Body Ecology and Emersive Leisure

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.
Bernard Andrieu is Professor of Philosophy and Epistemology of the Body at the
University Paris-­Descartes, France. He is Director of Body Technics; Coordinator
of Body Ecology in Adapted, Physical Sport Activities; and Co-­Editor of Corps, a
review published by CNRS. His main interests are in body ecology, emersiology,
self health, sport ethics, somatechny, and the history of somaticians.
Jim Parry is former Head of Philosophy and of the School of Humanities, Univer-
sity of Leeds, UK. He is now Visiting Professor at the Faculty of PE and Sport,
Charles University, Prague. His main interests are in applied ethics (especially
sports ethics) and social and political philosophy. He is co-­editor of the Routledge
series Ethics and Sport.
Alessandro Porrovecchio is Assistant Lecturer in Sociology of Sport at the Univer-
sity of Lille II, France. His main interests are in interdisciplinary sociology-­based
research on sports and health. He is Vice-­Coordinator of the European Sociological
Association.
Olivier Sirost is a Professor at the Université de Rouen Normandie, France, and
Head of the CETAPS Laboratory. His main interests are in the study of the senses
and outdoor leisure. He is the author of La vie au grand air; and with Bernard
Andrieu the Editor of L’écologie corporelle.
Ethics and Sport
Series editors: Mike McNamee
University of Wales Swansea and Jim Parry, University of Leeds

The Ethics and Sport series aims to encourage critical reflection on the
practice of sport, and to stimulate professional evaluation and develop-
ment. Each volume explores new work relating to philosophical ethics and
the social and cultural study of ethical issues. Each is different in scope,
appeal, focus and treatment but a balance is sought between local and
international focus, perennial and contemporary issues, level of audience,
teaching and research application, and variety of practical concerns.

For a complete series list please visit: www.routledge.com/Ethics-­and-Sport/

book-­series/EANDS

Recent titles include:

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Edited by Gunnar Breivik
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Their Doctors, 1950–2010
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Edited by Sandy Montañola and
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Aurélie Olivesi
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Holism and the Cultivation Body Ecology and Emersive
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Body Ecology and
Emersive Leisure

Edited by Bernard Andrieu,
Jim Parry,
Alessandro Porrovecchio
and Olivier Sirost
First published 2018
by Routledge
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© 2018 selection and editorial matter, Bernard Andrieu, Jim
Parry, Alessandro Porrovecchio and Olivier Sirost; individual
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and Olivier Sirost to be identified as the authors of the editorial
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Contents

Notes on contributors viii

General introduction 1
B ernard  A ndrieu , J i m   P arr y ,
A lessandr o   P o rr o vecchi o and Olivier  S ir o st

Part I
Body ecology: the basic concepts 7

Introduction to Part I 9
B ernard  A ndrieu and Olivier  S ir o st

  1 Central themes in body ecology 13

B ernard  A ndrieu and Olivier  S ir o st

  2 Georges Hébert (1875–1957): a naturalist’s invention of

body ecology 25
P ierre P hilippe - ­Meden

  3 The concept of ‘body schema’ in Merleau-­Ponty’s account

of embodied subjectivity 37
J an  H al á k

  4 Body, flow and learning: from Feldenkrais to

Csikszentmihalyi 51
A dj o a D o m elev o
vi   Contents

  5 Sport, health and academia: a reflexive approach to the

disenchantment and the re-­enchantment of the body 59
A lessandr o P o rr o vecchi o

  6 The naturalising process of technique: the antinomy of

nature and culture through the lens of Chinese practices 69
A le x andre  L e g endre and S t é phane  I brahi m e

  7 Health, well-­being and sport: some personal reflections 83

A ndre w B l o o d w o rth

Part II
Emersion in the leisure environment and the
recosmologisation of sport 95

Introduction to Part II 97

B ernard  A ndrieu and A lessandr o   P o rr o vecchi o

  8 Ecological transition and recreative leisure in nature 99

J ean  C o rnel o up , P hilippe  B o urdeau A N D P ascal Ma o

  9 Naked surfing in Tambaba, Brazil: an example of body

ecology 112
B ernard  A ndrieu , T E R E N Z I N H A   P E trucia da  N ó bre g a
and Olivier  S ir o st

10 Body ecology and urban sports: parkour as an

interdisciplinary immersion in the city environment 124
F l o rian  L ebret o n and B ernard  A ndrieu

11 Heidegger, sport and body ecology 136

I rena Mart í nk o v á and J i m   P arr y

12 The recosmologisation of the world: from Monte Verità to

naturism 150
Olivier S ir o st

13 Body ecology and academic well-­being: what sustainable

health can be offered to adolescents through the practice of
body art activities?  164
Gilles L ec o c q
 Contents   vii

PART III
Emersive leisure and aesthesiology 175

Introduction to Part III 177

B ernard  A ndrieu and J i m   P arr y

14 Bodies in the wind: dance and nature on Redinha Beach,

Natal, Brazil 179
T erezinha P etrucia da N ó bre g a

15 ‘No pain no gain’: the puritan ethic in bodybuilding 190

E ric  P erera and Marie  C h o lle y - ­G o m ez

16 The emersion of blackout in freediving: moderation and

immoderation 203
Mar y S C hirrer

17 The emersion of sensation in slacklining 216

L i o nel C havar o che

18 The emersion of involuntary gesture in the vertiginous

circus arts 227
B ernard  A ndrieu and H aruka Okui

Index 236
Contributors

Bernard Andrieu is Professor in Philosophy and Epistemology of the Body

at the University Paris-­Descartes, France. He is Director of Body Tech-
nics; coordinator of Body Ecology in Adapted, Physical Sportives Activ-
ities; and co-­editor of Corps, a review published by the French National
Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). His main interests are in body
ecology, emersiology, self health, sport ethics, somatechny and the
history of somaticians.

Andrew Bloodworth completed a PhD in the philosophy of health and

well-­being at Swansea University, UK, and his main interest is the role
of moral theory in health care. He has worked with UK Sport and UK
Anti-­Doping funded projects exploring the attitudes of talented athletes
towards performance enhancing substances and has also worked with
British Gymnastics exploring the ethical and sociological aspects of
eating disorders.

Philippe Bourdeau is Professor in Cultural Geography and Director of the

Institut de Géographie Alpine at Grenoble-­Alpes University, France. His
main interests are mountain tourism and outdoor sports. He is French
co-­representative at the International Scientific Committee on Alpine
Research (ISCAR) and President of the Association for Alpine Research
Development (ADRA) which publishes the Journal of Alpine Research/
Revue de Géographie Alpine.

Lionel Chavaroche is a doctoral candidate at UFR STAPS Paris-­Descartes

under the supervision of Bernard Andrieu and Mary Schirrer. His
main interests are slackline, body techniques and body ecology, and in
studying the relation with the wind and air in body practice.

Marie Cholley-­Gomez works as a social psychologist at Montpellier

University, France. Her main interests are in intergroup relations, social
representation, and psychosocial relations with the body, in particular
in bodybuilding.
 Contributors   ix

Jean Corneloup is a sociologist at the PACTE laboratory of Greno-

ble University, France and at the UFR STAPS in Clermont-­Ferrand
University, France. He is the President of research in an outdoor sport
network, and Editor of the journal Nature et Récréation.
Adjoa Domelevo is a doctoral candidate at the University Paris-­Descartes,
Sciences et Techniques des activités Physiques et Sportives (STAPS),
France under the supervision of Bernard Andrieu and Terezinha Petru-
cia da Nóbrega. She has published ‘Flow in Feldenkrais’s theory and
practice: an example of emersiology of the living body’ in Feldenkrais
Research Journal.
Jan Halák completed a PhD in philosophy at Charles University, Prague,
Czech Republic and Pantheon-­Sorbonne University, France, and is
now a researcher at the Department of Philosophy, Palacký University,
Czech Republic. His main interests are in Merleau-­Ponty’s philosophy
and ontology. He has translated into Czech Merleau-­Ponty’s Primacy of
Perception and the Preface to Signs.
Stéphane Ibrahime is at the Université Paris-­Sud XI, Orsay, France and is
a researcher in Complexité, Innovation et Activités Motrices et Spor-
tives (CIAMS) with expertise in cognitive psychology and cognitive
science. His main interests are in the cognitive treatment of high priority
tasks  and the determinants and influences of concurrent low priority
processes.
Florian Lebreton is a sociologist and Associate Professor at ULCO, France.
His main interests are recreational practice and littoral development, sports
in urban areas and body ecology in outdoor sports and environment.
Gilles Lecocq is completed his PhD in Psychology and is a Professor at
ILEPS Cergy, France. He is an associate researcher with CRP, EA 4296
at the Université de Picardie Jules Verne; administrator of the French
Society of Psychology, President of the Association Le Corps pour le
Dire and Research Head of Wellness & Empowerment.
Alexandre Legendre is a philosopher working under the direction of Ber-
nard Andrieu and Bertrand During. He studies the teaching of wushu
in Taiwan: imparting a ‘sense of the body’ as a keystone and personal
development through the search for the best integration of resources –
the case of Chinese traditional martial arts and the ‘shenfa’.
Pascal Mao is a geographer at Grenoble-­Alpes University, France. His
main interests are nature tourism development, territorial dynamics of
borderlands and scientific tourism in Patagonia.
Irena Martínková is a sport philosopher at the Faculty of Physical
Education and Sport, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic and
x   Contributors

currently Pro-­Dean for External and International Affairs. She is also

Vice-­Chair of the European Association of Philosophy of Sport.
Terenzinha Petrucia da Nóbrega is a philosopher at the University
Fédéral de Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Brazil (since 1995), labo-
ratory head of Estesia and Editor of the collection Corps et Éduca-
tion (Éditions IFRN). She is also Web Administrator for Corpografia
(www.corpografia.com) and Somaticiens (www.somaticiens.com –
with Bernard Andrieu).
Haruka Okui is a Doctor of Philosophy of Education, Kyoto University,
Japan and Post-­Doctoral Researcher, Laboratory TEC, University Paris-
­Descartes, France, as a JSPS Post-­Doctoral Fellow for Research Abroad.
Collaborating with Bernard Andrieu, he describes the body techniques
of performers, by analysing their training sessions, especially of puppet
performers in Japan (since 2010) and circus performers in France (since
2015).
Jim Parry is former Head of Philosophy and of the School of Humanities,
University of Leeds, UK. He is now Visiting Professor at the Faculty of
PE and Sport, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. His main
interests are in applied ethics (especially sports ethics) and social/polit-
ical philosophy. He is a qualified and experienced teacher of Physical
Education, and coach of several sports.
Eric Perera is a sociologist at Montpellier University, France, and a
researcher in SantESiH – EA 4614. His main interests are body build-
ing, studies in the first person and health and body practices in sport.
He also works in research methodology.
Pierre Philippe-­Meden has a PhD in aesthetics, arts, sciences and technolo-
gies from Paris 8 University. His main interests are in Georges Hébert,
Hebertism and the Natural Method (‘méthode naturelle’), including
body ecology, sport history and living show and arts.
Alessandro Porrovecchio is Assistant Lecturer in Sociology of Sport at the
University of Lille II, France, URePSSS EA 7369 Laboratory. His main
interests are in interdisciplinary sociology-­based research on sports and
health. He is Vice-­Coordinator of the RN 28 Society and Sports of the
European Sociological Association.
Mary Schirrer is a sociologist at Lorraine University, France and researcher
in EA 2310 LISEC. Her main interest is in the activity of the researcher:
dumping in the ground and in clean worlds, the physical commitment
and the feelings of the researcher. Also: aquatic dumping, anthropology
of the senses and the education of the senses, aquatic expertise (apnoea)
and the construction of knowledge of the body.
 Contributors   xi

Olivier Sirost is a professor at the Université de Rouen Normandie, France,

and Head of the CETAPS Laboratory. His main interests are in the
study of the senses and outdoor leisure. He is the author of La vie au
grand air (PUN 2009) and with Bernard Andrieu was the director of
‘L’écologie corporelle’, Sociétés, no. 125, 2014/3.
General introduction
Bernard Andrieu, Jim Parry,
Alessandro Porrovecchio and Olivier Sirost

The ecology of sport (Andrieu and Loland 2017), along with body ecology
and emersive leisure, is a new way of using bodily techniques when
immersed in nature, in the elements and inside one’s body through the
power of awareness. Leisure becomes ‘emersive’ when it involves the pro-
duction of new emotions in the body: ‘emersion’ is the activation of what
is living in the body. With environmental ecology, the ecological con-
science finds a way of preserving and fitting into ecosystems by using
restoration and recycling techniques: ecological ‘immersers’ may penetrate
the wilds and see the signs of human degradation but they do so by defin-
ing a philosophy of aesthetics and of aesthetical immersion in the elements.
Emersive leisure practices are corporeal experiences of interaction with
the world, as well as with the emotions that emerge in the course of corpo-
real engagement (Pepper 1996). Playful recreation, when it is carried into
sporting activity, finds a source of well-­being and satisfaction: the aim
seems to put motor control intentionally in the service of the non-­
competitive objectives of leisure. Arne Naess (2008: p. 19), like Thoreau,
opened the way by ecologising himself during regular stays in his high-­
altitude Tvergastein hut: ‘How can we explain that we are a part of this
place when we were not raised here and have not always lived here?’ By
allowing emotions and sensations to ‘emerse’ in the very place of body
ecology, the milieu fosters modes of self-­realisation as leisure unfolds.
Playful leisure procures pleasure that ends once it has been achieved,
whereas emersive leisure pursues the effects of knowledge and sensory
afterglow.
Emersion in leisure occurs as a cosmic experience of nature (first section
of this book), as a sensibility to echoes of the world in oneself (second
section), and as the awakening of the living body in activities that elicit
acute attention and meditation (third section). By corporeal engagement,
emersive leisures activate unsuspected resources in the living body. An
awakening by corporeal practices is the immersion of consciousness in
bodily experience whose effects are not controlled by the act of becoming
conscious. In order for the awakening of the living being to emerse – that
2   B. Andrieu et al.

is, to emerge unbidden into consciousness – the living body has to be acti-
vated to produce capability resources, until then unsuspected and unknown
to consciousness, through its dynamic and spontaneous ecologisation.
We present here the sensory, emotional and symbolic processes that
reflect the vast field of research that has often been presented in the ‘blind
spot’ in the history of the human and social sciences. Immersers testify by
the feeling of their flesh and the impression and imprint of the elements in
their everyday struggles, as in Sigmund Loland’s (1996) sports ecosophy,
inspired by Arne Naess. Unlike nudists and naturists, who master their
bodies by purifying them through reinvigoration, immersers plunge into
nature to allow their bodies to feel modifications uncontrolled by the will,
through sensory ecology. Examples might be the advance of the ice that
forced Ernest Shackleton’s (1874–1922) hibernation or Alexandra David-­
Néel’s encounters with other cultures in far-­away Tibet (1868–1969).
It is within this context that we study body ecology, which encompasses
three meanings:

1 In the first part of this book, Body ecology: the basic concepts (with
chapters by Bernard Andrieu and Olivier Sirost, Pierre Philippe-­
Meden, Jan Halák, Adjoa Domelevo, Alessandro Porrovecchio, Alex-
andre Legendre and Stéphane Ibrahime and Andrew Bloodworth), we
consider body ecology as an engagement in nature and the modalities
of ecological transition in leisure and sport.
2 In the second part, Emersion in the leisure environment and the recos-
mologisation of sport (with chapters by Jean Corneloup, Pascal Mao
and Philippe Bourdeau; Terenzinha Petrucia da Nóbrega, Bernard
Andrieu and Olivier Sirost, Florian Lebreton and Bernard Andrieu,
Irena Martínková and Jim Parry, Olivier Sirost and Gilles Lecocq), we
explore how the effect of environment on the living body produces
new leisure practices: a kind of recosmologisation is possible by the
incorporation of the natural element into the conception of the world,
the cosmos and leisure tourism.
3 In the third and last part, Emersive leisure and aesthesiology (with
chapters by Terezinha Petrucia da Nóbrega, Eric Perera and Marie
Cholley-­Gomez, Mary Schirrer, Lionel Chavaroche and Bernard
Andrieu and Haruka Okui), we learn about exploring and discovering
the internal sensations of the living body by becoming aware of the
experience of various ecologies (dancing in the wind, bodybuilding and
nutrition, freediving, slacklining, circus arts, etc.).

Body ecology
According to Gaston Bachelard (1971), the hard body disperses its action
on nature in wanting to master it as part of the knowledge of matter; it is
 General introduction   3

‘the convex mirror of our energy’. The will to dominate is expressed in

images and the architecture of skyscrapers. Cosmotics, like cosmic ecology,
is instead based on the soft body, the ‘concave mirror’: because the ‘soft-
ness’ of matter, and not its malleability, nourishes the desire to penetrate
nature or be penetrated by the elements in the feeling of a new intimacy.
Mud, caves and apnoea diving are all ways of being in nature while discov-
ering the nature of one’s own body, particularly the body that is ‘living but
not yet lived’ by our usual techniques.
Body ecology, defined in the first chapter by Bernard Andrieu and
Olivier Sirost, like cosmotics, is the principle of forging relations between
the body and the world; it is a dynamic interaction, both conscious and
unconscious. Thus, when Michel Siffres isolated himself in a cave ‘beyond
time’, submitting willingly to this cosmos, he deconstructed the cultural
time zone and let his living body discover its own biological rhythm
through the ecological effect of this new environment. It is appropriate,
according to Sylvain Tesson (2014), ‘to abandon oneself to life’. Immer-
sion in the cold, as well, brings about the slow alteration of temperature
sensation and perception. And, on the other hand, the greening of sports in
urban spaces, in such practices as skateboarding, rollerblading, scootering,
rooftopping, urbex, parkour, streetworkout or urban training (see the
chapter by Lebreton and Andrieu), opens the city to ‘slow’ sport and sus-
tainable leisure.
The founders of body ecology explored the possibility of describing
anew the relationship between the living body, the lived body and nature.
For example, Georges Hébert (see Chapter 2 by Pierre Philippe-­Meden),
introduced ideas about the ‘Natural Method’ and naturism; and Merleau-­
Ponty explored the consciousness of phenomenological experience through
the idea of ‘body schema’ (see Chapter 3 by Jan Halák). In Chapter 4,
Adjoa Domelevo analyses the work of two significant innovators: Moshe
Feldenkrais (1904–1984), who described the method that bears his name,
and Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi (1934–), the creator of the concept of flow.
She contrasts their differing concepts of body, flow and learning. In
Chapter 5, Alessandro Porrovecchio explores and explains the feeling of
‘cosmosis’ – the relation of body and self to the cosmos – as exhibited in
the commitment of the body to ‘greening’; and it may be produced, for
example, by the intensity of a re-­enchantment with the world, such as he
describes.
In Chapter 7, Andrew Bloodworth sees body ecology as a subjective
regulation by body practice, in which self-­health is achieved by the analysis
of emotion in first-­person. Theories of well-­being and quality of life now
become connected with our desires and our experiences and are reliable
indicators of our well-­being. The involuntary and unconscious character of
these indicators is illustrated in Chapter 6 by Alexandre Legendre and
Stéphane Ibrahime through the debate between nature and culture, with
4   B. Andrieu et al.

the example of tai chi. The deepening of consciousness in yoga or Buddhist

practices favours attention to internal and intimate states through the
intense concentration required by meditation techniques.

