Body Ecology and Emersive Leisure

Bernard Andrieu, Jim Parry, Alessandro Porrovecchio, Olivier Sirost

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138569836
• eBook ISBN: 9781351337052
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Mind & Body in Philosophy

The emerging field of body ecology offers fresh insights into how the body engages with its surrounding environment through consciousness, perception, knowledge and emotion. In this groundbreaking collection, leading scholars of sport, leisure and philosophy draw on research on topics as diverse as surfing, freediving, slacklining, parkour, bodybuilding, dance and circus arts to flesh out the concept of body ecology and its potential for helping us understand our connection with the world around us.

Touching on theories of subjectivity, embodiment, pleasure and play, this book explores different approaches to studying body ecology as a way of conceptualising the experience of being immersed in nature, in the elements and in one's own body through the power of awareness. An experience becomes emersive when it involves the production of new emotions in the body: emersion is the activation of what is living within the body itself.

Shedding new light on the possibilities of physical cultural studies, Body Ecology and Emersive Leisure is fascinating reading for all students and scholars with an interest in sport, leisure, philosophy and the body.

Part I

Body ecology

The basic concepts

Introduction to Part I

Bernard Andrieu and Olivier Sirost

In Chapter 1, Bernard Andrieu and Olivier Sirost open this volume by explaining the approach of body ecology to our understanding of new conceptions of leisure. The authors have based their work on philosophies of awakening and consciousness. These immersers into consciousness favour transcendental meditation and reflexivity in action through physical practices of consciousness. Although we might distinguish these techniques conceptually, in practice the holistic context of each can cause confusion, because the action on one part of the body would immediately be related to that of other parts.

Andrieu and Sirost explain the nature and significance of ‘immersion’ in leisure environments and the resulting process of ‘emersion’. Immersive techniques and activities can be intentionally organised so as to produce involuntary emersive (emergent) effects outside of the subject’s control. Emersion is here an awakening of consciousness by involuntary movements, reflexes and direct feelings.

Chapters 2–7 are all mainly devoted to central concepts in body ecology: naturalism, body schema, flow, enchantment/cosmotics, nature/culture and health/well-being.

In Chapter 2, Pierre Philippe- Meden examines the ‘Natural Method’, as presented in the work of Georges Hébert, whose naturalism implied an immersive contact with the air. Hébert embarked on a path in which the synthesis, dynamics, spatial displacement, diversity and naturalness of the major organs of physiology (lungs, heart, etc.) took precedence. Education, then mastery of the body, cognitive functions and environment in the naturalist current, rested on the link, the gear, the fusion of inner and outer impulses in a symbiotic relationship or in an organic unity woven between the subject and the environment. Outdoor leisure offers experiential modes of real encounters with the elements and with others. Body sensation in outdoor leisure must be able to be reported in the body as an increase in energy, a better body confidence and a new consciousness of and interaction with the environment. Phillipe- Meden argues that his ‘oceanic’ feeling is produced by Hébert’s Natural Method.

Jan Halák, in Chapter 3 on Merleau- Ponty, provides an interpretation of the concept of the body schema, with reference to Emmanuel de Saint-Aubert and his work on Merleau- Ponty’s archives (2013). The body schema is a practical diagram of our relationships to the world, an action-based norm with reference to which things make sense. In the recently published preparatory notes for his 1953 lectures, Merleau- Ponty dedicated much effort to further developing the notion of body schema, and interpreted fresh sources that he did not use in Phenomenology of Perception. Notably, he studied various possibilities of how this practical ‘diagram’ could be de- differentiated (pathology) or further refined (cognitive and cultural superstructures, symbolic systems) to show the fundamentally dynamic unity of the body. This chapter summarises the basic elements of Merleau- Ponty’s renewed philosophical interpretation of the notion of body schema, while contrasting it to the more traditional understanding of the body in phenomenology and recent philosophical texts dealing with body schema.

