Shona's Response to "Understanding Composing"

[Anonymous]

#519

It seems as though some of the questions emerging in our class discussion concerning how we might understand the bodily aspect of embodiment are receiving their due attention. Several themes in “Understanding Composing” provide a structure for understanding how the body is both a metaphor and a material component in one’s creative process. The idea of recursiveness within the flow writing where there is both a “forward-moving action that exists by virtue of a backward moving action” (364), to me is a symbolic representation of the similar functional concept of the body’s oppositional movement. In biomechanical terms, skeletal muscles for example, work in oppositional agonist, antagonist, synergist and fixed actions – pushing, pulling and stabilizing bones and joints in repetitive fashion which allows for various contractions and movements – just as returning back to “substrands” or “subroutines” (364) within the process of creation allows for forward movement in an overall composition. Similarly, the idea of circling back, in the recurrence of writing reminds me of the repetition of natural beings, the constant rhythm of respiration, cardiac function, the sunrise and sunset which circle back to create a new again, each moment and each day.

The concept of “felt sense” calls on the body’s sensory cognition as a source of creation and interpretation – not only in discovering meaning in one’s own private writing process, but in connecting with the experience of the reader towards understanding what is needed so that “the writer’s particular piece of writing can become intelligible and compelling” (369). This represents the needed fluidity in “alternating mental postures” (369) between an internal focus and an exterior exploration of the experience of others. Such a continuous redirection in postural integrity reminds me of the notion of proprioceptive awareness, via the nervous system – continuously informing the body’s extremities in order to maintain balance and structural security. Melding the fluctuating brain-cognition-internal processing with the bodily, physical, organ/muscle/nerve function seems an incredibly powerful tool for grounding not only the meaning of one’s ideas but also the production of fresh thought which forms through a whole-being process.

Still, it may be difficult to decipher the sensations which the body generates and maintains since the notion of “thinking” linked to one’s physical status is something which requires some education to intuit. Because the construct of whole-being awareness is mostly absent from our “advanced”, “western”, “first-world”, “global-north”, (and all other relevant cultural terms I cannot think of from my own bias at the moment), cultural paradigm, it seems bodily intelligence is segregated from the process of academic or intellectual work. And similarly, those involved in mindful somatic practice, or wellness often leave the intellectual capital that is always present in the flesh, out of the picture altogether. I am sensing this is where Gendlin will offer tools necessary for gaining access to such whole being aesthesis prior to the thinking/contemplating and being/doing notions become “split apart” (365).

[Sondra Perl]

#539

Gene would feel right at home with your notion of circling back and the natural rhythms of nature: “respiration, cardiac function, sunrise and sunset.”
I also love your way of seeing Gene’s “whole body aesthetics” as an antidote to or an answer to the separation of mind and body in western intellectual thought and mindful somatic practice.

[Author]

Posts