Emersion in the leisure environment and the

recosmologisation of sport
In the second part of the book, the sensory ecology of emersive leisure is
geographically situated in environments and experiences that favour the
exaltation of sensibility. Aesthesiology is situated in an environment so
that ecologisation is spontaneous and immediate and in line with the qual-
ities of the place and the possibilities of leisure practices (see Chapter 8 by
Jean Corneloup, Pascal Mao and Philippe Bourdeau). This geolocation of
sports practices also engages the body with nature in a sensitive way. The
authors construct a socio-­spatial reading grid of the interactions between
nature-­sports cultures and practice spaces, which describes the relation-
ships between a living area as a perceived, dreamed and a territoriality
situation.
The geography of sport brings an analysis of the embodiment of prac-
tice not only by geolocalising sports within an environment (see Chapter
13 by Gilles Lecocq) or in nature, but also by mobilising body ecology and
internal descriptions of perception in the process of immersive experience
with sport. An ecologically friendly practice like naked surfing implies not
only immersion in nature, but also collegial cooperation in sport (see
Chapter 9 by Terenzinha Petrucia da Nóbrega, Bernard Andrieu and
Olivier Sirost).
This management of a practice corresponds to the management of
nature that one would like to domesticate through emersed leisure, by pro-
posing ecological experiences of the emersion of the natural environment.
The effects of emersion in the course of the ecological experience pass
through environments and elements. To perform well, triathletes learn to
manage the elements and do so especially by developing strategies of
avoidance. Nevertheless, they do not easily escape nature, and each
element imposes a particular experience on the body and mind that has a
specific meaning for each triathlete. In his Chapter 12, Olivier Sirost
shows, with the concepts and pioneer work of the ‘cosmicers’, how this
history of body ecology practices prepared the development of the idea of
emersive leisure.
In Chapter 11, by Irena Martínková and Jim Parry, we see that the prin-
ciples of body ecology are part of the philosophical tradition of Heidegge-
rian thought. Their chapter discusses Heidegger’s ‘fundamental ontology’,
that is his ontological account of the human being (‘Dasein’), with refer-
ence to the human body and its emergent features within the context of the
sporting environment.
 General introduction   5

Emersive leisure and aesthesiology

In the third part of the book, emersiology, or activating the living body
through emersive leisure, consists of identifying the degrees of awakening
awareness. On the one hand, an immersion in the natural elements, such
as the wind that supports, lifts and stimulates bodies (e.g. Geraldine
Fasnacht and her wingsuit1 – see Chapter 14 by Terezinha Petrucia da
Nóbrega). On the other hand, the living body is itself active before the
consciousness of the lived body perceives it, as in apnoea diving (see
Chapter 16 by Mary Schirrer) or slacklining (see Chapter 17 by Lionel
Chavaroche).
The living body is here the entire organism that not only ensures our
biological existence but also incorporates all the information necessary for
affective life and for motor activity, an example being circus activities (see
Chapter 18 by Bernard Andrieu and Haruka Okui). At the threshold of
our conscious perception, the activity of the living body modifies our states
of consciousness depending on its moods, energy or reactions. Here we
demonstrate how the infra-­conscious activity of the body is triggered by
immersive body practices before the motor response occurs. Emersion is
not simply the voluntary emergence into consciousness of a bodily state,
but it is an awakening into living – an emotion, a reflex or a habitus (see
Chapter 15 by Eric Perrera and Mary Cholley-­Gomez, about bodybuilding
in the first person) arriving in spite of us at the threshold of consciousness.
Access to a live body and its in vivo brain has brought new insights
about the perception of self through interaction via the direct action of
electrical and neurobiological activity, similar to the brain-­machine inter-
face we now see for people with certain disabilities. A new self-­image is
produced by the first-­person perception of the living body and this becomes
visible and measurable for interfaced subjects. Without directly feeling
their brain, interfaced subjects discover new action modes for their body
using the mental work of their brain: seeing their electro-­encephalographic
activity on a screen, acting by thinking while their body is motionless,
developing mental attention.

Note
1 Fasnacht, G. Présentation de ‘4634 – Perception’ en Haute-­Savoie. www.
geraldinefasnacht.com/component/tags/tag/153-4634perception.

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6   B. Andrieu et al.

Loland, S. (1996). Outline of an ecosophy of sport, Journal of the Philosophy of

Sport, 23, 1: 70–90.
Naess, A. (2008). Un exemple de lieu: Tvergastein, in Drengson, A., Devall, B., eds.
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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 con-
ceptions 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 prac-
tices 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 move-
ments, 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 natu-
ralness of the major organs of physiology (lungs, heart, etc.) took preced-
ence. 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.
10   B. Andrieu and O. Sirost

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 dedic-
ated much effort to further developing the notion of body schema, and
interpreted fresh sources that he did not use in Phenomenology of Percep-
tion. Notably, he studied various possibilities of how this practical
‘diagram’ could be de-­differentiated (pathology) or further refined (cogni-
tive and cultural superstructures, symbolic systems) to show the funda-
mentally 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 under-
standing 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 con-
crete 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 pro-
posed 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 ele-
ments 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.
 Introduction to Part I   11

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 under-
standing of techniques, even artistic ones. Other cultures, however, con-
sider the relationship between nature and culture more dialectically than
agonistically and assume that it is by combining with nature that tech-
nique reaches its most advanced stage of development. The mind-­body
dualism that served as a philosophical substratum for Descartes’ descrip-
tion 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 immedi-
ately 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 prac-
tices. 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 confi-
dence in the activation of the living in its body. The development of emer-
sive 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 dis-
cusses various concepts of health and well-­being with respect to his con-
dition, 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
12   B. Andrieu and O. Sirost

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 con-
sciousness 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 unver-
ifiable 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 unpre-
cedented capability resources and thus encourages an involuntary emer-
sion, 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 rela-
tion 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
14   B. Andrieu and O. Sirost

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 experi-
ences, 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 practition-
ers’ 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 ‘placeless-
ness’ 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 quant-
itative 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 percep-
tion, 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 new questions: how are
sports facilities built at the regional level? What is the spatial behaviour of
the various practitioners? How can the geographical expression of a sport
be characterised across a district? Territorial analysis of embodied sports
practices is a way to analyse the influence of practitioners’ life story curric-
ula on their choices.

Body ecology: sustainable leisure

Body ecology corresponds to this emersion of new sensible data during
leisure. By ecologising, the body seems to undergo the effects of the
 Central themes in body ecology   15

environment in a passive way, whereas in the emersive leisures, ecologisa-

tion is described by what is activated in emotions, affects and internal sen-
sations such as empathy.
With pollution and climate change, the search for sustainable sports has
become an ethical and aesthetic pursuit. Outdoor sports and sports in
nature are now perceived as providing a genuine education for regulating
the behaviours of leisure and adventure (Ewert and Davidson 2017).
Outdoor adventure activities are becoming an increasingly popular part of
physical education programmes. Practising sustainable leisure is based on
reconnecting with nature, as we see in surfing (Borne and Ponting 2017).
By immersing oneself in nature, practising the new forms of leisure and
sport seems to prompt a feeling of belonging to the natural elements just as
much as a feeling in the body of new emotions and sensations. Ecology is
not just discourse, but a practice that engages our daily responsibility; it
connects to body awareness through reflection on our actions and their
consequences. Body ecology is a practice of self-­care that extends to a sense
of responsibility for caring for others through our lifestyle choices. This is
not about a return to an ideal state of nature, but an observation of our
lifestyle and our ways of production and consumption. From this per-
spective on body ecology, the material elements, namely the air, water, sun
and the earth itself, penetrate our bodies so that we also become ecological
at the very moment in which we breathe, feel the warmth or the depth of
the water, for example, in naturist or artistic practices.
If we do not know the ecology of our own bodies, we look to nature for
a harmony that is actually within us: our microcosm no longer corresponds
with the macrocosm. We look to the mountains, beaches or countryside
landscapes and find a mismatch between the body and nature.
To walk, take in the air, transform solar energy, sink into the earth, find
pleasure in water, take the products of the earth and relish their taste: all
are ways to green our bodies on a daily basis. If the body feels the effects
of the elements without suffering them, then interactions with nature can
no longer insulate us from the necessary ecological restoration of the
environment.
Body ecology is a micro-­ecology. It is a discipline derived from philo-
sophical naturism, deep ecology and holistic body-­mind practices
developed since 1850 in the corporeal experience of body recreation,
outdoor living and body awakening techniques. It is because we transform
the practices of individuals that ecology is transformed. The idea is to
create micro-­micro-situations and experiences. With body ecology, cosmot-
ics is a cosmology and it is different from cosmetic beauty: body ecology
does not stand for distance nor idolatry in natural elements; nature is
neither good nor bad, but it challenges us about our relentless physical
interaction with it through the limits of our body and the green inventive-
ness of our techniques.
16   B. Andrieu and O. Sirost

It must be said here that the new study of body ecology in sport and
leisure studies is a description, embraced by philosophy, sociology, sports
studies and ecology, of the living body’s activity as a living body, and its
effect on the perception of self, knowledge of the environment and the
ecologisation of the body. With body ecology, we describe how the implicit
information processing below the threshold of consciousness determines
the action modality, emotions and ecologisation of our body with nature,
with others and with space.

An ecology of perception in first person

In the New History project of Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre (Muller 1994),
one also finds the idea of body ecology. Invited by the Henri Berr Inter-
national Centre for Synthesis, Lucien Febvre prepared Earth and Human
Evolution (1970), which clearly showed the influence of geography in the
analysis of Humboldt’s ‘habitable earth’ and Ratzel’s ecumene. The difficulty
of the undertaking lies in the limits of human geography, which remains
deeply physical at its core and those of social morphology and its Durkheim-
ian coldness. If geography remains the science of places and not of people, if
sociology remains the cold study of social facts, it is nevertheless true that
‘people are geographical agents’ (Febvre 1970: p. 75). For Marc Bloch, this
last remark makes the historian a researcher of traces, residues deposited by
experience, footprints left behind: ‘What do we mean by a document, if not
a trace – that is, the mark – perceptible to the senses, that has left a phenom-
enon that is in itself impossible to grasp?’ (Bloch 1997: p.  71). Although
Bloch distances himself from the body to a certain extent, as it is not the
trace, the residue or the imprint, Lucien Febvre has sought to develop a geo-
graphy of the body, asking about what people once experienced by their
senses, emotions and imaginations. In short, the historian’s project is to
examine the body through time and live a multitude of epochs. The recent
work of Alain Corbin (2018) has mostly followed this perspective.
In the 1929 Davos lectures, an extraordinary debate took place between
Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger. The debate was centred around the
question: ‘What is it to be a human being?’. The neo-­Kantian Cassirer
postulated the existence of a mythical consciousness of the laws of the
mind. Heidegger denounced this as a super-­interpretation of Kantian
anthropology in which the question of the rootedness in human existence –
and a fortiori the body – had been resolved. This debate was undoubtedly
the inspiration for Heidegger’s famous essay: Poetically Man Dwells in
which he shows that inhabiting the world in its symbolic corporeality pre-
cedes building, which is based on the geometric rationality of the measure
(Heidegger 1958).
The rooting of symbolism in a matrix, a mother earth, is a reference
to  the philosophy of nature developed by Hölderlin (1967). His poem
 Central themes in body ecology   17

provided the inspiration for the circle of the Munich Kosmiker – which
included the poet Stefan George and the philosopher Ludwig Klages –
that proposed an ecology of the body, reminding us that the body is part
of the matrix of the earth from which symbols arise and from which it
draws its power. This cosmic circle became closely connected with the
pioneers of Mount Verità in Ticino, experimenting with vegetarianism,
naturism and free movement in nature. The work on the poetics of habita-
tion developed by Bachelard and his students (Tuzet 1965) has continued
the analysis of myths and symbolism via the Eranos circle built on the
traces of Mount Verità. There have been exciting developments in the
geopoetics of Kenneth White (2015) and the travel literature of Michel Le
Bris (2002).
These different themes still provoke considerable international debate
on body ecology. For example, for the psychologists of the movement, one
might cite the controversy between James J. Gibson and E. Panofsky
(Gibson 1978). In the Kantian tradition, Panofsky developed the idea of
the ‘Kunstwollen’, where an artwork presents itself to us with a particular
form and meaning that guides our judgement. Gibson dismissed this differ-
entiation between vision and representation and defended the idea of an
ecology of perception, with perception being an affordance or a pole of
interactions accessible to exploration. Through the ecology of perception,
the body mobilises and reveals itself as much as the environment that sur-
rounds it. It is this intuition that Augustin Berque (2000) addressed in an
original way with the concept of mediancy, in which he shows that humans
and their environments (natural and social) reveal themselves reciprocally,
creating ‘holds’ that give the other the possibility of grabbing hold. In this
way, he founded the relational logic of ecology: ‘Phenomenological
matrices (the schemes of perception and interpretation of the environment)
thus cease to generate physical impressions (modes of environmental
management), which in turn influence these matrices, and so on’ (Berque
2000: p. 44).
A recent disagreement concerns David Howes, a pioneer in sensory
studies, and Tim Ingold, who developed an anthropology of habitation
(Ingold 2011). According to Howes, the language of the senses is revealed
in different ways, depending on the epoch and culture. Thus, there are
ways to feel by mobilising the body differently, as proposed by art, medi-
cine, legislation, politics or marketing (Howes and Classen 2014). On the
contrary, Tim Ingold proposes a more transversal anthropology of the
textual relations that people maintain with their beliefs or with nature.
Ingold, like Gibson, emphasises affordances that he particularly analyses in
an ecology of existence, habitation and skill.
18   B. Andrieu and O. Sirost

Well-­b eing through cosmotics

Another route is possible (D’Andrea and Sirost 2017). As proposed by
Michel Maffesoli, this is ‘ecosophy’, where one returns to animal passions,
where the figure of Atlas does not merely bear the burdens of the world
but is also the ‘Kosmokrator’ (sovereign of the Cosmos) (Maffesoli 2017:
p. 124). Beyond reasoned and rationalising discourse, he has discovered a
tone to the lived experience of space that is rather awkward to integrate
into the modern worldview: the immediate sensation of incommensur-
ability that makes humans feel minuscule and inert, lost in the immensity
of nature. At the imaginal level, this primordial emotion prevents us from
taking seriously the possibility of the direct interference of human actions
on global equilibrium, which is in any case rejected because it is too close
to an awareness of the essential frailty of our species.
In Austria, Germany and Switzerland, communities of Kosmikers (Sirost
2016b) were founded. These European bohemian poets, painters, archi-
tects, dancers, writers and academics plunged into naturism, vegetarian-
ism, nature cures, new forms of dance, new pedagogies, new music,
Jugendstil, depth psychology, Eastern meditation, Bauhaus architecture,
nature hikes and urban rambling. In Paris, Munich, London, New York,
Vienna and Darmstadt, artist communities and colonies flourished. One
might audaciously cite Barbizon, Chicago, Monte Sol and Esalen as well.
Just as scientific ecology explores plant communities, it is clear that similar
explorations have driven the communities of bodies that have settled in a
number of geographically limited places and radiated through European
culture. Geographers were among them, such as Elisee Reclus, in connec-
tion with anarchist networks and Alpine clubs (Ferretti 2014).
When we talk about body ecology, we cannot avoid the question of
how to understand the human body. This question leads inevitably to
thoughts about the fullness of human beings, as we are often perceived as
a unity of body and mind, which implies dualist thinking. The cosmos does
not build nature as an environment. In search of experience and self-­
construction in nature, cosmocists immerse themselves in outdoor recre-
ation, with nature’s uncontrollable elements, disorienting horizons and
unpredictable events. The limits of adaptation are the invasive effects of
the ecologising living body, like fragility. This discontinuity between
human action and the transcendence of nature has fostered the ideals of
sobriety, humility and asceticism, an example being the fasting of the cos-
mocists. To become one with nature, the hermit/anchorite seeks refuge in a
cave: Thoreau retired to his wooden hut in Walden and John Muir (1954)
found peace in a canyon of the Sierras, as did Sylvain Tesson in Siberia.
Enclosure in nature intensifies the immersive effect. In the late 1970s,
Thomas Rain Crowe returned to the Appalachians and lived for several
years as a hermit. As he said about this experience of living deep in nature,
 Central themes in body ecology   19

in the wilderness: only the present moment exists (Crowe 2008). In the
universe of desert-­style nomadism, the criss-­crossing of an entire continent,
for full-­time voyagers, is like the domestication of a wild territory. Kenneth
White, in his cosmopoetic laboratory, found the headlands of the spirit in
Rimbaud, Gauguin and Victor Segalen as a temptation to surpass the West
in an orientalism that is still colonial.
Leaving behind the colonisation of nature and living beings, retreating
into the woods – before it was the lot of the homeless, living and dying of
cold and exhaustion in the open air – might have appeared as an attitude
of physical, social and mental aeration. Solitude in nature can thus be
understood as an immersion in living and vivifying air. Nonconformist
Christians and utopian socialists shared this anti-­modernist stance and
embraced the romanticism of John Ruskin and William Morris; as early as
1820, hikers organised to discover nature (Harvey 1997: p. 55).
Yet the wilderness may not exist and might never have existed because
the pioneers never crossed virgin nature: it was always inhabited by
natives. Although the earth has not always been for humanity, we should
not consider it as an object or as a subject but as a transject: the path of
our planet finds in the ecologisation of our living bodies infinite dynamics
that surpass us. Immersed in the earth, good cosmicists that we are, we
cannot deconstruct the earth to make it a piece of property. As mobile
tenants, earthlings are never entirely earthly. In a modern acosmic world,
Michel Collot’s body cosmos defines itself, finds itself and deepens itself in
nature:

Far from enclosing me within myself, this living and vibrant micro-
cosm reveals that I belong to the macrocosm; I find, at the heart of my
intimate coenaesthesia, the memory and the source of the emotions
that lead me to an encounter with others and the universe.
(Collot 2008: p. 9)

Immersive experience
For Barry Lopez (1986), this earth, which we conceive through geography,
pursues an existence perfectly independent in arctic nature: nature is not a
landscape organised for our gaze, but a power that can overwhelm, as we
know from stories of crossing the Arctic. The oceanic feeling, dear to Cha-
teaubriand, is found in Theodore Monod’s desert crossing as an experi-
ment of freedom in confinement. This long period of cosmic immersion is
that of the fluxes of the living in its processes of creation and death of the
forms of unfolding matter. The temptation is great to merge with nature,
its spirits, its elements and its living beings. Cultures that are so empathic
with nature express an ‘imsertive’ lifestyle by immersion-­imsertion in the
animal, in the force of the elements like an aboriginal dream: leaving one’s
20   B. Andrieu and O. Sirost

own body to become the body of an animal or giving up the ego of one’s
own body in order to experience an other body.
Imserted, cosmicists must ecologise their living bodies, otherwise they
will undergo the otherness of nature as a fatal alteration of the funda-
mental rhythms. By transforming oneself from within, the cosmicists
become part of the cosmos without reducing it or reducing themselves
whenever they maintain a homeostasis between the inner environment and
the external environment. An imbalance between the two produces ‘dismo-
sis’ with nature, others or technique. In nature rather than from nature, we
would all like to awaken our deepest nature in an ideal unity and harmony
between the inner cosmos and the infinite universe. This illusion, which
may be mystical, naturist and anarchistic, as we show here, also reveals an
intuition and a sensitivity to nature. The desire to become one with wolves
by living with them, as Shaun Ellis (Ellis and Junor 2009) did, is not simply
revisiting The Jungle Book or Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of
the Apes. The universe cosmotises us by revealing its grandeur relative to
our presence and actions, whereas our inner world is intensified by the
echoes of the elements, others and the techniques within us. This intensifi-
cation is the geography of the instant by a harmonisation of instants.
The survivors of extreme environments are sometimes hailed as heroes,
with their narratives reconstructed in fictional documentaries that render
both the real and the false aspects of immersion in an illusory way: the
camera is always at hand to serve the adventurer who wants to scare
himself. Survival guides in hostile environments are proliferating in the
name of survivalism: the need to have both physical techniques and
adapted equipment so as to avoid dismosis and succeed at the trials of
nature as proof, if not of one’s virility, of one’s flexibility. Extreme solo
walks, like that of Sarah Marquis (2016), is a way to exalt nature as a
whole: ‘you have to be aware of the environment at all times’ by discover-
ing the limits of one’s own body in full nature.
The experience of openness to space is thus tragic, which explains why
current rhetoric is moving away from it, denying any correlation between
vital activities and the places where they take place. In this way, humans
are losing their place in the world, which is not only an environmental
problem but also a crucial issue for the understanding and meaning of all
existence. Humans renounce consciousness of the finitude revealed by their
own corporeality but at the same time they lose the possibility of belong-
ing, of being part of something that this consciousness could give them.
Only a new ecological thinking can balance the destabilising effect of
knowing the boundaries inscribed in the flesh: another thinking, committed
to surmounting the Cartesian separation between body and mind and
recovering the richness of experience from an active relationship with
matter and space, whether it be one’s own body or the lost skill of
inhabiting a place.
 Central themes in body ecology   21

