Body Moving, Mind Moving

"We human beings have bodies.  We are "rational animals," but we are also "rational animals," which means that our rationality is embodied.  The centrality of human embodiment directly influences what and how things can be meaningful to 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 movement, the contours of our spatial and temporal orientation, and the forms of our interaction with objects."
-  Mark Johnson, The Body in the Mind, 1987, xix

“The human body is the best picture of the human soul.”
-  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

"It was a great thing to be a human being. It was something tremendous. Suddenly I'm conscious of a million sensations buzzing in me like bees in a hive. Gentlemen, it was a great thing."
-  Karel Capek  

“Somaesthetics can be defined as the critical study of the experience and use of one’s body as a locus of sensory-aesthetic appreciation (aesthesis) and creative self-fashioning.”
-  Richard Shusterman


Somaesthetic Practices for Health, Well-Being and Mindfulness

A Good Life

The Five Senses

The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason  By Mark Johnson.  University of Chicago Press, 1987, 1992.  Index, notes, 272 pages.  ISBN: 978-0226403182.  VSCL.

Thinking through the Body: Essays in Somaesthetics.  By Richard Schusterman.  New York, Cambridge University Press, 2012.  380 pages.  ISBN: 9781107698505.