Adjoa Domelevo, in Chapter 4 on flow, analyses the works of Moshe Feldenkrais (1904–1984), who described the method that bears his name, and Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi (1934–), the creator of the concept of flow. The author presents the results of a qualitative analyses with a focus on body, flow and learning, as a way to contrast the respective works of the authors. Feldenkrais’ theory links body and mind in an inseparable unity: ‘I believe that the unity of mind and body is an objective reality. They are not just parts somehow related to each other, but an inseparable whole while functioning’ (Feldenkrais 2010: p. 28). And this unity is made concrete in the lessons by a flexible attention oriented towards all the parts of the body in motion. On the other hand, since the body is considered the opposite of the mind for Csikszentmihalyi, a more psychological approach is taken. Domelevo categorises four types of exercises (among the 12 proposed in his book Flow in Sports): remembering, thinking, writing and sitting meditation.

In Chapter 5, Alessandro Porrovecchio shows how cosmotics might be confused with a pseudo- holism that does not scientifically describe the stages of the emersion in leisure of the different states of the body schema, the body image and emotions in the course of bodily practice. Emersive leisure embraces a holistic/pantheistic and re- enchanted ‘Weltanshauung’, in which the body becomes a key element to enter into a condition of synergy and balance with the cosmos, since it contains within it the elements of nature: the ‘Qi’, but also the ‘wu xi’, that is to say the primordial natural elements. According to this Weltanshauung, the body would be the key to reaching the psychological dimension – an energetic and spiritual dimension – and thus an ecological equilibrium.

In Chapter 6, for Alexander Legendre and Stéphane Ibrahim, the nature- culture antinomy has been generally settled in favour of the latter in Western thought and philosophy since antiquity, with a very few exceptions (particularly Rousseau and Nietzsche). This prominence emerged mostly, it seems, as an epiphenomenal manifestation of the ancient mind- body dualism, the latter being subject to the former. This bijective vision has not failed to affect the perception and understanding of techniques, even artistic ones. Other cultures, however, consider the relationship between nature and culture more dialectically than agonistically and assume that it is by combining with nature that technique reaches its most advanced stage of development. The mind- body dualism that served as a philosophical substratum for Descartes’ description of man was rejected in favour of models aggregating the two notions. The nature- culture opposition having been weakened from two different sides, the expression ‘natural technique’, although not immediately comprehensible, thus becomes at least admissible. But what exactly does it refer to? What does it mean for a technique to be ‘natural’? How can we bring out the ‘natural’ when, a priori, technique presupposes culture?

Here the authors wish to demonstrate how the infra- conscious activity of the body is triggered before the motor response in immersive body practices. Emersion is not simply a voluntary emergence in the consciousness of a state of the body but, by its involuntary and unconscious character, is rather an awakening in the living body, as in tai chi.

This corresponds to an abandonment of the idea of the ‘lived body’ – which acts consciously, by plan or by programme – in favour of the idea of a non- mediated subconscious of the ‘living body’, rooted in the motor unconscious, motor intelligence and proprioception. This challenge to reflective consciousness allows us to consider motor decisions as springing spontaneously and effectively from subterranean sources.

By going from the phenomenology of the lived body to the emersion of flow in sports leisure, awakening is a new technique that develops confidence in the activation of the living in its body. The development of emersive leisure thus goes from sensory exposure to elements in nature up to the inner exploration of the capability resources of the body.

Finally, in Chapter 7, Andrew Bloodworth develops the theme of what it means to be ill and healthy, based on his own recent experience of a series of seizures/spasms over a period of six weeks. He critically discusses various concepts of health and well- being with respect to his condition, which seems to evade categorisation. He presents various concepts of health and well- being and discusses how the body practices of yoga and football helped him to find a new and positive relationship to his body. This chapter shows us how a health condition can lead towards an inner examination of what is good for oneself, and an exploration of different perceptions of one’s own body. It shows us how a period of illness can lead us towards a better understanding of our health and well-being.