Emersive recreation
Emersive recreation does not encompass only those physical practices that
are carried out at the heart of the geographical and institutional spaces of
modern sport. Faced with urbanisation and polluted cities, Le Corbusier
(1985) founded his playful revolution on the emergence of emersive leisure,
starting from his own bodily experiences and from the idea of sports
carried out in proximity to buildings. Emersive leisure must offer the
possibility of a playful attitude to urban spaces, and in the 1930s this atti-
tude found little favour. Le Corbusier’s criticism of the architecture of
industrial cities, particularly as he travelled through Brazil, Germany and
the United States, was based on the remoteness from natural conditions
and the individual’s distant relations to nature. With sports played close to
buildings, leisure should be directly available from the ground floor to the
roof terrace, where hydrotherapy, heliotherapy and naturism are guaran-
teed and free.
Living in the air high up in the trees is not just a protection against
predators,1 but an arboricultural lifestyle, like that of the Korowai people
in Indonesia, whose homes are sometimes perched 35  metres above the
understorey of the Irian Jaya rainforest. Between the sky and the earth, the
canopy has become a place for exploring flora and fauna: Francis Hallé,
Professor of Tropical Botany; Dany Cleyet Marrel, inventor, designer and
aerostat pilot; and Gilles Ebersolt, inventor-­architect of the Radeau des
Cimes,2 lived in the canopy from 1986 to 2003. This access to the treetops,
at an altitude of about 50 metres, was accomplished with an airship that
could land on the canopy and an inflatable raft (the Radeau des Cimes)
functioning as a laboratory.
The ecological homes of green architecture offer the possibility of
immersing oneself in nature while inhabiting one’s body, like Le Corbusi-
er’s shed in Cap Saint Martin by the facilitation of interactivity with the
sun and air. Inspired by the post-­1968 Rousseau-­ist dream, the wooden
house, no longer standing alone in the meadow, defines an interactive
architecture. In France, until the eighteenth century, wood was omnipres-
ent in popular construction. After World War II, economic constraints, the
urgent need to rebuild and the fashion of ‘all concrete’ – considered the
most modern of materials – left wood as a building material far behind in
second place.
With the Instituto Terra, Sebastião Salgado and his family began to
combat deforestation and its accompanying run-­off, which makes land
infertile, and they did so by replanting spaces in the native forest of Minas
Gerais: ‘The beginning of everything, because, by recreating this forest, we
were in the process of recreating a life cycle’ (Salgado 2015). The ecosophy
of Félix Guattari (2008) finds here its three registers: ‘the environment,
social relations and human subjectivity’. If the Earth is a living being,
22   B. Andrieu and O. Sirost

which is the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock (2000) and Lynn Margulis
(1998), it would be appropriate for Guattari to extend Varela’s autopoiesis
to other living, human, social and cultural systems.
Now the body is experienced as a conscious perception of the activity of
the living body. Indeed, the living body is the biological activity of an
organism by its body schema and aesthesiological systems, and it adapts
informed consciousness. The living body became a central focus of philo-
sophy when Lamarck examined the internal link between the biological
transformations of the living body forging the study of zoological philo-
sophy. More than just a body, the living body is a philosophy of ecological
and zoological import because of the interactions of its matter by with the
media through its porosity and by elasticity (Steigmann 2017). Without
this permeability, adaptation would not foster the greening dynamic that
changes internal qualities instant by instant while still developing neuronal
plasticity (Seil 2000).
Access to the living body is difficult because its activity is under the level
of consciouness. Emersiology (Andrieu 2018) is a method for perceiving the
movement: it is re-­knowing the emotional information in the consciousness
of the lived body even if this information was activated by the living body
during its ecologisation. To make a reconnection with ones living body, we
can recosmise by body ecology to produce emersive leisures: this full awak-
ening implies a deepening of living by techniques that are non-­
representationalist techniques for emergence. The immersive scheme that can
be deliberately organised produces involuntary emersive effects outside of
the subject’s control. Emersion is here an awakening of consciousness by
involuntary movements, reflexive thrusts and direct feelings.
The passage from phenomenology to emersiology is a new step in
describing the internal activation of the living body. The methodological
difficulty and yet the interest of this research arises in great part from the
need for language: the emersion of internal sensation without conscious
control is produced involuntarily through interactions with our environ-
ment and contact with other people. It might be better to pen the mind in,
so that we can wholeheartedly welcome the activation of our brain and the
ecologisation of the living body.
‘Emersense’, the emersion of new meanings, awakens the living body in
order to activate the production of novel unconscious meanings for the
subject. Awakening the body means making it conscious through its own
understanding. For although body emersions are unconscious, they are not
inactive, because activation implements scenarios of decisions and emo-
tions in the living body before even a single action is realised. The living
body incarnates meaning before it can express it in a linguistic structure
likely to be recognised by a community during proxemic interaction. The
difference between bodily intention and bodily consciousness of intention
is useful for understanding the unconscious anticipation of the living body
 Central themes in body ecology   23

emotions, associative memory – all nurture and stimulate the semantic pro-
duction of the body, yet without consciousness always being able to reach
it. The living narrative of emersive leisures begins before the ego knows it
as such by the narrative form.

Notes
1 No authors listed. Open Tree Climbing. www.opentreeclimbing.org.
2 No authors listed. Opération Canopée. www.radeau-­des-cimes.org.

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Chapter 2

Georges Hébert (1875–1957)

A naturalist’s invention of body
ecology
Pierre Philippe-­M eden

The French naval commander Georges Hébert, Director of the Collège

d’Athlètes de Reims from 1912–1914 and editor of the journal L’Éducation
Physique (1902–1972) after 1922 (Philippe-­Meden 2014a), developed a
naturist or naturalist approach to the human body, movement and action
that revolutionised the concept and practice of gymnastics. Hébert can
therefore be considered as an early twentieth century forerunner of the
‘body ecology’ movement.
However, Hébert’s method went into decline after the 1960s and 1970s.
At a conference in 1995 organised by the Centre for Research and Innova-
tion in Sport at the University Claude Bernard Lyon 1, sports historian
Pierre Arnaud (1942–2016) described how it had been ‘[rejected] as a thing
of the past in the history of education, teaching and sport’ (Arnaud 1995).
Since then, the method has made a remarkable comeback, internationally,
both in the civil and military world.
Despite this rehabilitation, there are still misunderstandings about
Hébert’s method because the approach to his work has been historicist,
seen from the perspective of certain institutions and only considering the
French context. For instance, the key concepts, the Natural Method (NM)
and Hebertism, are often mistaken to mean the same. Hebertism is a holis-
tic pedagogical approach that consists of six modules: (i) in-­depth use of
NM; (ii) daily manual crafts (e.g. gardening, housekeeping); (iii) mental
and moral culture (psychic gymnastics); (iv) intellectual culture (e.g. history
of philosophy, arts, sciences); (v) aesthetic culture (e.g. the arts, Atlantean
studies, dance, rhythmic movement); and (vi) naturist initiatives (e.g.
treatment through exercise and nutrition, aerotherapy, hydrotherapy, heli-
otherapy). Hebertism therefore covers much more than the method of
training and physical education that Hébert developed in the period from
1904 to 1911: Natural Method of Physical, Virile and Moral Education
(Hébert 1936).
Our epistemological exploration of the NM addresses the synthetic
dimension of Hebertism, traces its origins, its naturalistic poetry in opposi-
tion to scientism, its institutionalisation in France, the reasons for its later
26   P. Philippe-Meden

decline and the circumstances of its comeback at the beginning of the

twenty-­first century.

A primitive scene: the genesis of the Natural

Method
Georges Hébert has gone down in the history of physical education as ‘a
pioneer and explorer’ whose method owes much to his many travels: 

physical education was developed at the beginning of the [twentieth]

century by a lieutenant in the French Marines who appreciated the
natural movements of indigenous people that he encountered on his
stopovers, in contrast with his colleagues who considered those incid-
ental and derisory.
(Métoudi and Vigarello 1980: p. 1)

After his training at the École Navale between 1893 and 1895, Georges
Hébert navigated the seas until 1903 and visited parts of South America,
the Antilles and North America, where he observed with the eyes of an
anthropologist what his contemporary Marcel Mauss (1872–1950) called
the ‘techniques of the body’ (Mauss 1933).
Georges Hébert studied for instance the French Navy’s topmen – the
sailors who work in the top of ships – and the coalwomen of the Compag-
nie Générale Transatlantique in Martinique. The NM was born when he
transformed the movements of the body used to perform these types of
manual labour to physical exercises to develop the body and correct body
posture. For example, sailors washing the deck was a source of inspiration
for an ‘exercise imitating this movement’ to strengthen the core muscles of
the lower back and abdominal region and maintain waist flexibility.
Hébert was more impressed with the performance of the coalwomen
than that of the sailors. They gave him the necessary ammunition to demol-
ish the stubborn arguments of those convinced of the physical inferiority of
the so-­called weaker sex: ‘let them try and carry forty kilos on their heads
and then climb stairs for several hours in a day. They will soon realise how
much effort the “female human machine” is capable of ’ (Hébert 1928:
p.  127). The black body was in vogue in those days, but Georges Hébert
had fewer affinities with Pierre Loti (1850–1923), who wrote about the
sculptural beauty of the young Senegalese in the Roman d’un Spahis (1881),
than with Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904), who described the beauty of the
body in movement, the erect posture and ease and grace with which these
women walked while carrying heavy loads on their heads:

From the most tender age – perhaps around five years – she learns to
carry small objects on her head: a bowl of rice, a ‘dobanne’ of red
 Georges Hébert (1875–1957)   27

earth filled with water, or an orange placed on a plate. Soon she can
keep these objects in balance, without the assistance of her hands. […]
When she is around nine or ten years old, she knows how to carry a
basket or a wooden tray with high and flared edges, relatively heavy,
containing ten to fifteen kilos of goods. She accompanies her mother
or her older sister during a long journey of peddling, walking barefoot
for twenty or twenty-­five kilometres a day; when she is sixteen or
seventeen, she has become a robust, supple, vigorous and solid girl, all
tendons and firm flesh. She wears a tray or a large basket, and carries
a burden of twenty to seventy-­five kilos. […] Created by the extra-
ordinary necessities of her environment, […] this is a type of human
thoroughbred, representing the true secret of grace: the economy of
strength.…
(Hearn 1890: pp. 107–108)

Hébert considered carrying weight on one’s head an ‘educational exer-

cise’ to straighten the spine, improve balance and walk with grace:

Take a pile of clothing wrapped in a towel, a pouffe, or any other

object that can drop without breaking. Balance it on top of your head
and try to walk while holding it with one hand at first and then
without any support. Walk forward, backward, sideways, turn and
make a ‘figure eight’. Increase the difficulty of the exercise by taking
objects that are increasingly challenging to maintain in equilibrium, a
very high object for instance or an object with a flat base. This exercise
[…] requires effort in all directions, especially effort in forward flexion
and lateral extension, twisting or rotation of the upper body, as well
as of the head.
(Hébert 1912)

Hébert also observed the Uruguayan partisans of the revolutionary

leader Aparacio Saravia (1855–1904) (from 3 to 6 September 1897 in Mon-
tevideo), the ‘macheretos’ of the War of Independence (14–21 July 1898 in
Guantanamo and Santiago de Cuba), the ‘guerilleros’ of the War of a Thou-
sand Days in Colombia (from 6 December 1900 to 1 January 1901), Amer-
ican sports students at the University of Philadelphia (7–25 May 1901), and
the bodybuilders of Attila’s Athletic Studio and School of Physical Culture
on Broadway in New York (4 July 1901). Hébert was intrigued by how the
Uruguayan, Cuban and Colombian guerrillas outperformed troops trained
in a European or American way from a physical, virile and mental per-
spective. He specifically emphasised their extreme agility, adaptation to
rugged terrain, flexibility and natural instinct, which the sports special-
isation of American students and the mechanistic conception of American
physical culture (Philippe-­Meden 2017) were unable to produce.
28   P. Philippe-Meden

On 8 May 1902, following the eruption of Mont Pelée on the island of

Martinique, Hébert participated in a rescue operation of the population
(Guiraud 1999). The experience marked him so much that he put in place
a new method of training and physical education for a simple and utilitar-
ian purpose: altruism. Although he had received a thorough scientific
education at the Naval School, his ideas underlying the NM were the result
of an anthropological approach of the senses rather than scientism.

Naturalism against scientism

In the beginning of the twentieth century, a vast range of methods of train-
ing and physical education existed including the Swedish gymnastics
method of Pehr Henrik Ling (1776–1839), promoted in France by Philippe
Tissié (1852–1935); the utilitarian gymnastics of Pierre de Coubertin
(1863–1937); the method consisting of organs of the body performing
gymnastic exercises developed by Edmond Desbonnet (1867–1953); the
ancient Greece inspired gymnastics of Raymond Duncan (1874–1966),
brother of the American barefoot dancer Isadora Duncan (1877–1927);
and the rhythmic gymnastics of the Swiss musician Émile Jaques-­Dalcroze
(1865–1950). In France, the work of the positivist Georges Demenÿ
(1850–1917) became so influential that gymnasts turned to scientism
rather than empiricism.
Georges Demenÿ, early pioneer of cinematography and biomechanics,
and author of Les bases scientifiques de l’éducation physique (1902), con-
ducted his work at the Cercle de Gymnastique rationnel and later at the
Station physiologique du Collège de France (Pociello 1999). Hébert recog-
nised the importance of his systematic research that demonstrated the
effects of physical activity to be hygienic (health), aesthetic (beauty), eco-
nomical (force) and moral (mental). He also acknowledged Demenÿ’s
method that was inexpensive, adaptable, applicable anywhere, scalable
and attractive to all ages and to both women and men.
From a technical point of view, most of the gymnastic methods of this
period were variations of the old Prussian drill: 

[t]he first principle of the drill consists of breaking down movements

into simpler segments that are practised and repeated in isolation. Body
movements – according to the second principle – are then standardised
and triggered by an external command so that they can be directed […].
The third principle determines the formation of groups by addition.
Military units are positioned in predetermined geometric figures, which
move without interference of human or circumstantial variables. The
purpose of the drill […] is to produce a soldier in control of his emo-
tions, which favours domination on the battlefield.…
(Pradier 2000: p. 266)
 Georges Hébert (1875–1957)   29

In Hébert’s view, this Taylorisation of human beings, geometrisation of the

body and decomposition, standardisation and repetition of movements
executed on command, destroy imagination and creativity.
Scientist-­gymnasts such as Demenÿ and Tissié had an analytical concep-
tion of movement and preferred exercises that were static, stationary,
repetitive, requiring moderate effort and with a strong focus on the form
of the exercise. The resulting movements had effects that corrected bad
posture and were precise, localised, orthopaedic and hygienic, but neg-
lected cognitive development. For more outspoken artistic gymnasts, such
as Desbonne, Duncan and Jaques-­Dalcroze, the body became poetry in
motion and expressed the world of emotions, passion and subjective
experience. However, their methods were still so technical that the aes-
thetic experience was more scientistic than natural. Movement was trig-
gered by external elements, such as the antiquity for Greek gymnastics and
music for rhythmic gymnastics. This means that in the latter example,
music controls movement, whereas in a natural and spontaneous
context,  music will follow movement. Georges Hébert devised a method
that gave priority to synthesis; natural movements that are dynamic and
diverse, progressing in a natural environment and with beneficial effects on
the most important physiological organs (e.g. lungs, heart). Education and
subsequent control of the body, cognitive functions and the surroundings
are based on connecting, intertwining and fusion of internal and external
impulses of the subject and the environment that are in a symbiotic
relationship.
The essence of Hébert’s reform consisted of replacing the gymnastic
methods in vogue with a method based on the execution of ten types of
body techniques, called natural or utilitarian activities. These body tech-
niques are those for which the human body is built: walking, running,
jumping, climbing, lifting, throwing, swimming, self-­defence, quadrupedal
movement and balancing. These were first presented in 1532 by François
Rabelais (1483 or 1494–1553). Hébert adopted Rabelais’ method of body
techniques without adding or removing anything (Hébert 1909). The
Hebertist performed these exercises in a state of near-­nudity as far as that
was tolerated by the moral police at the time.
Georges Hébert introduced practising ‘nude’ in the first place for a prac-
tical reason: it allowed him to easily see how a movement was performed
and to correct it. It also reflects the influence of Bernarr Macfadden’s
hygiene theories (1868–1955). Hébert translated several of his articles on
heliotherapy, aerotherapy, hydrotherapy and vegetarianism to improve
physical resistance and endurance (Philippe-­Meden 2016a). Hébert also
had a connection to the naturist physician Paul Carton (1875–1947) that
gave him medical endorsement for the use of the NM to work with chil-
dren (Carton 1935). The third reason for near-­nude practice was that a
suntan enhanced physical beauty.
30   P. Philippe-Meden

The ten families of natural exercises must ideally be executed in the fol-
lowing conditions: the movements should be continuous, at a rapid and
sustained pace and progressing on rugged terrain in a natural environment.
The objective is to overcome a series of obstacles that require physical and
cognitive qualities: strength, endurance, resistance, speed, skilfulness,
adaptation and willpower. If a rough terrain in nature is not available, an
obstacle course specifically arranged for the purpose can be used. The NM
body techniques must always follow a sequence of exercises that are effi-
cient and enable the practitioner to be in harmony with him/herself and
nature, but this is always subjected to an overriding moral idea: altruism.
In Hebertism, altruism is understood in a horizontal and biological sense
(vital, corporeal and instinctive forces) as illustrated by his motto: Being
strong to be useful, being strong to rescue. It also has a vertical and spir-
itual sense because it embodies an ontological relation to Nature. Georges
Hébert’s altruistic naturalism has been seen to be a way to access Christian
esotericism (Philippe-­Meden 2014c).
Hebertist pedagogy makes use of imagery and fun as key elements for
learning. The Hebertist enacts the creations of theatre figures such as Léon
Chancerel (1886–1965):

[w]e will be the windmills attacked by Don Quixote; we will be the

galley slaves on the bench; we will be the cat that tiptoes or Baloo, the
philosopher-­bear that lumbers heavily, ensuring that for every step, all
the support of the body is on the leg that is moving. […] Every edu-
cator will easily invent stories and characters to dramatise the various
elements of a typical Hebertist lesson.
(Chancerel 1941: p. 36)

The NM is transmitted in a natural way through ‘an action mime’ (Lecoq

1997: p. 82).
Hebertist body ecology can be adapted to variations in space, time and
performance. This is reflected in the evaluation system that Hébert pro-
poses in Le Code de la Force (1911), with performance scores based on
physiological data (e.g. centimetres, grams, seconds) rather than an assess-
ment on the effects of the body based on anatomical data (e.g. tape
measure, rachigraphy, spirometry, pneumography). Hebertist body ecology
is based on three principles: action, adaptation and altruism. But for
Georges Hébert, the NM is not a dogma: it represents life force and it can
therefore be perfected in accordance with the level of experience and
circumstances.
Hébert’s naturalism contains some rational and scientific elements, but
it has more points in common with the transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo
Emerson (1803–1882) and Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) or the
pragmatism of William James (1842–1910) and John Dewey (1859–1952).
 Georges Hébert (1875–1957)   31

Georges Hébert’s focus on subjective experience, the senses, psychology,

pedagogy and the development of the self in a global physical, mental and
moral context, is an approach that is similar to Edouard Claparède’s
(1873–1940), Ovide Decroly’s (1871–1932) and Maria Montessori’s
(1870–1952).

Institutional impact of the Natural Method

From 1904 to 1912, the NM was test piloted on 1000 Marine fusiliers at
the French military school, École du Bataillon de Lorient, with half of the
population of soldiers renewed every six months. It was also tested on 800
children and adolescents from 14 to 17 years old at the École des mousses
de Brest in 1908 and about 20 instructors and 50 girls at the Collège
d’athlètes de Reims in 1913. In 1914, the NM as practised at the Collège
d’athlètes de Reims was also taught to children in hospices and schools in
the city for roll-­out to physical education for children on a massive scale,
but this was interrupted by the war of 1914–1918. During the war, the
NM was adopted in 1916 by the Fourth Army of General Gouraud
(1867–1946) for rehabilitation of soldiers after injury.
After the war, from 1919–1925, Georges Hébert developed physical
education for women and children in the community La Palestra, close to
mundane Deauville (Philippe-­Meden 2014b). He also worked on
L’Éducation physique, the journal that he relaunched in 1922 with an
explicit motto: ‘Physical education must be promoted by the schools. The
teachers shall be the masters’. In 1925, without consulting Hébert, the
French State incorporated the NM into the Règlement général d’Éducation
physique (Ministry of War, 1925). The Hebertists criticised this regulation
for being a ‘watered down’ version of the NM – and for having been
drafted by the military.
Many diverse institutions adopted the NM at this time, including les
Compagnons de l’Université Nouvelle (1919), la Ligue internationale
d’Éducation nouvelle (1921), l’École du Vieux-­Colombier (1921), la Com-
pagnie des Chemins de Fer du Nord (1922), the schools of the Michelin Tyre
factories (1925) and the Scouts (1926). Georges Hébert became internation-
ally renowned. Following the International Congress on Physical Education
held in Paris in 1913, his influence reached physical education institutes in
Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Argentina and Brazil, and it then spread to the
USSR (1925), the Republic of Cuba (1927), Poland (1928), Bolivia (1930),
Vietnam (1934), Lebanon (1945), Jordan (1956) and beyond.
In the mid-­1930s, Hébert gradually withdrew from French Society:
‘From 1936 onward, [he] started to work on the Physical Education (…)
by the Natural Method that would take him 20 years, with the fifth and
last volume published post-­mortem in 1959’ (Terret 2006). In 1937, he
refused to be part of the Groupement Hébertiste, which was established by
32   P. Philippe-Meden

Raoul Dautry, the director of the State Railways (1880–1951), the pub-
lisher Henri Vuibert (1857–1945) and the Inspector of Education Ernest
Loisel (1892–1943). In 1938, Georges Hébert announced that he would
have nothing further to do with the Hebertist movement.
When the Vichy Government (1940–1944) came to power in 1940,
some Hebertists became associated with the regime. According to the Offi-
cial Instructions of 1 June 1941 for general education activities, the NM
was taken as the basis for national doctrine. However, Hébert was never
consulted:

[…] the idea of a meeting or association with Georges Hébert, if it was

ever mentioned, never materialised. As a matter of fact, word had it
that the old master was somewhat feared at Vichy (…). [There] was,
to my knowledge, never an encounter between the author of the NM
and the authorities of Vichy.
(Gay-­Lescot 1995: p. 29)

In 1942, the Groupement Hébertiste was institutionalised as the French Fed-

eration of Physical Education. Georges Hébert refused to be the honorary
president (Terret 2002), reminding everyone that he had ‘always been
against federalism and state subsidies’. A very explicit statement was pub-
lished in the press in 1938: ‘[…] concerning [his] position of independence
vis-­à-vis any group, including the Groupement Hébertiste’ (Hébert 1942).
At the Liberation of France, Hebertism continued to play an educational
role in various civilian and military communities. In 1955, the fiftieth anni-
versary of the NM was celebrated at the Arènes de Lutèce in Paris under
the aegis of the President of the Republic René Coty (1982–1962). On the
programme were various demonstrations by the National School of
Military Physical Training of Antibes, the Centre of Physical Education of
the Marines at Saint-­Mandrier, the Paris Fire Brigade, the Athletic Associ-
ation of the Prefecture Police of Paris, the Scouts de France, the elite
National School for Girls’ Physical Education, the School for Construction
Vocations and the French national railway company.
However, the influence of Hebertism was starting to fade and became
obsolete after the wars of Indochina (1946–1954) and Algeria
(1954–1962). During this period of relative peace, military training under-
went reform. The French army was involved in very few military opera-
tions abroad and this meant that French reputability on an international
level was in decline. Under the Fontainebleau doctrine (1975–1990), it was
planned that the army would henceforward be used to extend the actions
of national education to the field of sport:

General de Gaulle entrusted the military institution (…) with the

mission to prepare our young athletes for the Olympic Games […] the
 Georges Hébert (1875–1957)   33

desire to seduce the French youth in this period which saw a clash with
civilian society (wars of decolonisation, May ’68), made it revert to
media coverage of sports to propagate a new image. […] There is a lot
of criticism that it [the doctrine of Fontainebleau] is a failure and it is
not the role of the army to take on National Sports Education [… ].
(Lapouge 2012: pp. 515–519)

In parallel with the military world, the appetite in civilian society for new
outdoor physical activities, such as boardsports and alternative practices
such as yoga ended up obliterating Hebertism. Added to that, it was
perhaps not surprising that the Sexual Revolution generation could not
identify itself with a method of physical, virile and moral education.

