Gallery: Incandescent flights of association
Humans emit light
Human bodies emit light but it is 1000x less intense than can be seen our naked eyes. To observe human bioluminescence at a light frequency that humans are sensitive to requires magnification. It is less known that almost all living creatures emit ultraweak photon emission, which is thought to be a byproduct of free radicals caused by biochemical reactions. The time of day when our body is burning the most energy is the late afternoon, when we glow the brightest *.
Lived embodiment lost to machines
The human evolutionary trajectory towards a collective enfeeblement in consciously occupying our lived embodiment may contribute to understanding how it is that we inflict harm towards ourselves and other living beings on our beautiful planet. There are myriad conditions that have led to the evolution of disembodiment. One pivotal shift occurred throughout the Industrial Revolution when the creation of material goods became transferred from embodied human hands to the empty staccato enacted during mass production by disembodied factory machines.
Embodied data informs cognition
When human disconnect from present embodied sensorial data experiences such as feelings, sensations and emotions a major gap of information is left unprocessed. This phenomenological sensorial data is encoded and stored fragmented from present time and becomes part of the less conscious field of bodily awareness.
This less conscious sensory data misses out on being consciously synthesized through the domain of experience referred to as hermeneutic integration. If this sensorial data remains fragmented in the bodily domain unprocessed, it accumulates in the body absent lived conscious awareness.
The intergenerational transmission of unintegrated embodied experience passes onto human offspring without a coherent narrative attached and lives as dislocated traumatic material until it is consciously metabolized. The emotional defenses we enact to block off unwanted feelings, sensations and emotions interfere with crucial embodied perceptual data which is necessary to maintain homeostasis and optimize the systems that ensure survival.
Patterns of cognitive misinterpretation emerge in sensing interoceptive data which can result impaired embodiment conditions such as alexithymia which is a diminished ability to interpret and understand feelings and emotions. Depersonalization and depersonalization are other impaired embodiment conditions in which a person is detached from their embodied interiority.
These conditions characterize a mode of human perceptual existence that borrows from past categorical schemas to explain the present, relying on distorted duplicative reenactments of the past instead of present lived embodied experience. To heal from this, humans must reawaken our sources of embodied perceptual data to inform embodied cognition. Interoceptive awareness, bodily attunement and embodied presence facilitates the cognitive hermeneutic process that interprets all phenomenological data. Every living being is responsible for registering and monitoring the impact our individual choices exert upon the collective matrix of co-experients we exist with inside the planet.
Systems of Inquiry
Comprehending and translating the embodied perceptual data that is received from interoceptivity is vitally important to compose embodied cognition. The wisdom espoused within the systems of inquiry developed through Deep Ecology, Whitehead’s Process Relational Ontology, Complexity/Systems Theory, and Embodied Phenomenology provide comprehensive maps that contribute to collective ontological understanding. This is accomplished by attuned deep listening to our own perspectival embodiment which in turn inculcates hermeneutic phenomenological cognition so that humans can learn to reinhabit themselves more consciously to experience the vast palette of bodily awareness available within.
Waves of Concrescence
In the spirit of practically applying Process Thought, an elongated cognitive space of contemplation fawns Whitehead’s words in Modes of Thought “the thought of ourselves as process, immersed in process beyond ourselves" (Whitehead, 1938). In phenomenological experience, the waves of concrescence require our subjective embodiment to translate the process of selection and defining importance. When I observe experiences of prehension (Whitehead’s term for currents of unconscious feelings) in my own meta-cognitive awareness I attempt to notice and trace a map of the directionality of my thoughts. Is it possible to observe the exact moment of the toggling filament of discernment involved in the selection process?
Interiority ~ Exteriority
Why have humans evolved to detach from their interoceptive awareness and what are the myriad implications of disembodiment for the planet and on all the sentient beings who live here? Do other mammals dissociate and detach from their interoceptive experience like humans do? What will it take to reverse the direction and move again towards a dialectical balance in interiority and exteriority.
In my somatic psychotherapy practice I guide my clients how to create a cartography of their lived experience to enhance their own unique interiority. My practice applies embodiment techniques to sense inside and develop the capacity to accurately interpret emotions and feelings resulting in interoceptive accuracy which is associated with improved self-regulation and overall well-being.
Another important internal dimension of interoception is one’s ability to distinguish the atmospheric qualities of one’s own mind and discern our patterns of thought as described by metacognition. This skill adds matrical dimension for consciously understanding the heuristic process of ontogenetic development. Our own perspectival theory of mind about other beings develops from these simulations and predictions.
Cartography of Synchronization
In my attempt to apply Process Relational Philosophy into my own heuristic ontology of experience, I am placing an emphasis on the experiential shoreline of what happens when we creatively interact and engage in the transformative collective co-experiences of awe, joy, beauty, and other meditative and conscious states. Is it possible to generate resonance in our perspective when this cartography of experience is explored through the lens of the phenomenology of Coordinated Brain Wave Resonance and Affective Synchronization?
Heart-centered Cartography
When our sensory and cognitive perceptions are distorted and narrowed in felt scope by the physiological states of fear our ability to skillfully interpret reality is reduced to duplicative reenactments of the past. How can we create a heart-centered cartography that references the wisdom of beginner’s mind and the alchemical embodiment of graceful humility.
Biosemiotics
Biosemiotics is the study of signs and codes in the contextual interactions expressed in the pluriverse. Biosemiotics considers the unique perspectival inquiry related to how different living systems perceive and map the world. What is the cartography of the arborizational experience that is modeled by the cicada brood listening for the next time they will surface above ground or the flush of an insect kissing flowers?
Nocibo Effect
The nocibo effect studies how our brains create and compose negative, fearful expectations based on our personal past experience. These simulations orchestrate how these negative predictions, once ingrained, actually create the feared negative outcome. The nocibo effect, like the placebo effect, is so powerful it has been observed that it can even change our bodies physiologically.
The Elusive Companionship of Truth
There is a pervasive elusiveness to locating and occupying the abiding companionship of truth. Truth is a mosaic composite of all experience. Each experient in the composite holds their unique perspectival truth. The experient maps their perspectival position and adds this to the matrical collective affective synchrony resonant throughout the pluriverse.
Ephaptic Coupling
Ephaptic coupling is a strong form of rapid communication within the nervous system. This neural form of communication is non-synaptic and it relies on the direct influence of electric fields which are able to influence the electrical excitability of neighboring neurons near instantaneously. Source for ephaptic coupling: Christopher Chen.
Generating Creativity
Alpha waves are linked to the generation of new ideas. Creativity happens during mind wandering. When you focus intently on a task you make it more difficult. Letting your mind wander frees up attentional resources and frees up the structured way of thinking that limits creative inputs. Source for alpha waves: Julia Kam, cognitive neuroscientist.