Bibliography

Feldenkrais, M. (2010). Embodied Wisdom. The Collected Papers of Moshe Feldenkrais. [Kindle edition]. Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books.

Chapter 1

Central themes in body ecology

Bernard Andrieu and Olivier Sirost

Body ecology (Andrieu 2008–2011; Andrieu and Loland 2017) is based on philosophies of awakening and consciousness. These immersers into consciousness favour transcendental meditation and reflexivity in action through physical practices of consciousness. Although we might distinguish these techniques, the holistic context of each can cause confusion because the action on one part of the body would immediately be related to that of other parts. Only the subject in his or her physical, real- life experience can establish this correspondence, making efficient perceptions of health unverifiable but not improbable, although we do know that yogic meditation is able to modify the levels of intellectual activity. By causing a shift from a postural hyper- consciousness to a liberating consciousness, these emersive techniques are based on an awareness of these more or less deliberate techniques.

The connections between body ecology and emersive leisure are the effects of ecologisation: immersive in the body, ‘greening’ activates unprecedented capability resources and thus encourages an involuntary emersion, extending as far as the awareness of new emotions. This activation is a new mode of self- knowledge in the very experience of body immersion. By the awakening of previously unknown internal sensations, as presented here in the selected chapters on thrills, osmosis with the elements and the pain of injury, leisure allows the activity of the living body to emerse all the way to consciousness; our great surprise at the vitality of our bodies suggests that this kind of leisure is less a sense of relaxation and more a sense of discovery and enhanced knowledge of ourselves and the world.

Olivier Sirost (2016a), an ecological sociologist, has described this relation as separately gardened natures, culturalised natures, identified natures and the depletion of nature. The ecological sociology of sport reflects socio-historical progress: the possible release of an environmental nature by humans and, at same time, a refusal of the wilderness despite a desire for immersion. The search for emotion reflected in the new leisure falls short of the true nature that we still yearn for in interpreting the myth of Eden. The new body ecology, defined by Bernard Andrieu (2017), is a way of living in the corporeal world and the cosmos. This cosmic leisure must be understood as arising from the myths of an Edenic nature (rural and wilderness landscapes) and the utopias of returning to nature (body experiences, Monte Verità, youth movements, adventure novels and explorers’ clubs).

Body ecology and the geography of sport

The geography of sport and recreation was first described in 1962 by Terence M. Burley (1962: pp. 46–55). At the Valley Research Foundation in Australia, he studied a means of locating body practices before they became a reflection upon the effects of territory and land on the practitioners’ corporeal experience. He defined five aspects of the geolocalisation of sport: economic impact, social models, effects on society, cultural origins of practitioners and geographical distribution.

In 1969, John Rooney (Rooney and Pillsbury 1992) advanced the idea of sports regions with the publication of an atlas of American sports. Under the influence of Edward Relph, who introduced the term ‘placelessness’ in 1976, Karl Raitz (1995: p. IX) demonstrated how the interaction between the sports landscape and the game itself contributes to the bodily experience. This mapping approach to sports practice is not only quantitative and tourist- oriented for an economic market, but we can also understand it as an emotional map, like Yi- Fu Tuan’s use of the term topophilia (Tuan 1974). Tuan founded the study of environmental perception, attitudes and values according to a humanistic model of geography, stressing the emotional connection between a place and a leisure practice.

Socio-spatial studies of territorial changes in the type of sports practices and their spatial patterns of distribution reveal how much embodied places and local spaces change the bodily experience of practitioners, as Bernard Jeu described (1977). However, using land for the purpose of personal entertainment does not follow the logic of sensory immersion in nature (Augustin 1999). The feeling of space is built through contact with the earth and its elements on a given territory.

The emotional geography of sport has produced ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on contributors
• General introduction
• Part I: Body ecology: the basic concepts
• Part II: Emersion in the leisure environment and the recosmologisation of sport
• Part III: Emersive leisure and aesthesiology
• Index