The strong comeback of the Natural Method

In the 1990s, Georges Hébert was represented in the history of sport as a
negative, conservative and reactionary person, who successively broke
away from or opposed the military, medical and sports approaches of
physical education. He was a defender of natural equilibriums, and
defended empiricism against scientism, synthesis against analytism and
utilitarianism against Olympism. Although he preached absolute independ-
ence of the mind, he was above all ‘antimodern’ – not in the sense that he
was yearning for a return to the past, filled with inert nostalgia but in the
sense of a vigorous renewal with the past to invent one’s own modernity
(Banu 2013). In France between 1990 and 2000, the NM was only taught
in history books or by a few irreducible Hebertists such as at the Centre
Hébert of Nantes.
In the beginning of the French army’s involvement in Afghanistan
(2001), when it became clear that sport had failed to successfully train
combatants for rugged terrain, the NM was dug up as ‘an old concept with
modern virtues’ and used to prepare experts in Military and Sports Train-
ing and Physical Education (Entraînement et éducation physique militaire
et sportif, E2PMS):

[t]his method prioritises the adaptability of the environment and the

soldier by gradually increasing the complexity of the exercise. It con-
siders the environment and offers the advantage of managing con-
straints in time and space. It is therefore legitimate to say that it is
suitable for various terrains, in particular OPEX [external operations],
and it can be put in place with very limited means.…
(Flourette 2009)

As a leading figure in the NM at the National Centre for Defense Sports,

senior instructor Roland Gonnet explains:
34   P. Philippe-Meden

Although it is legitimate to say that [NM] is not the right tool to reach
optimal personal achievement in a sports discipline, it does remain the
best way to learn the basics of a sport. When you are initiated to a
sport via a Hebertist lesson-­type, the sensation of being able to
perform a set of simple moves without any effort will allow you to
implement a protocol of effective and thought through actions and this
will have a real impact on the physical engagement. Need and instinct
are very powerful catalysts. Developing one will increase the other,
and applied to a soldier you will have a real chance that in particularly
harsh combat operations as we are seeing more and more, the poten-
tial of an entire company will be improved.
(Gonnet 2010)

In the same period, the NM has attracted renewed interest in the civilian
world from alternative sports communities (Lebreton 2010): David Belle’s
‘Parkour’, Sebastien Foucan’s ‘Freerunning’, Erwann Le Corre’s ‘MovNat’,
and ‘Athletic Explorations’ by John-­Edouard Ehlinger, to name only a few.
Many have turned to the Hébert-Sport’Nat® section of the Belgian Federa-
tion of Hebertism because they are seeking a meaningful activity and are
disappointed with the mindset in sport that focuses on competition and
spectacularity. In France, Georges Hébert’s work may have been forgotten
but Hebertism is still practised in a ‘traditional’ way in Belgium (Philippe-­
Meden 2016b).
As sport is plagued by doping (pharmaceutical, genetic and others) in
the race to extend human physiological limits, Hebertism is perceived as an
ecology-­of-the-­self approach or eco-­athleticism, with the moral dimension
acting as a bridge between the twentieth and twenty-­first centuries.
However, the generational divide between the Hebertists and the neo-­
Hebertists does call for a discussion about the issues of transgenerational
transmission, the relationship between tradition and ultra-­contemporaneity,
the need for innovation of the technology and perhaps also the pedagogy
of the Natural Method.

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Chapter 3

The concept of ‘body schema’

in Merleau-­Ponty’s account of
embodied subjectivity1
Jan Halák

Our idea of the body codetermines our idea of

subjectivity
In the second book of his Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and
to a Phenomenological Philosophy (1989), Edmund Husserl introduced a
perspective on our body that had the potential to bring an entirely new
view on subjectivity. Distinguishing ‘one’s body’ (‘Leib’), a body inter-
twined with a ‘soul’, from mere physical bodies (‘Körper’), Husserl demon-
strated the functional characteristics of the living body that cannot be
grasped exclusively from a third-­person perspective (ibid.: pp.  152–169).
Of course, our body is part of the objective world, ‘integrated into the
causal nexus of material nature’ (ibid.: p. 167), and linked to other objects
by causal, physico-­chemical relationships. Yet, apart from all the objective
properties it shares with other objects, our body possesses a complex of
experience-­related values that an external object can never have: it is the
‘zero point of orientation’ (ibid.: p. 165f.) for the perception of objects; it
is a ‘bearer of localised sensations’ (ibid.: p.  162); and I can ‘freely’ or
‘spontaneously’ move it (ibid.: p. 168), which makes it the ‘organ’ and the
‘means for all my perception’ (ibid.: p. 167).
By opening up this new ‘phenomenological’ perspective on the body,
Husserl took a step that founded a twentieth century tradition of interpret-
ing the subject’s body that breaks with a long and well-­rooted European
tradition of understanding subjectivity. Ever since Descartes defined our
body as a ‘res extensa’, a pure material extension foreign to the essence of
subjectivity (Descartes 2008: Second meditation), Western culture has
understood the body as essentially irrelevant for subjective processes. In
other words, even if we accept that our body factually limits our subjective
experience in some way, we do not usually understand it as something
defining its very nature. (On the other hand, we certainly cannot give a suf-
ficient account of what we experience as subjectivity by simply reducing it
to a third-­person, objectivistic explanation.) Inversely, a transformation of
the idea of our body, particularly as introduced in some of Husserl’s
38   J. Halák

descriptions, also requires a transformation of the definition of the subject

– ‘mind’ or ‘consciousness’. If my body is no longer an object among other
objects, a machine inexplicably connected to me, but rather the ‘vehicle’,
‘agent’ or ‘fulcrum’ of my existence, as Merleau-­Ponty wrote (2012: p. 84,
1968: p. 171, 1964c: p. 229), then the essence of my subjectivity is linked
to the way I rely on my body and to the possibility of how I can eventually
transform it.
In Husserl, the possibility of such a reversal of our idea of subjectivity
based on a reconsideration of the role of the body is without doubt
present. Contemporary commentators claim, for example, that Husserl’s
phenomenological notion of embodied experience offers an alternative to
mind-­body dualism (Behnke 1996, 2011), or that his interpretation of
embodiment ultimately leads us to consider the subjectivity as a funda-
mentally historical and social phenomenon (in a Merleau-­Pontyan context,
cf. e.g. Zahavi 2002). Merleau-­Ponty himself, however, did not have at his
disposal the vast corpus of Husserl’s posthumously published research
manuscripts on which contemporary commentators usually rely. Based
principally on the works published during Husserl’s lifetime, the second
book of Ideas (Husserl 1989), and several late fragments (Husserl 2002;
cf. Van Breda 1962), Merleau-­Ponty perceived Husserl’s innovative
account of the lived body as not quite in harmony with the usual Husser-
lian conceptual framework based on the idea of correlation (cf. e.g.
Merleau-­Ponty 1970: p. 82, 2000b: pp. 303f.).
For indeed, from the intellectual perspective for which every possible
phenomenon has to be considered as ‘constituted’ in the consciousness,
that is, as ‘correlated’ to the meaning-­giving ‘acts’ of the consciousness, the
lived body is endowed with ‘abnormal’ qualities (Husserl 1989: pp. 63ff.,
1973: p. 280). As Husserl writes, in some of the oft-­quoted passages from
his Ideas: ‘… it is a remarkably imperfectly constituted thing’ (Husserl
1989: p.  167). The obvious reason for this is that, as an object of con-
sciousness, the body simultaneously seems to contribute to the way in
which consciousness relates to objects. Consequently, but no less para-
doxically, the unity of the body is described by Husserl as the unity of co-­
apprehension of the subjective and objective dimensions, and therefore a
‘double unity’ (or a ‘two-­fold unity’, ‘Doppeleinheit’; Husserl 1989:
p. 170), a ‘sensing thing’, a ‘subjective object’ (Husserl 1989: p. 159, 1971:
p.  124; quoted in Merleau-­Ponty 1964b: p.  166). (For Merleau-­Ponty’s
explicit interpretation of the second book of Husserl’s Ideas, cf. in par-
ticular Merleau-­Ponty 1964b: pp. 166ff., 1995: pp. 104–113, 2000c)
Merleau-­Ponty soon took notice of Husserl’s difficulties with the phe-
nomenon of the body and wanted no longer to confront them as para-
doxes, obstacles or exceptions, but to accept them as a point of departure
for the development of a new philosophical perspective (cf. e.g. Merleau-­
Ponty 1996: p. 380). From this perspective, he elaborated their description
 The concept of ‘body schema’   39

with the help of Gestalt psychology, psychopathology, physiology and

psychoanalysis. Merleau-­Ponty’s early analyses of the pathology of percep-
tion thus already show, for example, that the unity of the body is not given
as a system of correlation of certain subjective sensations to certain
objective qualities (Husserl’s ‘double unity’), but rather that the body-­
object shows itself as a difference or deviation from the norm established
by the body-­subject, the performer of perceptual intentions which estab-
lishes the standards of interaction with the environment. On the other
hand, the body-­subject does not establish these standards by itself and as if
from outside of the world, but precisely based on the way in which it
organises its relationship with the realities within the world, thanks to the
body and symbolic systems functionally analogical to it. The body-­object
and the body-­subject are therefore not irreducible phenomenological and
ontological ‘strata’ of the body, which would mutually exclude each other,
as in Husserl. Rather, both these dimensions have to be understood as
abstracted from the original unity of a subject always already intentionally
related to the world, but also situated within it.
The question remains, however, how the original unity of the body,
which appears as ‘pre-­subjective’ and ‘pre-­objective’, can be positively
grasped and formulated. We need a systematic conceptual framework,
different from Husserlian correlationism, in which the circularity in the
body would not appear as a paradox – where it would be accepted as an
original phenomenon, and thus serve as a starting point for a new, non-­
Cartesian interpretation of subjectivity. Although we can find elements for
such a solution in Merleau-­Ponty’s early work (1963, 2012), he himself
later saw much of it as insufficient, precisely because it did not provide
such a new framework and only showed that neither of the two reduction-
ist positions is valid by itself. In the following, we will see how the notion
of body schema later served for Merleau-­Ponty as one of the major ele-
ments for the conceptual solution of the problem we have just outlined.

The circularity between the experiencing and the

experienced
First, let us more precisely describe how an embodied subject relates to its
surrounding world. Such exemplary phenomena as spatial orientation,
visual depth or movement attest to an intrinsic mutual reference between a
living body and its environment. These phenomena are never exclusively
‘subjective’ representations or ‘objective’ givens. Based on examples taken
from Max Wertheimer’s experiments (Wertheimer 1912), Merleau-­Ponty
showed, for example, that an ‘objectively’ or ‘subjectively’ identical situ-
ation can be perceived both as ‘oblique’ or ‘vertical’, depending on how
the subject concretely ‘appropriates’ the surrounding space (cf. Merleau-­
Ponty 2011: pp.  41–54, cf. 2012: pp.  253–265). That is, our sense of
40   J. Halák

‘verticality’ is closely linked to, and dependent on, what we accomplish in

such a ‘vertical’ space and how it phenomenally reacts to our actions (e.g.
when we walk upright, the ground moves horizontally). The perception of
orientation such as ‘verticality’ is thus a norm for some activity, a tempo-
rary ‘standard’ open to transformations depending on how this activity can
be concretely realised.
Merleau-­Ponty’s aim was to generalise these findings. In these and
similar cases, a subject experiences in the world something that is funda-
mentally linked to his/her attitudes, possibilities, capacities and abilities;
and vice versa, the subject has only these powers at his/her disposal inas-
much as the appropriate surroundings call out for them. When I walk, for
example, and I perceive the space between trees as a void, the perceptual
meaning I experience is linked to my ability to move and thereby to control
the way in which my spatial environment phenomenally transforms. A
subject conceived as a contemplating conscience, a pure synthesising activ-
ity or the ‘faculty of judging’ (Descartes 2008: p.  23) would lack any
reasonable resource permitting it to differentiate between an ‘obstacle’ and
‘walkable space’, for both phenomena would be ‘objects’ synthesised from
aleatory bits of ‘sensory givens’ according to a neutral a priori logic. In
reality, however, a landscape is a passable space that invites me to invest
my capacities to change my position; a face is the site of gestures of which
I myself am capable and the meaning of which I can situate into my own
emotional and cognitive world. When they are turned upside down, for
example, a transcendental consciousness considers them only as identical
objects from a different perspective, whereas, in fact, they are no longer
the sites for my powers to be employed and therefore become completely
different realities, which are foreign and unrecognisable for me.
The perceptual experience in general thus contradicts our natural belief
that the objects we perceive exist, for us, independently of whether we
experience them and which of our powers they invite us to invest in them.
Merleau-­Ponty showed that the meaning of the perceptual world is given
to us as dynamic mutual referring of a subject-­related perspective, attitude,
or activity and object-­related availability for that perspective or attitude.
Although we cannot develop this question more in detail here, Merleau-­
Ponty also believed that this description of perception requires a radical
transformation of our idea of understanding or intelligence in general and
that correspondingly, the role of language and all symbolic systems has to
be understood as analogical to the role our body has in the perceptual
experience as the agent of a particular ‘grasping’ (Merleau-­Ponty claims,
for example, that the language ‘is a second body’; 1995: p. 273).
 The concept of ‘body schema’   41

The subject of circular relationship with the world:

the living body as body schema
When Merleau-­Ponty attempted to revise his definition of the embodied
subject in his 1953 lectures (2011) so he could fully account for the circu-
larity in the experience which we have just described, he took as a point of
departure the notion of ‘body schema’ originally developed by neurologists
(Merleau-­Ponty’s primary sources are Head 1920; Head and Holmes
1911–1912; Lhermitte 1939; Schilder 1923, 1950). According to Head’s
seminal definition, the body schema is a preconscious ‘standard against
which all subsequent changes of posture are measured’ (Head and Holmes
1911–1912: p. 187; quoted in Schilder 1950: p. 12; cf. Gallagher 2005a:
p. 19; cf. Merleau-­Ponty 2011: pp. 138f., 141). Based mainly on the defini-
tions of Head and Schilder, Merleau-­Ponty understood the body schema as
a practical intuitive diagram of one’s relationships with the world, a
‘register’ where all of one’s attitudes and actions are ‘noted’, and which
therefore provides the reference norm in contrast to which one perceives
something as specifically spatially and temporally related to one’s body
and to its activities (Merleau-­Ponty 1970: p. 7, cf. 1995: pp. 270ff., 2011:
pp. 126ff., 2012: pp. 100ff.).
In 1953, Merleau-­Ponty develops his position from Phenomenology of
Perception (2012), where he already studied the concept of body schema
and rejected its early ‘associationistic’ and later ‘formalist’ interpretations,
which attempted to conceive it as the result of an empirical accumulation
or as an a priori form (Merleau-­Ponty 2012: pp.  100–105). On the one
hand, such disturbances of one’s relationship with the body as autotopag-
nosia (in which a subject has lost the capacity to grasp conceptually some
parts of his/her own body, but has maintained practical access to it) shows
that the body schema is not a set of ideas or representations of conscious-
ness, a mental entity (Merleau-­Ponty 2011: p. 139; in contemporary liter-
ature, cf. e.g. Paillard 1999). On the other hand, the body schema is not a
body-­object either, a physical entity, as we can see in the example of
certain pathological illusions, such as the amputee’s ‘phantom limb’. In
these cases, the ‘overall practical activity’ continues following the original
body schema, in spite of the fact that the subject has lost the objective
physical part on which the activity needs to be based (Merleau-­Ponty
2011: pp. 137–140, cf. 2012: pp. 78–91; in contemporary literature, cf. in
particular Gallagher 2005a: pp. 86–107).
The body schema has to be more specifically defined as a preliminary
‘attitude’, ‘privileged position’ or ‘point of departure’ that we need to have
at our disposal while confronting a particular situation in the world and
the objects in it (Merleau-­Ponty 2011: pp.  133, 138f.). Due to the
necessary mutual implication between the perceived phenomenon and the
body as the point of departure for an action and the background for a
42   J. Halák

perception, our position and attitude must be continually readjusted

according to what we intend to perceive and how precisely this intention is
fulfilled or not by our environment. As a preliminarily established struc-
ture, the body schema is therefore continually transformed and ‘reani-
mated’ via movement, differentiated and dedifferentiated. The world in
front of us acquires a different level of structuration depending on our rel-
ative (in)ability to adopt an appropriate position, posture or to carry out
an appropriate movement. In sleep or at rest, for example, when we are
not facing any practical situation to deal with, the body schema loses its
differentiation and becomes less structured (cf. Merleau-­Ponty 1970: p. 9,
2010: pp. 138ff., 2011: pp. 160–165). In such situations, correlatively to
the lowered level of articulation of our body schema, the differences
between, for example, left and right or above and below become vaguer.
Similarly, the ‘compensatory’ movements in patients with apraxia can be
interpreted as attempts to bring back the pathologically weakened articu-
lation of their body schema (Merleau-­Ponty 2011: pp.  139–141). In con-
trast to these cases where the articulation of the body schema is weakened,
situations requiring our active participation demand a particular position,
posture or movement of the body, which in turn contributes to their finer
and differentiated perception.
These above descriptions of the body schema require us to change our
understanding of the relationships between our ‘practical’ body (the body as
a departure point and referential norm for our actions and perceptions in the
world) and the body-­object (the body as the target of our actions and percep-
tions). The body as ‘schema’, that is as a dynamic norm and agent of percep-
tion, has itself the capacity to ‘sediment’, or acquire the function or the value
of a body-­object (Merleau-­Ponty used the expression ‘to sediment’ repeatedly
in this context, cf. e.g. 2011: p. 148). Based on his interpretation of Schilder
(1950), Merleau-­Ponty asserted that the visual layer of the body schema – the
image we have of our own body from the exterior – results from a fixation or
objectification of our practical-­motor body schema (Merleau-­Ponty 2011:
p.  148; in the more recent literature, this relationship is described between
‘body-­image’ and ‘body-­schema’, cf. the following section of this chapter).
The same idea is shown negatively by the fact that a subject dealing with
apraxia still has access to his body as an object of perception, speech and ges-
tural pointing, but no longer as a point of departure for an action (cf. the
well-­known case of patient Schneider, Gelb and Goldstein 1920; Merleau-­
Ponty 2011: pp. 139ff., 2012: pp. 139ff.; for a contemporary description, cf.
e.g. Paillard 1999); this means that, in apraxia, the sedimented, objectified
structure remains, while the set of practical functions that helped to build it is
damaged and inaccessible.
If the body-­object were one of the fundaments of our practical body,
such relative dependencies and disconnections, as seen for example in
apraxia and autotopoagnosia, would be incomprehensible and factually
 The concept of ‘body schema’   43

impossible. Merleau-­Ponty’s interpretation of the body schema thus

excluded the widely spread idea that the body as performer of our inten-
tions presupposes the body-­object as one of its preliminary components or
layers. In Merleau-­Ponty’s understanding, this thesis is valid on the episte-
mological level, as we have seen in the examples of our perception of the
body, but also on the ontological level, for the very idea of the ontological
dimension of objects must be traced back to the context of the constitution
of the object in our (bodily) experience (cf. Merleau-­Ponty 1995:
pp. 104–113; Merleau-­Ponty 2000: pp. 215–234).
Despite this partial clarification in the 1953 lectures, the difference and
exact relationship between the practical ‘infrastructure’ and the objectified
‘superstructure’ of the body remained an open question for Merleau-­Ponty.
He found that the objectified body must be ‘connected’ to the practical,
but also that it acquires a ‘relative independence’ (cf. Merleau-­Ponty 2011:
p. 157). Inversely, we must be able to maintain the objectified superstruc-
ture in contact with the practical infrastructure, or it becomes, as in some
pathologies, a mere ‘mask’ of the original bodily functions, their simplified
and reduced imitation (cf. Merleau-­Ponty 2011: pp. 148, 157f.). Merleau-­
Ponty eventually asserted even more strongly that whatever is built upon
the practical infrastructures continually re-­established on the level of the
body schema, including symbolic systems such as language, ‘would col-
lapse if ever the body ceases to prompt their operation and install them in
the world and our life’ (Merleau-­Ponty 1970: p. 9).
Despite its somewhat open-­ended character, Merleau-­Ponty’s 1953
interpretation of the body schema sheds considerable light on the subject-­
object paradox we have seen with Husserl: between the body-­performer or
the dynamic reference level for the experience and the body-­object, there is
neither parallelism or one-­directional determinism, but dynamic circular
referring which, moreover, results in an asymmetric relationship, in which
the body-­performer ‘reanimates’ our relationships with the world by differ-
entiation, whereas the objectified superstructures based on it enable to fix
these relationships by ‘sedimentation’ and thereby make them resistant to
change. Merleau-­Ponty presents here an elaborated systematic interpre­
tation of the relationship between the body-­performer and the body-­object,
a relationship which still seems to be far from clarified even in the
contemporary discussions in neurology, cognitive science and their
philosophical interpretation. We will see this point in more detail in the
following section.

