override other input and dissenting thought. Embodiedness is so much more than pulleys and levers and electrical connections! Our preferences alter our movements, our movements partially determine our structure (consider a body builder vs a ballet dancer) and our society partially determines our raw materials, as in eating.
There is no abvstract body, no clincal body, no model body. The concept of scientific knowledge based on controlled experimentation breaks down when we deal with human life in its inherent subjectivity. Thus the medical science based on this way of thinking can be brilliant at times, and grotesquely flawed at others.

To cope with this, we need a deeply subjective perspective that takes into account the objective pieces and deliberately weighs them against personal experience.