As I developed my understanding of body awareness practices, I felt more and more unsatisfied with the way body theory focused on theoretical critiques of dualism and often demonised the “mind-body split.”
On the one hand it could become formulaic, and on the other did no justice to the experiential reality of this split, or the desire for it during the experience of suffering. The sense of alienation from the bodily self occurs, and can be a life-saving strategy as in the case of sexual abuse or torture.
The perspective of body awareness practices does not dismantle the conceptual nexus that links agency and dualist understanding of the body. Rather, it draws attention to the movement within the system that enables the system by virtue of exceeding its terms. Thus I find a volatility within “the body I have” which makes necessary a practice of encounter and engagement. In this difference lies both the possibility of freedom and agency, and its ruin.
Just as the heartbeat of my body and its distribution of oxygenated blood allows for any action whatsoever, it also threatens me with the possibility of losing all capacity to act. So, it is a profound dependency on the agency of the body that enables the concept of agency to describe the transcendence of corporeal constraints. Freedom is constituted in opposition to constraint and yet it relies on another level of constraining dependency.
”sorry about the length of the quote… it’s from Hellene Gronda’s PhD. and i was just reading it. there’s something in there that made me want to share it…
not sure exactly what, but perhaps it’s to do with some sense of agency and paradox…
postedbydavid