The originality of Merleau-­P onty from the

contemporary perspective
Contemporary scholars dealing with embodiment underline that it is neces-
sary to clearly distinguish ‘body image’ and ‘body schema’ (Gallagher
44   J. Halák

1986, 1995, 2005a: pp.  17–40, 2005b; Gallagher and Cole 1995:
pp. 369ff.; Gallagher and Zahavi 2008: pp. 145f.; Paillard 1999: p. 197).
Gallagher pointed out ‘a long tradition of ambiguous terminological usage’
of body image and body schema in many disciplines, in particular in neu-
rology and its philosophical interpretations (Gallagher and Cole 1995:
p. 370; cf. Gallagher 1986). With respect to this difference, ‘body image’
has recently been defined as ‘a conscious idea or mental representation that
one has of one’s own body’; an experience of one’s body as one’s ‘inten-
tional object’, which can acquire several forms, such as percept, concept or
affect (Gallagher 2005a: p. 25). In contrast to this, ‘body schema’ has been
defined a set of ‘various neural motor programs command[ing] muscle
groups’ and remaining ‘below the threshold of my awareness and outside
of my personal control’ (Gallagher and Cole 1995: pp. 369, 373); or as ‘a
system of sensory-­motor capacities that function without awareness or the
necessity of perceptual monitoring’ (Gallagher 2005a: p.  24; with an
almost identical definition in Gallagher 2009: p. 118).
The difference between body image and body schema was also implicitly
addressed by Merleau-­Ponty, who was never prone to the terminological
and conceptual confusion criticised by Gallagher and other contemporary
authors. Although several of Merleau-­Ponty’s neurological sources did not
clearly maintain this difference (Lhermitte 1939; Schilder 1950), through-
out both Phenomenology of Perception (2012) and his 1953 lectures
(2011), Merleau-­Ponty interpreted Head’s and Schilders’s ideas under the
heading of the concept of ‘schéma corporel’ precisely in order to distin-
guish it clearly from an ‘object of knowledge’, image or representation
intentionally possessed by the consciousness (Merleau-­Ponty 2011: p. 140;
cf. Carman 1999: p.  218; Merleau-­Ponty 2012: pp.  100ff; translator’s
introduction, Merleau-­Ponty 2012: p.  XLIX; Saint-­Aubert 2011: p.  29).
For Merleau-­Ponty, the body schema is not an idea grasped by our under-
standing, because it is has perceptual character, it is ‘concrete, visible as a
drawing’, it provides ‘knowledge without concept, totality without idea’, it
‘does not need interpretation’. On the other hand, the body schema is not
mere particular ‘contents of perception’, because it ‘indicates an order’, it
‘indicates the essential’ (Merleau-­Ponty 2011: pp.  133f.). As a reference
level, or a norm of experience, Merleau-­Ponty understands the body
schema in contrast to both particular sensory ‘contents’ and general ‘idea’
which can be formulated in language.
The importance of these distinctions becomes more apparent when we
open the discussion of the relative phenomenal presence of the body
schema and, correlatively, the question of how to situate it in relation to
the ontological dimensions of subject and object.
Paillard, for example, recently stated that the schema is ‘registered’ but
‘not perceived’, that it provides a ‘clear localisation without sensory detec-
tion’ (1999: pp. 198, 201). Gallagher and Cole (1995) relied on the notion
 The concept of ‘body schema’   45

of ‘proprioception’, ‘proprioceptive awareness’ or ‘proprioceptive informa-

tion’, which they defined as ‘a felt experience of bodily position’ consisting
in ‘subpersonal, physiological information – the result of physical stimuli
at certain proprioceptors’ (pp. 376f.). The authors also claimed that, to a
great degree, ‘the body schema functions to control body posture and
movement nonconsciously’ (p. 385).
Gallagher essentially concentrated on showing that the body schema is
not a body image – not an intentional object of explicit consciousness. In a
more recent publication (2005a), he explained that the body schema func-
tions in a ‘prenoetic’ or ‘non-­conscious way’, although ‘there are reciprocal
interactions between prenoetic body schemas and cognitive experiences’
(p. 35). In other words, I can become aware of some of aspects of the body
schema, although it ‘is always something in excess of that of which I can
be conscious’ (p. 38). Gallagher claimed even more strongly that ‘posture
and the majority of bodily movements operate in most cases without the
help of bodily awareness’ (p. 28, italics added), the ‘awareness’ being itself
defined in opposition to intentional conscious perception, as ‘marginal
awareness’ (p. 27) or ‘non-­observational self-­awareness’ (p. 29). This posi-
tion ultimately leads to a relativisation of the phenomenal presence of the
body schema, clearly visible in Gallagher’s claim that ‘whether and to what
degree body awareness is a constant feature of consciousness is […] a
matter of individual differences, and differences in situation […]’ (p. 28).
In contrast to Merleau-­Ponty’s systematic explanation based on the con-
ceptual ground-­figure, norm-­deviation pair, these above characteristics
seem to have weaker explanatory potential, for they assert that the schema
is simultaneously ‘felt’, ‘registered’ and given as ‘information’, but ‘non-
conscious’, ‘not sensorily detected’ and not (entirely) present to our ‘aware-
ness’. The body schema must be clearly situated in relationship to
consciousness if we are to understand how it can ‘interact’ with the body
image, or the objectified body, as Gallagher and others claim. In this
respect, a relativising or simply negative explanation of the phenomenal
status of the body schema is not satisfactory.
Functionally, Paillard and Gallagher (with his collaborators) attempted
to articulate the difference between body image and body schema with the
help of the opposition between ‘knowing what’ and ‘knowing how’, inter-
preted more precisely as the difference between ‘what’ (body image) and
‘how to use it’ (body schema), and ‘where’ (objective space) and ‘how to
get there’ (practical space) (Paillard 1991; Paillard 1999: pp. 207f.; cf. Ryle
2009); or between ‘noetic contents’ and ‘prenoetic performance of the
body’, or ‘implicit processes or operations’ (Gallagher 2005a: pp. 32, 17;
cf. also Strawson 1997). Ontologically, however, these distinctions seem to
be interpreted following the opposition between subjective and objective
dimensions, and thus without the ontological novelty of Merleau-­Ponty,
for whom these dimensions must be understood as an indivisible system,
46   J. Halák

where every pole has some meaning only in reference to the other (a similar
criticism is addressed to Gallagher by Saint-­Aubert 2013: pp. 44f., 52ff.).
With the distinction of body image and body schema, Paillard believed he
had met the distinction between the ‘cognitive’ brain and sensorimotor
‘machinery’ (1999: p.  212). Gallagher claimed, in addition to the previ-
ously explained relativisation of the phenomenal presence of the body
schema, that the prenoetic body-­schematic function ‘happens’ as a ‘per-
formance’ or ‘process’ (2005a: pp. 29, 32, 17).
On the one hand thus, Gallagher’s efforts to distinguish between body
image and body schema obviously converged with Merleau-­Ponty’s, who
explicitly claimed that the body schema ‘is not perceived’, that it ‘precedes
explicit perception’ (Merleau-­Ponty 2011: p. 143). On the other hand, the
positive characteristics of the body schema on the phenomenal and onto-
logical level seem different for the two authors. In contrast to Gallagher,
Merleau-­Ponty (2011) explained that, precisely because the variations in
the articulation of the schema systematically arouse variations in the per-
ceived world, the body schema ‘is also a specific structure of the perceived
world’ and that the perceived world ‘is rooted’ in it (2011: p. 144).
In other words, the ‘perception and the experience of one’s own body
are implicated in each other’ (Merleau-­Ponty 2012: p. 132, note 71), one’s
body is the ‘unperceived term at the centre of the world toward which
every object turns its face’ (Merleau-­Ponty 2012: p. 84). The ‘unperceived’
body is ‘a structure of the perceived world’ precisely in as much as it pro-
vides the reference level for every particular perception and serves as the
‘background’ of every perceived ‘figure’ of the world. As such, the body
schema is not phenomenally opposed to the perceptual contents, it is pre-
cisely that part of perceptual contents which serves as a reference level for
the phenomenality – it is ‘the limit or degree zero of visibility, the opening
of a dimension of the visible’ (Merleau-­Ponty 1964a: p. 21). As a ‘specific
structure’ of the perceived world providing the reference in contrast to
which something appears, the body schema must be therefore understood
as something which is in principle constantly present in our perceptual
experience. For Merleau-­Ponty, the body schema is not only a factual, but
‘metaphysical necessity’ (Merleau-­Ponty 2012: p.  93), and as such a sys-
tematic part of our experience of the world, its presence cannot be relativ-
ised, as it seems to be by Gallagher (cf. the citations on p. 44, in particular
2005a: pp. 27f.).

Conclusion
The statement that a subject is embodied means, for Merleau-­Ponty, that it
is open to empirical, historical events and their arbitrary transformations,
without nevertheless being only their function. As a concept summarising
Merleau-­Ponty’s position, the body schema has to be understood as a
 The concept of ‘body schema’   47

preliminarily established reference level, in regard to which all the par-

ticular contents of experience make sense in the first place, but which can
be re-­established if some of these contents require its systematic adjust-
ment. In Merleau-­Ponty, the body schema therefore does not have the
status of an objective reality and cannot be exhaustively identified with a
physical process occurring in the body. Rather, the notion of body schema
helps Merleau-­Ponty to approach his goal to develop a conceptual frame-
work that would make it possible to dynamically integrate the third-­person
(objective, external) and first-­person (subjective, reflexive) perspectives on
the body and on human existence in general (cf. e.g. Merleau-­Ponty 2000a:
pp. 11–13). This effort has to be understood in contrast to those concep-
tual frameworks, where it is unclear how these two dimensions can ever
have mutual influence on their respective roles and how they can impact
on each other.
A comprehensive interpretation of Merleau-­Ponty’s philosophy of the
embodied subject in relation to contemporary knowledge certainly requires
a more elaborated clarification (for a further commentary on the body
schema in Merleau-­Ponty and Gallagher, cf. Saint-­Aubert 2013:
pp.  43–59). The originality of Merleau-­Ponty’s approach, however, can
already be seen in the fact that he understood the ‘image’ or ‘perception’
(be it of one’s own body) and its ‘background’ provided by our body
‘schema’ as an indivisible dynamic system of the establishment and shifting
of norms and deviations from them, and not primarily as an opposition
between subjective ‘mind’ and objective ‘machinery’ or ‘process’. Merleau-­
Ponty’s different understanding of the phenomenality of the body schema
thus also entailed a different ontological conception of the subject.
According to Merleau-­Ponty, the body-­agent carries us to (or maintains
us at, or prevents us from getting to) a particular point in space and time
and thereby establishes a perspective, from where we experience something
as given with such and such characteristics. More importantly, the body-­
agent does it principally from within the world and could not do it from
outside or without being part of it: only as situated inside the world and
being part of it – that is, as being perceptible as an object – can the body-­
subject take a stand, adopt an attitude from which it can experience some-
thing under a particular perspective. The fact that we are, as subject-­bodies,
part of the world of objects thus has, for Merleau-­Ponty, a transcendental
value – that is, it is not merely accidental, or limiting and negative charac-
teristics, but it is constitutive of subjectivity.
‘My body’, claims Merleau-­Ponty, ‘sees only because it is a part of the
visible in which it opens forth’, it ‘would not be able to see if it were not
visible, because it would lack a point of view’ (Merleau-­Ponty 1968:
pp. 153f., 1995: p. 286). Here, Merleau-­Ponty does not want to say that
we need the ‘machinery’ of the eye in order to see. He wants to say that
what a subject experiences mirrors the subject’s standing among other
48   J. Halák

beings, which is not possible without the subject being simultaneously per-
ceptible as an ‘object’, for then he would not have any standing. The body
schema is precisely a summary and the demarcation of a subject’s various
standpoints – visual, haptic, motor – in regard to the beings that
surround him.
Merleau-­Ponty thus convincingly showed that, in order to clarify that
and how we experience ‘thanks’ to our body and as ‘embodied’ subjects, it
is not enough to scrutinise our body as an object. Rather, we must show
how this body-­object serves as a reference for some experience.

Note
1 Work on this study was supported by the project ‘Merleau-­Ponty’s Collège de
France lectures in the roots of his overturning of the objectivist paradigm’, Czech
Science Foundation, reg. no. 16–17984Y. This chapter is a revised version of a
work previously published as Halák, J. (2016). Merleau-­Ponty on embodied sub-
jectivity from the perspective of subject-­object circularity. Acta Universitatis
Carolinae Kinanthropologica, 52, 2: 26–40.

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Chapter 4

Body, flow and learning

From Feldenkrais to Csikszentmihalyi
Adjoa Domelevo

Introduction
In the course of our research on the Feldenkrais Method® and the notion
of flow, we analysed 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. We present here the results of
a qualitative analysis, with a focus on the following three words: body,
flow and learning, as a way to highlight clearly and distinctly the respective
works of the authors.
In examining the comparative word usage it becomes clear that:

• for Feldenkrais, body takes first place but is last for Csikszentmihalyi;
• for Csikszentmihalyi, flow is first, whereas this word does not appear
in Feldenkrais;
• however, for Feldenkrais, learning takes a high place while for Csik-
szentmihalyi it is at the bottom.

We will follow three steps in presenting our findings. The first step will be
to define the meaning of the three words for each author. The second step
will show how the two authors use these words differently in both theoret-
ical and practical contexts. The third step will demonstrate the emphasis
that Feldenkrais and Csikszentmihalyi respectively give to each word and
why. We will use a short-­hand code (shown in capitals in the bibliography)
to indicate from which works we have taken quotations.

Body
For Feldenkrais, the word body is polysemic. First, as for all living beings,
the body is the whole of the material parts constituting the organism, the
seat of physiological functions. He says: ‘The newborn human (…) can
breathe, eat, digest, eliminate, and his body can organise all the biological
and physiological processes except the sexual act’ (ATM, p. 12). The body
may also mean, especially for humans, the person in his or her totality:
52   A. Domelevo

‘… we do make an improper use of the body. Our use of self is as good as

our means at the moment permit’ (PS, p. 90).
Feldenkrais also considered the body as an organised whole bringing
together a set of elements that are its different parts. Thus, he wrote: ‘A
person who lies down on his back and tries to sense his entire body sys-
tematically – that is, turning his attention to every limb and part of the
body …’ (ATM, pp. 20–21).
He also perceived the human body as an object of physical science,
hence as an object orientable in space at different angles to the ground.
This geometrical aspect is revealed through this extract: ‘… any particular
detail of the configuration of the body’ (PS, p. 58).
From a motor perspective, he observed:

The standing body is thus ever ready for translation movement at short
notice. In that respect it is more perfect than the body of any other
animal, which may be faster in one particular direction but has not the
all-­round freedom of movement of man.…
(BM, p. 107)

Feldenkrais also saw the body from a phylogenic viewpoint, as evid-

enced thus: ‘The tonic contraction of the muscles of the body is the result
of the species adaptation to the forces of gravitation and is an innate prop-
erty of the nervous system of each species’ (PS, pp. 74–75).
Finally, for Feldenkrais, the body can also be the ecological niche of the
nervous system. For example: ‘The body itself may be considered as part
of the environment of the nervous system’ (PS, p. 1).
So, Feldenkrais attributed multiple meanings to the word body. Now let
us now look at Csikszentmihalyi’s vision. For Csikszentmihalyi, the word
body has four different meanings. In the first sense, the body is opposed to
the mind – that is, it is opposed to the seat of intellectual faculties and
thinking. We can note this in the following quotation: ‘… the everyday
experience of duality between mind and body’ (F, p. 106).
However, the oppositional relationship can be transformed into a har-
monious relationship when an individual experiences an optimal experi-
ence: ‘… allow the mind and body to get involved in a total, harmonious
interaction’ (FS, p. 76).
A second meaning refers to the physiological dimension of the human
body, an example being: ‘… the level of liquids in the body influences
nerve impulses’ (FS, p. 88).
A third sense is oriented towards the motor dimension of the human
body, as the following excerpt illustrates: ‘the kinesthetic feeling of body
movement’ (BBA, p. 104).
Finally, the expression ‘use of the body’ (F, pp. 97, 100) indicates that
the term body is equivalent to the person in his or her totality, or the self.
 Body, flow and learning   53

Flow
Let us now look at the meanings these two authors attribute to flow.
At first, it appears that Feldenkrais used the word flow mainly to
express the fluidity of liquids or gases: ‘… the air entering the nostrils and
flowing past the palate’ (ATM, p. 167).
However, Feldenkrais also used flow to describe the quality of an
optimal gesture – that is, a gesture with a continuous and reversible effect.
In the lexical field of fluidity, we have found these examples: ‘fluidity of
movement’ (ATM, p.  146) and ‘awareness improves the fluency (…) of
movements’ (EW, p. 39).
As for Csikszentmihalyi, flow is a concept defined thus:

First of all, it is a state of consciousness where one becomes totally

absorbed in what one is doing, to the exclusion of all other thoughts
and emotions. So flow is about focus. More than just focus, however,
flow is a harmonious experience where mind and body are working
together effortlessly, leaving the person feeling that something special
has just occurred. So flow is also about enjoyment.
(FS, p. 5)

From a figurative point of view, flow was represented by Csikszentmihalyi

(F, p. 74) as a channel into which one can (re-)enter and from which one
can exit depending on the individual’s ratio between the level of challenges
and the skills that he or she possesses. Csikszentmihalyi also attributed a
goal to flow:

The purpose of the flow is to keep on flowing, not looking for a peak
or utopia but staying in the flow. It is not a moving up but a con-
tinuous flowing; you move up to keep the flow going.
(F, p. 54)

Learning
We now turn now to the third concept: learning.
For Feldenkrais, learning was above all a process of acquiring knowledge
and skills, as evidenced by these statements: ‘Learning, in the most general
sense, is acquiring new responses to stimuli’ (BM, p. 53); ‘An adjustment is a
successful act of learning’ (BM, p.  47); and ‘Learning involves gaining a
difference’ (MM, p. 177). Moreover, this process of learning is part of an
ontogenetic evolution: ‘The fœtus learns to hear in the womb’ (EO, p. 59).
In addition, Feldenkrais draws our attention to two types of learning:

• Organic learning: ‘For human beings, learning, and especially organic

learning, is a biological, not to say physiological, necessity’ (EO, p. 30).
54   A. Domelevo

• School learning: ‘… scholastic learning with teachers in charge’ (EO,

p. 31); ‘… that you find among grown-­up people’ (MM, p. 19).

Further, Feldenkrais presented a metaphor and compared the process of

learning with that of digestion:

When you learn something, either you can digest it or you can’t. Part
almost everyone can digest. But the part that a person assimilates
depends on one’s mental health and the method of learning. (…) Just
as in eating, learning requires digestion.…
(MM, p. 138)

Last, the sine qua non of all learning for Feldenkrais was comfort: ‘You
can’t learn with discomfort, with apprehension, with challenge, with hur-
rying (…). Without comfort the body will never learn, and will refuse to
accept it’ (MM, p. 144).
However, our research indicates that Csikszentmihalyi did not give a
definition in the strict sense. In other words, he did not directly answer the
question ‘What is learning?’ He did, however, provide clear answers to the
following three questions:

• What is learned?
• How do we learn?
• Who is learning?

Let us take the series of answers in descending order.

First, Csikszentmihalyi answered that what is learned is how to live
optimal experience: ‘… if human evolution is to go on, we shall have to
learn to enjoy life more thoroughly’ (BBA, p.  206), and this goal can be
achieved by concrete learning such as listening to one’s body: ‘… self-­
aware athletes learn to listen to their bodies’ (FS, p. 106).
Second, Csikszentmihalyi considered that we learn by sharing know-
ledge: ‘… sharing their learning mutually’ (F, p. 166).
Third, he gave importance to both the child and the adult: ‘… the infant
learning to walk’ (FS, p. 144) and ‘… learning in adulthood’ (F, p. 251).
These three answers indirectly indicate that, for Csikszentmihalyi, learn-
ing meant: acquiring knowledge and skills or preparing oneself by training
or practicing.

Theoretical and practical differences

Now we shall try to highlight the differences between the two authors both
in the theoretical context and in practice.
 Body, flow and learning   55

Body
Feldenkrais’s 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 func-
tioning’ (EW, p.  28). This unity is made concrete in lessons by a flexible
attention oriented towards all the parts of the body in motion. The con-
crete actions consist of bending, elongating, lifting, posing, pressing, etc. as
the students question themselves the quality of their execution while doing
the movements.
On the other hand, since the body is considered the opposite of the
mind for Csikszentmihalyi, a more psychological approach is taken. We
have categorised four types of exercises among the 12 proposed in his
book Flow in Sports (1999): remembering, thinking, writing and sitting
meditation.

Flow
Csikszentmihalyi considered flow in an abstract sense (he conceptualised
it), whereas Feldenkrais gave it a concrete meaning. Moreover, in Csik-
szentmihalyi’s theory, flow is a person’s subjective experience, whereas
Feldenkrais theorised flow objectively (continuous motion without acceler-
ation or deceleration).
So how do these differences translate into practice? Essentially, Csik-
szentmihalyi gave advice, explanations and mental exercises for before,
during and after the optimal experience. Feldenkrais accompanied and
guided the person during the creation of fluid movement.

Learning
With respect to learning, the type of approach is what distinguished the
two authors. For Csikszentmihalyi, phenomenology and psychology served
as the conceptual framework, but for Feldenkrais, the notion of learning
was part of the paradigm of biological evolution. These theoretical distinc-
tions are also manifested in practice: Csikszentmihalyi proposed develop-
ing mental skills, whereas Feldenkrais proposed numerous skeletal
configurations (positions of the body in space) in order to stimulate the
nervous system in a varied way and a series of movements based on
schemes of primitive reflex movements (de Moro reflex, the Magnus and
de Kleijn neck reflexes, etc.).
56   A. Domelevo

The weight of the words

In this third step, we will now show how Feldenkrais emphasised learning
and Csikszentmihalyi emphasised flow and why this was so.
Feldenkrais insisted vigorously on learning:

• he devoted a whole chapter to it: ‘On learning’ (EO, pp. 29–37);

• he included it in the chapter of his book Embodied Wisdom, Part  II
(2010);
• he included it in the title of an audio recording accompanying his
Learn to Learn Booklet (1980);
• he asked fundamental questions about it: ‘What is learning?’ and
‘What about learning is important?’ (MM, pp. 19, 20);
• he used it in the last sentence of his book Body and Mature
Behavior (p. 219);
• he included it in the title of the first work on the method published in
1949 (BM), emphasised by the position of the word (after a comma
and a conjunction of coordination);
• he included it in the title of Chapter 5 of Body and Mature Behavior
(2013);
• he included it in the title of the last chapter of The Master Moves
(1984: p. 187), ‘Learning to sit …’.

Feldenkrais insisted on the concept of learning because he considered it to

be a prerogative of the human species (EO, p.  33; MM, pp.  16–17),
whereby humans could emancipate themselves. This emancipation was
expressed in the following: 

To my mind, learning that allows further growth of the structures and

their functioning is the one that leads to new and different ways of
doing things I already know how to do. This kind of learning increases
my ability to choose more freely.…
(MM, p. 35)

Csikszentmihalyi, on the other hand, emphasised flow:

• he included it in the title of several books;

• he created derivatives of the concept through the continuum of
microflow-­macroflow experiences (BBA, p. 141);
• he carried out studies: interviews, questionnaires, the experience sam-
pling method;
• he progressively changed the initial model of 1975 over several decades
(1990 and beyond);
 Body, flow and learning   57

• he specified the type of approach chosen (BBA, pp. xx, xxi): systematic

phenomenology, every aspect of daily life and from as many perspec-
tives as possible;
• he illustrated how the concept was adopted in various fields
(BBA, p. xxiv).

We found two reasons why Csikszentmihalyi used the word flow so much.
The first reason was philosophical and concerned happiness. Indeed, the
author’s interest in flow emerged in his youth when he would ask himself
such existential questions as: ‘What makes life worth living?’ (BBA, p. x)
and he would raise ‘fundamental questions about the good life’ (BBA,
p.  xv). The second was more scientific, as Csikszentmihalyi wanted to
understand and explain humans: ‘the understanding of human experience’
(BBA, p.  xxvi) and ‘explaining the phenomenon of optimal experience,
identifying the key antecedents and conditions of occurrence’ (FS).

Conclusion
This overview of the works of Feldenkrais and Csikszentmihalyi shows us
clearly what distinguishes them and why. Yet to conclude, one might say
that what brings these two authors together is that they have understood,
each in his own way, that: ‘Man is therefore a fully biological being, but if
he did not have the fullest of culture, he would be a primate of the lowest
rank’ (Morin 1999).

Bibliography
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1975/2000). (BBA) Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experi-
encing Flow in Work and Play. San Francisco, California: Jossey-­Bass Publishers.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). (F ) Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
New York, New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., Jackson, S. A. (1999). (FS) Flow in Sports. The Keys to
Optimal Experiences and Performances. Champaign, Illinois: Human Kinetics.
Feldenkrais, M. ([1949] 2013). (BM) Body and Mature Behavior: A Study of
Anxiety, Sex, Gravitation and Learning [Kindle edition]. Berkeley, California:
North Atlantic Books.
Feldenkrais, M. ([1985] 2002). (PS) The Potent Self: A Study of Compulsion and
Spontaneity. Berkeley, California: Frog Books. 
Feldenkrais, M. ([1972] 1990). (ATM) Awareness Through Movement: Easy-­to-Do
Health Exercises to Improve Your Posture, Vision, Imagination, and Personal
Awareness. New York, New York: HarperCollins. 
Feldenkrais, M. (1980). Learn to Learn Booklet. Berkeley, California: Feldenkrais
Resources.
Feldenkrais, M. (1981). (EO) The Elusive Obvious. Cupertino, California: Meta
Publications.
58   A. Domelevo

Feldenkrais, M. (1984). (MM) The Master Moves. Cupertino, California: Meta

Publications.
Feldenkrais, M. (2010). (EW) Embodied Wisdom. The Collected Papers of Moshe
Feldenkrais [Kindle edition]. Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books.
Morin, E. (1999). Les sept savoirs nécessaires à l’éducation du future. Paris, France,
UNESCO.
Chapter 5

Sport, health and academia

A reflexive approach to the
disenchantment and the
re-­e nchantment of the body
Alessandro Porrovecchio

Introduction
In his work on the rationalisation, formalisation and depersonalisation of
social relations, and more generally of the ‘Weltanshauungs’ Max Weber
(2003) introduced the idea of ‘Entzauberung’ into sociological discourse at
the beginning of the last century – in other words, the ‘demagification’
(Swedberg 2005) or disenchantment of the world (Weber 1992). Accord-
ing to Weber, this process makes the condition of the social actor tragic
because rationality – and bureaucratisation, as an important expression of
its materialisation in modern Western societies – is no longer intimately
connected with human nature. Thus the ‘modern’ human being struggles
between the historical obligation to be rational and the human and anthro-
pologically rooted need for non-­rationality.
Several authors have taken up and developed the idea of Entzauberung,
illustrating a kind of oscillation between situations of disenchantment, char-
acterised by conditions of social and/or symbolic ‘misery’ (Stiegler 2004,
2005) and more or less punctual phases of re-­enchantment. In The Re-­
Enchantment of the World, Bernard Stiegler (2014) advances a critique of
consumer capitalism to construct an utterly contemporary analysis of our
time. Stiegler explores the cognitive, affective, social and economic effects
of the ‘proletarianisation’ of the consumer in late capitalism and the result-
ing destruction of the consumer’s ‘savoir-­vivre’ and argues for the re-­
enchantment of a world that is disenchanted. According to Michel
Maffesoli (2009), however, contemporary Western societies are showing
signs of re-­enchantment, which would indicate a new and critical historical
phase manifesting through the contemporary imagination. Therefore, in the
different views of Maffesoli and Stiegler, this crisis also affects the bodily
cultural forms, their representations, practices and (sub)cultures, within the
broader framework of a new, ecological Weltanshauung. This crisis can be
embodied at both the collective and individual levels (Shilling 2008).
In this chapter, on the basis of these premises, I aim to develop a kind of
self-­analysis (Bourdieu 2008) in order to discuss the strategies of bodily
60   A. Porrovecchio

resistance put into place in my daily struggle between a ‘Protestant ethic of

precarious academic work’ and the need for the hedonism and magic that
characterise the human as ‘animal symbolicum’ (Cassirer 1944). This ana-
lysis develops through the prism of the sociology of everyday life and the
micro-­sociology of sport, mobilising some of the interpretative categories
proposed by Anthony Giddens (1990, 1991) and David Harvey (1995)
concerning contemporary society. I will also refer to the idea of ritual as
found in Arnold Van Gennep (1909) and Victor Turner (1969, 1975).

Methods: self-­s ocio-analysis and mixed methods

In the introduction to this chapter, we referred to the idea of ‘self-­analysis’
developed by Pierre Bourdieu in relation to his Algerian experience. The
author of Sketch for a Self-­Analysis (2008) questions his past and the
experiences that brought him to sociology, emphasising the need to
develop a work of reflection (see also Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992;
Melucci 1998), a critique, including his biographical perspective as part of
his research. The self-­analysis in question, while not clearly explained in
methodological terms, nevertheless comprises a double test: that of the
validity of its concepts, and therefore of its own theory, and that of its
capacity for objectification.
As concerns the specific case of this chapter, the self-­analysis is based
mainly on the study of field notes taken during informal research con-
ducted between 2008 and 2013. The research focused on the role of orien-
tal disciplines (mainly martial arts) from the Far East and south-­east Asia
in relation to the construction of the practitioner’s bodily identity. I paid
attention to the Eastern imaginary and its interaction with that of the prac-
titioner’s socio-­ecological context, and thus to mine. A significant part of
the notes offered subjective thoughts and observations about my commit-
ment and passion in this research, and a special role was played by my
interest and involvement in martial arts.
As regards my research method, I started my research path by ‘surfing’
(McLuhan 1951) through the imaginary of various oriental disciplines.
My  purpose was to gather preliminary documentation and, in order to
do so, I referred to three kinds of documents: scientific literature, manuals
and popular culture products (e.g. movies or fiction). In particular, I
focused on the cultural products that supposedly play an important role
in  arousing interest in ‘Other’ worlds: anime, manga and wuxia movies
(Porrovecchio 2014).
Starting from this preliminary documentation and from my personal
experience as a martial artist, I built a qualitative research design: I became
a participant-­observer in one of the many martial arts centres in Rome, a
traditional kung fu school supervised by my Master. I collected detailed
field notes, on the spot or right after every training session. My own body
 Sport, health and academia   61

became a research object through body agency (Andrieu 2011a), building

an immersive approach (Andrieu 2011b).
Because of my interest and long-­term involvement in martial arts, there
was the potential for me to go native (Hammersley and Atkinson 2007),
which would affect my ability to engage in the field. I therefore decided to
widen my research field by training in several centres, where I practised
disciplines from both south-­east Asia, such as Pençak Silat and Filipino
Kali, and Europe (Sicilian stick, knife fighting). The twofold goal in this
phase was to explore, as a beginner, a considerable number of symbolic
worlds and to interact with many martial artists who practised disciplines
different from mine. This strategy enabled me to ask probing theoretical
questions about the data I collected and the interpretations I provided (Jen-
nings et al. 2010: pp. 536–539). This research approach, as with Samudra’s
notion of thick participation (2008), provided many details on the multi-
sensorial and emotional nature of the oriental disciplines practised in the
‘Kwoons’ (training halls for Chinese martial arts).
I completed this research path with a virtual ethnography (Hine 2000,
2005) that I conducted in martial arts and manga fan communities. This
last method allowed me to merge the real (sports clubs) and the virtual
(online communities). In fine, I conducted 20 in-­depth interviews with
masters, beginners and therapists in oriental disciplines.

The context: disenchantment, contemporary

society and academia
The analysis of the field notes highlighted specific aspects of a con-
temporary historical phase interacting with the ‘magical’ world of the eco-
logical equilibrium of oriental disciplines and the bureaucratic rationality
of academic precariousness, with its needs and obligations. These aspects
have already been observed by some of the scholars who have analysed the
contemporary condition – for example, Anthony Giddens (1990) and
David Harvey (1995).
Among the factors identified by Giddens in The Consequences of Mod-
ernity (1990), the new relationship between space and time, recombined
into a uniform and universal temporality, is often interpreted as a contrac-
tion of the space–time relation (Harvey 1995). According to Giddens, from
this perspective, the modern condition, which implies an idea of linear
time, hasn’t been completely overcome: we are facing a condition of
‘radical modernity’ (1990). Modern linear time thus becomes a paradox-
ical and somewhat incomprehensible time: at the same moment instantan-
eous and eternally present (absolutely linear).
The process of contraction of the temporal dimension implies the loss of
meaning of the spatial dimension (Harvey 1995). This dynamic relation
uniting space and time lays the foundations for their recombination and
62   A. Porrovecchio

re-­semanticisation in relation to social practices and the symbolic universes

of reference, and it is the first condition of some of the processes of dis-
integration currently underway in the social systems of the West (Giddens
1990). The re-­semanticisation of space, time and their relationship can
thus take the form of a ‘presentification’ of everyday life that, in the spe-
cific case of the precarious lecturer, takes the shape of an impossibility and/
or inability to carry out projects over the medium and long term and may
give rise to an explosive interaction between academic and individual tem-
porality. For the individual, this situation is the basis for a condition of
‘malaise’ and suffering, displaying itself in the partial incompatibility
between the time of personal life that is reduced to an eternal present, and
academic time that is modern and linear, requiring the precarious lecturer’s
simultaneous reactivity and availability.
The precarious academic experience is also depersonalising, somewhat
vocational and bureaucratised – to quote Max Weber, referring to pietistic
circles:

The ability of mental concentration, as well as the absolutely essential

feeling of obligation to one’s job, are here most often combined with a
strict economy which calculates the possibility of high earnings, and a
cool self-­control and frugality which enormously increase perform-
ance. This provides the most favourable foundation for the conception
of labour as an end in itself, as a calling [Beruf] which is necessary to
capitalism.
(Weber 2003: p. 63)

Staying with Anthony Giddens’ interpretative categories, the system of aca-

demic competition, just like the system of academic journals, takes the
shape of an expert system and hence a disaggregation mechanism, highly
rational, formal and bureaucratic – thus, it implies the attitude described
above through Max Weber’s words – separating social relations and local
contexts of interaction, and restructuring them through indefinite space-­
time chains based on the mechanism of ‘trust’, with its paradoxical and
uncontrollable aspects.

Re-­e nchantment: the quest for a new body ecology

In this context, some of the phenomena characterising our experience in
the world of oriental disciplines take the shape of a reaction, a response to
a need arising from a condition of ‘anomie’ (Durkheim 1897), leading to a
feeling of existential malaise and symbolic misery (Stiegler 2004, 2005).
During my first observations it seemed that a part of the practice of ori-
ental disciplines was the response to a strong ‘need for ritual’, characteris-
ing both my attitude and that of other practitioners. Arnold van Gennep
 Sport, health and academia   63

(1909) was among the first scholars to state that social life requires rituals
to face some of the crucial stages of existence, whether individual or col-
lective. Van Gennep’s rite of passage is the result of three micro-­rituals
(‘pre-­liminal’, ‘liminal’ and ‘post-­liminal’) that follow along the passage
from one phase of life to another. The pre-­liminal ritual opens the ‘cere-
mony’. In martial arts, for example, a pre-­liminal ritual is the salute of the
altar or the salute that the master/instructor performs with trainees when
the lesson begins: it enacts the symbolic death of the individual; it starts
the lesson and the practice involved. This pre-­liminal rite opens the door to
a new bodily rhythm peculiar to the practice of the oriental discipline (Por-
rovecchio 2012a). During my research, I noticed that most of the instruc-
tors asked the practitioners to ‘leave behind the problems of everyday life’
in order to be completely immersed in the lesson. This attitude was stressed
whenever the discipline was defined as ‘internal’, as, for example, tai chi,
pa kua or qi gong: liminality is a marginal time in which the individual
lives a different space, time, body rhythm and identity.
Van Gennep points out that liminality is a condition in which, para-
doxically, individuals are freer than in everyday life and at the same time
they internalise a respect for the sociocultural rules: during this phase, the
practitioners of martial arts internalise the imaginary and the rules of their
discipline. This is the core of ‘real martial art practice’. In the end, the
post-­liminal rites enact the symbolic rebirth of individuals with a new
status and new prerogatives: in martial arts the ‘final salute’ concludes the
lesson and the practitioner goes back to everyday life with a different iden-
tity, enriched by the practice and the internalisation of a new symbolic
universe.
The progressive disappearance of the rites of passage in contemporary
society, which tends to isolate individuals, is one of the constitutive ele-
ments of Weber’s disenchantment and partially explains the ‘need for
ritual’ revealed by my research. In contemporary societies, the socialisation
structures are in crisis (Porrovecchio 2012b). In response, people are
increasingly looking for excitement, sociability and the release of tension
(Maffesoli 2009). This situation leads David Le Breton (2007) to identify
what he calls ‘intimate rites of passage’, and this was clearly my situation.
These are a set of micro-­rituals (Goffman 1959, 1967, 1969) that replace
the collective and institutionalised ones.
Within my ethnographies I identified some basic and recurring elements
that had a fundamental role in building the imaginary of the ‘intimate’ and
collective rituals (see also Min-­Ho 1999: pp.  218–227; Porrovecchio
2012a): gym, clothing, martial hierarchy and the salute. These aspects
recall Victor Turner’s writings on community ritual, symbolism and limi-
nality (1969, 1975), which provide possible strategies for studying the
sociocultural transformations of contemporary society through oriental
disciplines. Training in oriental disciplines is made up of ritual gestures.
64   A. Porrovecchio

These actions are intended to bring practitioners from one phase to

another: each ritual sets a number of rules with the aim of transforming
the practitioners, educating them and bringing them into the world of ori-
ental disciplines through the embodiment of the art, its philosophy and
body rhythms (Porrovecchio 2012a).
The ritual aspect of martial arts is based on obedience, which is one of
the essential conditions for training. It is consistent with the imagined ori-
entalist tradition (Said 1979) – that is, with the mainly reinvented tradition
(Hobsbawn and Ranger 1983) – and involves physical and spiritual
aspects. Trainees are joined in a social bond through the embodiment of
ritual and martial art principles, which ensures that the transmission of
tradition is successful. At a symbolic level, this transmission is an encoun-
ter between past and present. The rituals set the body rhythms, techniques
and representations. Together they define the martial body ‘Self ’. Hence,
they define the image of the Self, the image of the Other, and the inter-
action with the ‘Cosmos’ – that is, with the ecological context surrounding
the individual.
Therefore, the practice of an oriental discipline leads practitioners to
immerse themselves in a symbolic and behavioural socio-­ecological context
that has strong similarities with the religious context. It is also connected
to the traditional dimension: it has a sacred character (Durkheim 1979;
Jennings et al. 2010) that makes it possible to re-­enchant the individual’s
daily life by establishing a dialogue, a dialectic with the space of the metro-
polis. I found this to be specific to the existential context of the individuals
participating in my survey and to the academic mental space in which my
daily and professional life as a precarious lecturer developed.

To conclude: dialectics of a resistant body

The fact that many participants in my study referred to a type of tran-
scendent energy that permeates the universe (the ‘Qi’, or ‘Ki’) is a clear
indicator that – in the context of these practices – they embrace a holistic/
pantheistic and re-­enchanted Weltanshauung in which the body becomes a
key element for entering 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 is the key to reaching the psychological,
energetic and spiritual dimensions, thus to reaching ecological equilibrium.
Constant training maintains a good level of efficiency and well-­being, and
– in the logic of traditional thought – allows one to immerse and blend
with the cosmos, thus creating a ‘new’ ecology of the body, a body that is
‘Other’ compared with the modern idea of the body and the ‘La Mettrian’
idea of the human as machine (de La Mattrie 1966). It is clear that this is
an approach based on pseudo-­sciences and beliefs of the traditional type,
 Sport, health and academia   65

and therefore irrational (or ‘differently rational’) and antithetical to the

academic knowledge system, which is generally rational and based on the
scientific method.
This set of aspects seems to indicate the return of a set of elements
which, according to Ferdinand Tönnies (1977), characterises the ‘Gemein-
schaft’ in relation to the ‘Gesellschaft’: among these aspects, within the
framework of the ritual experience there is clearly a significant change in
the idea of time, especially the overcoming of the modern idea of linear
time (Harvey 1995). The traditional model, and thus the model of ritual
experience in martial arts centres, is based on a cyclic temporality, an
‘eternal return’ opposed to the ‘eternal present’ of modernity. In short, the
time of oriental disciplines is holistic and ecological, constantly sought in
ritual, and an epistemological fracture with the context of everyday life is
needed to make room for the incorporation of a ‘different’ tradition and
philosophy. A tradition and a philosophy that are ecological, ‘Other’.
The body is immersed in this set of experiences, which are lived by and
through the body (Andrieu 2011b). These experiences are incorporated,
embodied. I started from the idea that my experience in the world of orien-
tal disciplines was taking the shape of a reaction to a need arising from an
existential malaise: it is through the body that I have built, both con-
sciously and unconsciously, resistance strategies to a condition perceived
as a Weberian ‘stahlhartes Gehäuse’, a depersonalising and alienating ‘iron
cage’ (Weber 2003). These strategies of resistance, this quest for magic,
developed through the continuous process of the deconstruction and recon-
struction of my identity as a precarious lecturer, living a condition of both
‘eternal return’ and ‘eternal present’, anchored in the constant questioning
of my professional ‘Self ’. It is, in short, a condition that can be summarised
in the words of Anthony Giddens:

The transmutations introduced by modern institutions interlace in a

direct way with individual life and therefore with the Self. One of the
distinctive features of modernity, in fact, is an increasing interconnec-
tion between the two ‘extremes’ of extensionality and intentionality:
globalising influences on the one hand and personal disposition on the
other.
(1991: p. 1)

Another aspect that I would like to emphasise is the struggle to face aca-
demic time. It was evident for me that I was enslaved by an idea of linear
time in which the present is erased to focus on future goals (Elias 1984;
Harvey 1995): I was always pushed towards an endless teleological action
that led to value appearance more than substance, targets more than paths.
The model of time proposed by the oriental disciplines I was practising –
based on a circular and cyclical idea of time in which the present moment
66   A. Porrovecchio

must be fully internalised – instead moved me by a particular type of social

action (both traditional and emotional) that can be called ‘holistic’: an
action that arises from the vision of a man potentially in harmony with
nature and the environment in which he lives.
The ‘holistic time’ was also a ‘time of fracture’. The cyclical aspect,
namely the eternal return, allows us to embody the Other’s traditions and
philosophies. The first radical change was a temporal short-­circuit that
moved symbolic universes coming from distant eras within the con-
temporary context of the information society.
The experience of cyclical time, dialectically dialoguing with the eternal
present and the linearity of the times of the metropolis and the academy,
the reference to an imagined and symbolically dense elsewhere, the irra-
tional (or differently rational) Weltanshauung superimposing itself on the
rational academic approach, developed from ritual moments (lived as
bodily concrete, giving rise to a new dialectic between ritual security and
occupational insecurity) was concretised in the dialectic between disen-
chantment and re-­enchantment. This dialectic can be summarised as the
dialogue between two anthropological essences, the ‘homo academicus’,
immersed in the academic Protestant ethic, and the ‘homo holisticus’, who
establishes an ecological dialogue between his/her body and the cosmos,
immersed in the struggle to re-­enchant his/her world.

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Chapter 6

The naturalising process of

technique
The antinomy of nature and culture
through the lens of Chinese practices
Alexandre Legendre and Stéphane Ibrahime

Introduction: nature, culture, technique

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. Art indeed, early defined as a ‘mimesis’ of
nature, when it is not despised for this very reason, is considered at most
as a creative imitation, a ‘poiesis’ emanating from the mind (Aristotle
2011). As such, artistic beauty is superior to natural beauty, according to
Hegel (1967), since it manifests Spirit (‘Aesthetic’). The ‘techniques of the
body’ (ibid.) are not to be outdone: insofar as ‘mind’ shapes these tech-
niques through human cultures with the raw material of the body, these
techniques generally emerge fully and exclusively from culture or the mind,
contrary to instinct, which would incline towards nature and the body.
There is no room traditionally for a ‘natural technique’.
Other cultures, however, consider the relationship between nature and
culture more dialectically than agonistically and assume that it is by com-
bining with nature that technique reaches its most advanced stage of
development. At the same time, since the ‘cognitive revolution’ of the
1950s (Gardner 1985), we tend to recognise that thought and action are
analogous. The mind-­body dualism that served as a philosophical sub-
stratum 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? Because technique is subject to
transmission, it remains attached to culture: despite its pretensions to
70   A. Legendre and S. Ibrahime

gaining an obscure and elusive natural dignity, it remains to a large

extent cultural.
We try to show how the relationships between technique, nature and
culture have historically been established in the West and then present the
case of a model for learning a Chinese martial art that claims to be natural,
in the ‘natural style’. Then, using this model in relation to recent findings
in the cognitive sciences, we sketch out a paradigmatic genealogy of tech-
nique and try to explain in passing why the West has lagged behind on this
issue.

‘Natural technique’: an oxymoron in the West

Why has the West been reluctant to acknowledge the natural aspect of
technique? Nature – and the Latin etymology attests to this (from the verb
to be born, ‘nascor’) – initially referred to that with which one is born,
namely the state of birth of things (i.e. the innate). On the contrary, culture
– originally ‘the action of cultivating the earth’ – has come to refer to the
transforming action of the mind (i.e. the acquired) on the raw and formless
material provided by nature, as a semantic shift symptomatic of Western
dualistic sensibility occurred.
Ethnology and anthropology, which specifically explore human cultures,
have long subscribed to this Manichaean representation of phenomena.
Culture, often assimilated to civilisation, refers to human actions, and
more specifically to what those actions owe to the privileged exercise of
human minds in society; the means by which they rise above a state of
nature implicitly perceived as primitive and degrading. Techniques, and
even the ‘techniques of the body’ (Hegel 1967) perfectly satisfy this cri-
terion. Insofar as the raw material of the body is immersed from birth in
certain social structures, because these entrenched structures shape it,
‘society by society’ and particularise it, this body is to a large extent ‘con-
structed’. Meaning: his habitus is indubitably the work of the mind. The
‘natural body’, like the ‘natural technique’, therefore exists a priori only as
a myth.
Hébert himself, whose ‘Natural Method’ aims at a ‘reasoned return to
the natural conditions of life’ through a rational arrangement of tech-
niques, seems impeded in this logical straightjacket. The system of values
on which his ‘complete’ physical education (Hébert 1936) is based, cer-
tainly reverses the classical balance in favour of nature, erected as the new
ideal. But the bijection continues: Hébert fails to question the validity of
the concepts of nature and culture, their arbitrary definitions and indisput-
able opposition. Therefore, technique remains obliged to make an act of
allegiance to one or the other pole, one to the exclusion of the other.
Other cultures, however, have been less scrupulous about reconciling
the terms of nature and technique. As Jeu admirably expressed it in writing
 The naturalising process of technique   71

about yoga, in eastern cultures, body techniques are often presented as

activities that concern the whole person and the surest means of commun-
ing with the absolute. This approach does not emanate from a detached
mind or an act of transcendence, then, but more ‘simply’, by immanence
(‘by the ways of interiority’), through repeated activity (Jeu 1987:
pp.  123–124). And the absolute that is sought out, in fact, merges with
nature, ‘deus sive natura’, as Spinoza (1993) expressed it. Comparable
sensitivities are found in China: Zhuangzi Taoism provides many
examples.1 The Japanese martial arts (judo, kendo, karate-­do, etc.) attest
to the same approach: this ‘do’, or ‘dao’ in Chinese (the ‘dao’, 道, of
Daoism), generally translated as ‘the Way’, refers indeed to the functioning
of the universe, which one can reproduce through exercise. The technique
makes a sign towards nature, without having to deny its affectation to
culture. As Descola (2005) noted, many cultures indeed function without
assuming a direct opposition to nature, but instead offer an extension of it.
There are even extreme cases where it is openly claimed that a technique
belongs to nature: the ‘natural style’, ‘ziranmen’ (自然), is a good example.
But how does a style that proclaims itself natural proceed to make the
technique natural?

Nature, culture and technique in China: the case

of ‘natural style’
The ‘natural style’2 (‘ziranmen’, 自然) is an internal martial art (‘neijia’, 家)
explicitly oriented towards combat: training is split into three distinct
phases called ‘form’ (有形, youxing), ‘formless’ (形, wuxing), and ‘true
form’ (真形, zhenxing), each corresponding to a specific way of conceiving
and materialising the relationships between technique, nature and culture
through appropriate exercises and working methods.
The first of these phases, ‘form’, focuses on the learning of basic combat
techniques. This initiation is preceded by a propaedeutic stage of ‘tabula
rasa’, during which one seeks to get rid of any parasitic ‘habitus’ – that is,
one likely to interfere with the targeted techniques. It is only then that the
phase of acquisition of the techniques, properly speaking, comes. These
techniques are borrowed from ‘styles’ other than the natural style itself. It
should be noted that, in general, ‘styles’ are intended to organise the
sprawling family of Chinese martial arts, either in lineages (associated with
a genealogy of transmission, called ‘menpai’, 門牌) or in combat systems
(reduced to their biomechanical and strategic biases, they are then called
‘quanfa’, 拳法). It is essentially under this second aspect that this odyssey
in terms of styles becomes of interest to the ‘natural style’, insofar as they
sensitise to certain pugilistic gestures and logics. Behind the apparently
arbitrary codification attached to canonical ‘styles’, the learner discovers
various ways of using his body to serve his purposes. One draws on and
72   A. Legendre and S. Ibrahime

takes from the culture the combat techniques best able to reveal the poten-
tial of his body, its ‘nature’. We see from this first stage that even when the
cultural dimension of technology seems fully assumed, nature is already in
the spotlight.3
The second stage, called ‘formless’, consists first of all of freeing oneself
from the conventional character of the forms and styles learned previously:
concretely, one strives to deprive them of ornament in order to return to
the elementary gestures that compose them, distilled down to the expres-
sion of the purest biomechanical logic. This purification is doubled by a
remodelling to conform to the morphological nature of the individual.
Subsequently, the execution of the gesture is expected to become auto-
matic: not in the usual sense of a ‘motor stereotype’ (Parlebas 1981), a pre-
arranged sequence, executed in a reflex, but in the etymological sense of
that which moves of itself, responding only to its intrinsic determinism, its
‘natural’. A ‘sponte sua’ movement emerges at the cost of extremely
tedious personal work, thanks to endless repetition, without a model
(mirror use symbolically is prohibited). Consequently, the proprioceptive
and kinaesthetic sensibilities become imperceptibly refined to develop,
according to some, ‘a sense of movement’ (Berthoz 1997), and according
to others, an ‘internal sense or a ‘sense of the body’ (Billeter 2010), and the
tacit knowledge of the self that accompanies it (Sheets-­Johnstone 1998).
Later, the work on ‘styles’ that increased the learner’s awareness of his
own body, will also provide the opportunity and the means of discovering,
empirically and intuitively, the physical laws that govern action and con-
dition their success.4 Their internalisation accelerates by gradually turning
away from the ‘techniques’ and ‘styles’ themselves, in order to favour the
work of ‘gongfa’ (功法),5 the exercises intended to perfect the use of one’s
body, ‘shenfa’6 (身法). Specifically, it is a matter of optimising the body
structure (構, ‘tigou’) so that it can deliver, by its very structure, the
maximum of its ‘potential for action and force’ (勢, ‘shi’).7 We use, for
example, a weighted system to force it to improve the coherence of its con-
figuration, as this prefigures its effectiveness. Or we teach it to make the
best use of the impulses already underway (such as centrifugal force). It is
ultimately a question of learning the laws of efficiency, crystallised in
Chinese culture by a notion at once celebrated, misunderstood and sub-
jected to fantasies: ‘qi’,8 which might be compared with the internal thrust
of a movement that has optimised its biomechanical efficiency.
In sum, at this stage, we again rid ourselves of certain habituses, but this
time, we have become somatically9 conscious of the principles that regulate
effective action. As Master Liang underlined, this second ‘emptiness’, with
its newly acquired know-­how and openness to opportunities, differs on all
points from the initial void, which was total vacuity (空, ‘kong’). In this
case, it is thus the functioning of nature that is grasped through the culture
(styles), which is at its service: the real challenge consists in well and truly
 The naturalising process of technique   73

understanding the workings of the universe (理, ‘li’, the intelligible, organ-
isational principle of the cosmos) and observing the natural dynamism
within us.
We then arrive at the third stage of learning, the ‘true form’ that aims to
produce the ‘right’ gesture in situ, just by being adjusted to the situation
(one of the senses of ‘zhen’, 真), elaborating the appropriate technical
mechanism. This mechanism is not a creation ex nihilo, like a demiurgic
act applied to the world. Rather, it follows the ‘propensity of things’
(Jullien 1992), to bend its course in a favourable sense, certainly, but
without decision-­making taking prominence and interfering.10 To this end,
the surrounding forces and energies, including our own, are recycled, and
borrow the natural dynamism (‘qushi’): for instance, while interacting with
the opponent, we try to use his force rather than opposing it, and we will-
ingly cede the initiative (後發刺人, ‘hou fa ci ren’), only responding a
minima. It is in this sense that the Taoist11 ‘wuwei’, literally ‘not acting’
but usually given as ‘letting act’, was able to provide a theoretical founda-
tion for the style: ‘weiwuwei’ (為無為), ‘act without acting’, means essen-
tially that we let nature act in us and for us.
A form of intentionality (意, ‘yi’) then manifests itself, and this is
crucial, yet it does not operate against the backdrop of a detached con-
sciousness, as a pure will seeking to materialise.12 It tends rather to conjoin
with the movement of nature. In Chinese thought, this refers to the ‘shen’
(神), most often translated as ‘mind’, although this is unfortunate as such a
translation hides the natural and creative dimension of shen: ‘Human
genius, through its action in the process of the Tao, provokes the myster-
ious becoming that incarnates shen’ (Cheng 1991: p. 110). The mind is the
efficiency of nature, within as well as without the human. This is what is
being targeted in the activity.
How is all this concretely put into place in the teaching? Exercises like
meditation are now preferred as a way to eliminate any preformed goals or
representations, and since another objective is to rid oneself of all format-
ted gestures (the body itself is objectified as any natural element with
which one must compose), as much as any ‘motu proprio’13 initiative – that
is, disconnected from the surrounding natural or immanent dynamics –
‘qigong’ (氣功) becomes a practice of first choice. By seeking an optimal
coupling between breathing and movement, one becomes familiar with the
principles of rhythm, momenta and inertias through which we learn to sink
into the general movement of the world. All phenomena, whether endo-
genous or exogenous, are then naturalised – that is, converted to forces,
energies: from gravity to the ground (as a counterweight), and in passing
through others or by breath (reduced to its cosmic dimension). Essentially,
we work to refine synergies, and, to do so, our grasp on the world: notably
through haptic sensitivity, which is privileged because it is at the interface
of touch and proprioception, feeling and acting. It also enriches the
74   A. Legendre and S. Ibrahime

Nature
of
technique Codified
Motor ster
eotype Personal
Début de Pure gest
l’apprentiss ure Natura
age
Adjusted l
gesture
Original
habitus ‘form’
‘formless
’
‘true for
m’

Accommodation Relation
to culture
Inductive discovery Relation
of natural laws to nature
Assimilation Relation
to culture
Empirical discovery of one’s morphotype Relation
and general laws of efficiency to nature
Naturalisation Relation
to culture
Ecologisation + wuwei = trust to the Relation
body’s self-organising capacities to nature

Figure 6.1  Natural style learning process.

kinaesthetic sense, now turned to the outside, and progressively increased,

moreover, by a form of kinaesthetic empathy.
Of course, the three stages of formation overlap at least as much as they
succeed one another: the beginning of a new one reflects above all the prac-
titioner’s degree of maturity in a given technique: in order to perfect it, he
must join other ways of working with the preceding ones. This sequencing
emphasises, moreover, the orientation of learning, which, based on the cul-
tural background of the technique, inexorably detaches itself from it to
rejoin nature. The relationship between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ is therefore
not conceived here as an antinomy, but rather as a flexible and functional
interaction between two terms at the extreme points of a continuum; a
continuum on which the technique moves over the course of training,
trying to approach, asymptotically, the natural ideal. This is a dynamic
that is less akin to an ascending dialectic than descending, since it reveals
the immanent determinism of nature working in us.
But can these observations be extended beyond China? Like Simondon
(2012), could we base ourselves on this model of learning the natural
style  to contribute to the construction of a paradigmatic genealogy of
technique?
 The naturalising process of technique   75

The natural style tested by the cognitive sciences:

for a genesis of technique
Let us begin by testing these observations with the classical models of
learning in cognitive and educational sciences. From the 1950s, cognitive
psychology tended to describe human behaviours and thought on the basis
of memory and information processing. Although different nomenclatures
compete, they agree that learning can be described as a succession of three
stages from novice to expert.
The first stage is known as the ‘cognitive stage’ (Fitts 1964; Fitts and
Posner 1967), ‘declarative’ (Anderson 1982) or ‘controlled processing’
(Shiffrin and Schneider 1977). In this stage, motor and cognitive skills are
essentially governed by controlled processes.14 Learning and skill execution
primarily involve a knowledge base stored and retrieved by a system asso-
ciated with ‘declarative’ memory (Squire and Zola-­Morgan 1991), also
called ‘explicit’ (Tulving 1995). This knowledge requires working memory
(Baddeley 1986), which involves conscious mechanisms for access to
knowledge and attention allocation.15 The acquired knowledge is then
mainly stored in the form of facts, rules and events experienced in an auto-
noetic context. This stage allows the active selection and regulation of
easily verbalisable knowledge and information and, incidentally, the cor-
rection of initial errors (Maxwell et al. 2001).
The second stage, known as ‘associative’ (Fitts 1964; Fitts and Posner
1967), ‘knowledge compilation’ (Anderson 1982) or mixed processing
(Shiffrin and Schneider 1977) is a time of overlap between memory systems
and information processing. In this stage, errors in understanding or exe-
cuting learned skills are progressively reduced, and declarative knowledge
gradually gives way to procedural knowledge. As a corollary, controlled
processes are abandoned in favour of the automatic processes that form
the basis of the last stage.
The final stage, known as the ‘autonomous stage’ (Fitts and Posner
1967), ‘procedural’ (Anderson 1982) or ‘automatic processing’ (Shiffrin
and Schneider 1977) concerns expertise, when motor and cognitive skills
are mainly driven by automatic processes. Learning and skill execution are
therefore achieved through a knowledge base stored and retrieved by a
system associated with ‘non-­declarative’ memory (Squire and Zola-­Morgan

Novice Performance
Implicit � Explicit
Performance Expert
memory memory

Figure 6.2  Skill acquisition related to the memory types.

76   A. Legendre and S. Ibrahime

1991), also called ‘implicit’ (Tulving 1995). This knowledge is thus stored
in the form of information that corresponds essentially to motor coordin-
ation, perceptual skills and habits obtained through practice. Its acquisi-
tion and utilisation does not require working memory, conscious and
voluntary access to information, or attention allocation, and is hardly ver-
balisable (Squire 1992).
These classic models from learning theories show certain similarities
with the empirical sequencing proposed by the natural style: the con-
tinuous transition from the stage of ‘form’ to ‘formless’ suggests the shift
from motor skills initially performed via controlled and explicit processes,
to automatic and implicit processes. The ‘formless’ and the ‘true’ form
stages, for their parts, echo the prescriptions of classical learning models to
use information on a procedural and automatic basis that excludes verbali-
sation:16 the cult of repetition and the prohibition of mirrors or declarative
contents17 specific to ‘formless’, and the orientation of the attentional focus
towards the environment, rhythm and movement during ‘true form’, act as
a safeguard against the use of explicit and controlled processes, that would
affect performance at the intermediate and advanced stages of the practice.
The two models thus seem to converge on the essential, namely the
main sources of the dynamics of learning, and only differ in the explan-
atory model they call on: an explicit reference to nature and the identifica-
tion of the underlying cognitive mechanisms. This coincidence suggests
that what is called ‘nature’ in humans might in fact refer to the regulatory
processes of action inaccessible to analytic, declarative and conscious
mechanisms: if nature > | < culture and culture = consciousness, then nature
> | < consciousness. Therefore, ‘mutatis mutandis’:
As a working hypothesis, this lets us pursue the genealogy of the tech-
nique begun by Simondon, who attempted to elucidate the ‘genesis’ of the
technical object (comparable with a ‘phylogenetic lineage’), revealing a
‘series’ (in three levels: ‘element’, ‘individual’ and ‘ensemble’) ranging from
the ‘abstract mode’ (direct application of scientific laws) to a ‘concrete
mode’ when a technical object becomes a ‘fully coherent, fully unified
system’ (Simondon 2012: p. 27). He symbolically described this genealogy
as a ‘natural technical evolution.’ We can extend inquiry by observing the
learning process through the lens of the nature-­culture dialectics: forced to
borrow from culture his first tools, the canonical styles18 (‘form’), the

Novice Technique Nature � Culture Technique Expert

Figure 6.3  Skill acquisition related to culture and nature.

 The naturalising process of technique   77

learner gradually pushes culture out as he develops his ‘natural’ nature

(‘formless’); ultimately, while he ‘ecologises’ (‘true form’), his ‘natural’
nature becomes an instantiation of Nature, as he starts trusting the self-­
organising capacities of his body (meaning of the wuwei). All of these
aspects attest to the importance of ‘nature’ in technique, or, in other
words, the propensity of technique to become naturalised: as Simondon
pointed out, the technical object, by becoming concrete, tends to approach
the mode of existence of natural objects (ibid.: p. 57). This applies to body
techniques too.
This dimension of technique is no longer ignored by the West. Emersiol-
ogy, for example, can be used to detect the manifestations of the living
body, below the threshold of consciousness, when it is engaged in an activ-
ity (Andrieu 2015) The ‘ecological’ (Gibson and Shaw 1977) or ‘enactive’
(Noë 2004) approaches to perception emphasise how the individual’s
ability to act on his environment impacts the capture of sensory informa-
tion itself. It effectively blurs further the traditional boundaries between
the subject and object (the individual and the environment), the active and
passive (the actual and potential), the conscious and unconscious.
These  advances have led to the developments in a ‘phenomenology of
activity’ (Billeter 1993)19 and of the acquisition of technique (Dreyfus and
Dreyfus 2002).
All of these works have been part of the struggle to overcome the classi-
cal dichotomies between body and mind, nature and culture. Not that
there weren’t pioneering attempts to break this logical stronghold in the
past: Spinoza stated in Ethics that no one knew what a body was capable
of.20 Later, ontological dualism changed into a ‘dualism of tendencies’
(Jankélévitch 1931, about Bergson) or a methodological dualism, propos-
ing a more flexible articulation of mind and body. This new matrix
allowed for the later ‘holistic turn’ in the sciences (Azouvi 2007), the ‘cor-
poreal turn’ (Sheets-­Johnstone 2009) and the ‘practice turn’ (Spatz 2015)
in contemporary theory.
Practice and techniques have thus become a privileged ground for
observing ‘new’ powers that concern a ‘natura naturans’ (Nature naturing,
meaning nature as creative, Spinoza 1993) or the vital impulse (‘élan vital’,
Bergson 1941) instantiated in us: a power that regulates our action by cir-
cumventing consciousness and even the will if necessary. But it is one thing
to accept the pervasiveness of such a causality, and quite another to set it
up as the sine qua non of performance. As we have seen, the natural style
expresses a secular inclination in Chinese practices, assuming that it is only
by abdicating consciousness that nature is attained and consequently excel-
lence in technique. Yet the West, which is finally inclined to concede this,
continues in practice to magnify the ‘logos’, reflexive consciousness and
control. This is borne out by the work of Houssaye (2014), which reveals
the persistence of traditional pedagogical models in teaching practices
78   A. Legendre and S. Ibrahime

despite the progress in didactics and the psychology of learning; or the

works of Arnaud (1983), who has shown how physical education kept
depending on a resolutely intellectualist general education.

Conclusion: technique, between nature and

culture
What can we conclude about the relationship between technique, nature
and culture? Obviously, technique possesses an undeniable cultural dimen-
sion, which is what makes it transmissible. But it has as well its intrinsic
dynamics, by virtue of which it tends to naturalise itself. Bergson (1941)
said that consciousness appeared in man to compensate his lack of instinct.
Technique likewise is a second-­best solution, an artefact produced by
culture to compensate for this same lack of instinct, but one that also seek
to imitate the instinct’s efficaciousness. For this reason, technique
naturalises.
The West’s reluctance to recognise this comes from representations of
nature and culture that are too divided and agonistic: an epiphenomenon
of mind-­body dualism that hindered the inspection of technique’s ‘mode of
existence’ (Simondon 2012):

Culturally based paradigms place obstacles in the path to under-

standing because culture equips each of us with built-­in blinders,
hidden and unstated assumptions that control our thoughts and block
the unravelling of cultural processes. Yet, man without culture is
not man.
(Hall 1976: p. 220)

The assignment of Western technique exclusively to culture appears as a

symptom of the cultural irrationalism that Hall describes here. When tech-
nique unfolds in a cultural context more favourable to nature, a context in
which the antinomy between nature and culture is not so marked, a
‘natural technique’ becomes conceivable and the true nature of technique
reveals itself. Hence, we see the Western fascination with the apparent sub-
tlety of Asian techniques. In reality, it is not so much a matter of subtlety
as of accomplishment, their genesis not having been hampered by mis­
conceptions. In this sense, too, the development of technique remains
dependent on culture.

Notes
  1 These include the famous dramas of the ‘Ding butcher’ or the ‘swimmer of
cataracts’.
  2 This rather confidential style appeared in the nineteenth century. It is taught
in  France and China by Master Liang Chaoqun, with whom we have been
 The naturalising process of technique   79

training since 2003. A work by Wan Laisheng (1927/2009) outlines its prin-
ciples and method. The description below draws on the written document and
the ethnographic notes collected throughout our training.
  3 Strictly speaking, any style, although related to culture, is presented as a reifica-
tion, the formalisation of an expert’s ‘natural’: a fighter will have proved the
efficiency of his technique, the relevance of his ‘shenfa’ (see note 6). Solicited to
transmit his way of fighting, he is obliged to codify and thereby rigidify his
know-­how. His originally alive technique ossifies, becomes orthodoxy. Hence,
the apparent arbitrariness of style.
  4 Cf. Doganis 2012: pp.  95–97 and Jullien 1996: pp.  149ff. ‘In other words,
learning does not consist in appropriating forms but in integrating the process
that leads to the dynamism of the path.’ (Escande, 2001, pp. 104–105).
  5 One of the most famous proverbs associated with the martial arts is: 不 練功 練
功, 老 一場空 一場空: practise the styles without practising the exercises for the
body (the gongfa), once old, you have nothing left.
  6 See Legendre 2015.
  7 ‘The shi, momentum or dynamic force, applies to both the natural world and
the process of realising the brushwork. The shi of the natural world corres-
ponds to the dynamism of its movement’ (Escande 2001: p. 109).
  8 ‘The teacher ensures that the student adopts the correct position of the body,
enabling the energy to circulate without hindrance’ (Escande 2001: p. 57).
  9 This consciousness is not necessarily discursive: what the Chinese language
expresses very simply through the expression ‘tiwu’ (體悟), etymologically
understood as by/with the body. On the different modalities of body conscious-
ness, see Shusterman 2008.
10 This is why there is no contradiction between the spontaneity of the natural and
the course of things: ‘spontaneous gesture; that is, an extension of the dyna-
mism of the universe’ (Escande 2001: p. 102).
11 On the notion of wuwei in the doxographic Chinese tradition, see
Slingerland 2003.
12 Note that intention in Merleau-­Ponty’s phenomenology is also detached from
consciousness and will.
13 ‘The painter does not act voluntarily: the landscape seems to impose itself on
him without being able to do otherwise’ (Escande 2001: p. 117).
14 For a review of the literature, see Schneider and Chein 2003.
15 For a review of the literature on attention, see Maquestiaux 2013.
16 A number of recent studies have shown that declarative processes, verbalisation
(Flegal and Anderson 2008, see also the notion of verbal overshadowing,
Melcher and Schooler 1996) and internal attentional focus (Wulf 2007) may
impair learning and performance.
17 This is a consequence of the absence of an external reference that makes this
stage of learning a kind of somatic maieutic, the body tacitly dialoguing with
natural laws.
18 ‘This primitive technical object is not a natural, physical system. It is the phys-
ical translation of an intellectual system’ (Simondon 2012: p.  56). In other
words, it is a bias, manifesting a certain arbitrariness, that gradually ‘concre-
tises’, and in so doing, learns to transact with natural laws.
19 In fact, Billeter anachronistically applies the expression to a classical Chinese
text, the Zhuangzi, dating back to the fourth century bce.
20 In reality, they are innumerable, from Heraclitean mobilisation, to the monism
of Spinoza, through the genealogical thought of Nietzsche, etc. all thoughts
stifled by the dualistic doxa.
80   A. Legendre and S. Ibrahime

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Chapter 7

Health, well-­being and sport 

Some personal reflections
Andrew Bloodworth

At the beginning of 2015 I suffered from a series of seizures/spasms over a

duration of six weeks. My right hand would clench uncontrollably, the
muscles in my face on the right-­hand side would tighten, lifting one side of
my face and rendering me unable to speak clearly. During the episodes,
which would last about one minute, I was fully conscious and in no pain,
although of course the sensation was a fairly unusual one. While initially I
had one, maybe two of these episodes a day, at their peak, I was suffering
from roundabout 20 to 30 a day. Ascertaining the cause of such episodes,
and in particular whether they were a set of epileptic seizures or spasms
associated with inflammatory lesions on the brain (a process often associ-
ated with multiple sclerosis and related conditions) is a process that can
take some time. It was eventually found that the symptoms were spasms
rather than seizures, although I have not yet suffered a relapse.
My current situation is as follows. I have a diagnosis (clinically isolated
syndrome) that is more likely than not to lead onto further episodes and a
diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Patches on a brain MRI scan have con-
firmed this diagnosis, and also suggested the possibility of another area
which may or may not mark a cause for concern. I am currently without
symptoms, and some might say in excellent health. Without symptoms, I
am able to pursue my goals as I wish, and on certain conceptions of health,
this would be enough to deem me healthy. Nevertheless, this episode had a
profound effect on me. Initially the striking experience of a body failing,
and outside of my control, was in stark contrast to my normal experience
in which my body was taken for granted. After the spasms ceased, my
experience of my body remained a complex issue, with a definite distrust
of my body. The episode and eventual diagnosis also marked a watershed
moment in terms of my viewing the future with a greater degree of
uncertainty.
This chapter marks an attempt to understand my recent experience of
these neurological problems. First it employs noted theories in the philo-
sophy of health to explore my current status, healthy or unhealthy. My
currently being without symptoms, and the uncertainty regarding the shape
84   A. Bloodworth

of the condition in the future, raises some interesting challenges for these
theories. Having ascertained the limitations of such theories in encompass-
ing my experience, the paper moves to conceptions of well-­being and suf-
fering to better understand my condition and experience of it. Finally, the
paper also examines the manner in in which playing sport impacted on my
experience of illness. It seeks to explain how playing football and taking
up yoga have all contributed to relief from some of the psychological
effects of such a condition.

Conceptions of health and well-­b eing

First, I will examine my condition in the light of Boorse’s (1975, 1977)
celebrated theory of health. Boorse offers a naturalistic theory of health.
Health is defined independent of the values or goals of the individual.
Health is the absence of disease. A disease compromises the normal func-
tion of the body. Normal function is defined with reference to a species’
typical contribution of an internal part of the body to the survival and
reproduction of the individual. A disease reduces function below the
species’ typical levels.

1 The reference class is a natural class of organisms of uniform func-

tional design; specifically, an age group of a sex of a species.
2 A normal function of a part or process within members of the ref-
erence class is a statistically typical contribution by it to their indi-
vidual survival and reproduction.
3 Health in a member of the reference class is normal functional
ability: the readiness of each internal part to perform all its normal
functions on typical occasions with at least typical efficiency.
4 A disease is a type of internal state which impairs health, i.e.
reduces one or more functional ability below typical efficiency.
(Boorse 1977: p. 562)

In Boorse’s terms, my condition certainly conforms to the physical

abnormality required for the definition of a disease. While I was suffering
from the spasms the condition appears to have met every aspect of Boorse’s
definition, compromising species typical functioning. My diagnosis is a
little more complicated now – referred to as clinically isolated syndrome, it
is possible, although not probable, that I have no further symptoms. The
extent to which I am currently diseased in Boorse’s terms appears
dependent on the future impact of the abnormality on my species typical
functioning, which has yet to be discerned.
There are a number of challenges to Boorse’s definition that I will not
address here. One interesting point to note is the definition effectively
trades upon an idea of the normal that can be difficult to define. I have had
 Health, well-being and sport   85

discussions with doctors in which they have made clear the difficulty
(without opening the brain up) in discerning just what patches on an MRI
scan are for example, and have noted disagreement, among professionals
as to how best to interpret such a scan. It can be difficult in many medical
instances to identify just what an abnormality is, and then to predict its
implications in terms of functioning.
Nordenfelt (1987, 1997, 2000, 2007a, 2007b) is aware of the problems
that might be raised in stipulating the normal without reference to the
goals of the individual. Health concerns whether we are in a bodily and
mental condition that allows us to realise our vital goals.

A is completely healthy if, and only if, A is in a bodily and mental state
which is such that A has the second-­order ability to realize all his or
her vital goals given a set of standard or otherwise reasonable
circumstances.
(Nordenfelt 2007c: p. 54)

The conception of vital goals (although not purely subjective goals in Nor-
denfelt’s terms) allows for the individual to define their own health, with
recourse to what is vital for them. In Nordenfelt’s terms the impact of my
current condition on my health concerns the extent to which the condition
impacts upon my vital goals. It is certainly not a given here, that the appar-
ent abnormality that is present in my MRI scans, in itself compromises my
health. Something further must be said about how such a condition
impacts upon my vital goals, now or in the future. Here, even during the
episodes themselves, at least at the outset, it might be reasonable to claim
that I was healthy and able to achieve my vital goals. Were the condition
to have been a stable one, one could also claim that there was no signi-
ficant impact upon my health in the future either. A growing number of
spasms per day would threaten the vital goals, as would a suggestion that
eventually the condition would compromise aspects of my life that I con-
sider vital. I would need to adapt my goals and life in some way, if pos-
sible, (and perhaps the environment and social context would need to be
adapted too) or suffer a detriment to my health. With the uncertainty sur-
rounding my condition, and my presently being (luckily) without symp-
toms, the discussion of vital goals does not seem to quite capture the
implications of the condition for me now. The key aspect of the condition
that remains is the effect on my conception of the future and a growing
uncertainty regarding this. It becomes more difficult to consider your
longer term without a certain degree of anxiety.
Havi Carel reflects upon the limitations of both of these naturalist and
normative approaches in her book Illness, an account of Carel’s own
experience of the rare and serious lung condition lymphangioleiomyoma-
tosis (LAM).
86   A. Bloodworth

These two approaches both have merits and have spawned a large liter-
ature. But there is a different set of issues pertaining to illness that is not
captured by either approach. In this chapter, I focus on what is left out of
these two accounts, namely, the phenomenology of illness. What do I mean
by a phenomenology of illness? I mean the experience of being ill: illness as
it is lived by the ill person. I mean the set of experiences – physical, psycho-
logical and social – and the changes that characterise illness. I view illness
as a life-­transforming process, in which there is plenty of bad but also, sur-
prisingly, some good (Carel 2008).
Carel refers to something important here. The two approaches she refers
to, described above, miss something out. With my condition in mind, the
naturalist approach stops at the physiology of the condition. Is this a scien-
tifically verifiable abnormality? Its impact is considered in more general
terms, rather than the implications for me. The normativist approach
offered by Nordenfelt concerns itself with my goals and gets closer to con-
sidering my own experiences here. The compromising of vital goals,
however, does not fully capture how a condition has impacted upon my
life. I might be able to realise my vital goals, but the impact of the con-
dition on my sense of the future seems key, particularly now as I am
symptom free.
Carel also makes an important observation regarding some surprisingly
good things associated with illness. It is probably a lot easier for me to
consider in hindsight such values, when I am currently without symptoms.
I did, however, make some changes to my life after suffering such spasms.
These were in the main to focus on certain important aspects of life, and
try not to get swept up in other less meaningful, but often all-­encompassing
aspects. This I have found can get more difficult as you gradually return to
normal life, but perhaps hints at something Carel refers to here.
The contention thus far is that conceptions of health have not quite
captured the significance of my condition for me. It may, however, be just
that the question – am I healthy? – is the wrong one to ask, and that
another conception will better reflect the impact of the condition on my
life. Theories of well-­being and quality of life have spawned a large liter-
ature in a number of disciplines. In psychology, the focus appears to have
been on developing a subjective conception, where well-­being might be
defined in terms of, for example, life satisfaction and the presence of
greater positive rather than negative affect (see for example Diener 1984,
for a hallmark paper in the field). Such approaches have been challenged,
in much the same way that authors have sought to challenge Nordenfelt’s
conception of health (see for example Schramme 2007). Vital goals, being
defined in turn as necessary for the realisation of minimal happiness, have
been accused of being too flexible, too easily distorted by the subjective
preferences of the individual. For example, as Schramme points out, are
we  happy to conclude that someone is unhealthy, or at least suffers a
 Health, well-being and sport   87

detriment to their health because they are unable to realise a lifelong goal
of jumping a certain distance? A challenge for subjective conceptions is
that our desires and experiences are not necessarily reliable indicators of
our well-­being. I might rate my well-­being highly, and yet be mistaken
because I have merely adjusted my expectations to a very harmful environ-
ment. It is because of such tensions that theorists have moved to articulate
what might be termed objective, or list theories of well-­being.
Philosopher James Griffin, in his celebrated text Well-­being (1986)
offers a defence of his progression from desire-­based accounts of well-­
being to what he later acknowledged amounts to a list theory of well-­being
(Griffin 2000). The theory proposes a number of values thought central to
well-­being. These are included in a list of prudential values:

• Accomplishment – ‘We all want to do something with our lives, to

act  in a way that gives them some point and substance’ (Griffin
1986: p. 64)
• Autonomy, liberty, – ‘The components of human existence’ (ibid.:
p. 67), ‘the minimum material goods to keep body and soul together’
(ibid.).
• Understanding – ‘Simply knowing about oneself and one’s world is a
part of the good life. We value, not as an instrument but for itself,
being in touch with reality, being free from muddle, ignorance and
mistake’ (ibid.).
• Enjoyment – ‘pleasures, the perception of beauty, absorption in and
appreciation of nature’ (ibid.).
• Deep personal relations – ‘deep, authentic, reciprocal relations of
friendship and love’ (ibid.).

The extent to which my condition impacts upon my well-­being concerns

the extent to which it impacts upon these values. The theory certainly has
room to accommodate a reduction in well-­being caused by my condition.
Perhaps for example it is trickier for me to enjoy things as much, because I
am preoccupied with the possible impact of my condition, or perhaps in
the future I might consider the condition as a threat to my autonomy, in
the sense of a disability restricting my ability to pursue a life as I
would wish.
The relationship between health and indeed disability and well-­being
warrants further discussion. Indeed, Griffin (1986) spends some time dis-
cussing the relationship between health and well-­being.
Health on its own is not valuable; it is necessary for a life, out of which
each of us in his own case can make something valuable, but then what
moral status has a necessary condition of the good life, in a case where
achieving it will not allow one, and may prevent one, from having a good
life? (Griffin 1986: p. 46–47).
88   A. Bloodworth

This stance on health should be placed within the broader context of his
critique of basic needs accounts. Griffin accepts that governments will
generally seek to promote needs such as health, paying less attention to
desires, even going so far as to say that ‘needs generally trump desires’
(Griffin 1986: p.  47). He is reluctant, however, to conclude that needs
must have greater moral importance, suggesting that the trumping that
seems to occur in a political context indicates only the elevated political
importance of needs. Indeed, Griffin considers the elevation of needs over
desires in a moral sense a mistake.
Not all basic needs are morally important; some mere desires are. What
we need are deeper categories. We have to get behind talk about needs and
desires to their deeper significance in our lives (ibid.).
Basic needs discussed by Griffin include education, ‘interesting work’,
(Griffin 1986: p. 43) and health. Griffin recognises that needs are required
to at least some level or threshold. ‘They all involve a norm falling below
which brings malfunction, harm or ailment’ (Griffin 1986: p. 42). Discern-
ing quite where a harm to health will necessarily precede an impairment to
well-­being is a difficult task however. If we were to accept a normative
conception, conceptions of health and well-­being seem more closely
aligned. If my vital goals are impaired, then both my health and well-­being
are likely to be compromised. Griffin’s suggestion, however, is that our
vital goals might in the end fit with his list of prudential values, rather than
a list of basic needs.
In the context of disability similar moves have been made. There need
not be any necessary condition between disability and well-­being, particu-
larly if the conception of disability is one that focuses on physical or
objective indicators of impairment, rather than one that considers the goals
and values of the individual. If we consider Griffin’s list of prudential
values these support the notion that there is no necessary connection
between disability and well-­being. Conceptions of disability such as Nor-
denfelt’s (2000) suggest a closer relationship between disability and well-­
being, with vital goals central to the definition of disability. This allows
flexibility on the definition of disability itself, where two people with the
exact same condition, might interpret their circumstances differently, or
indeed be situated in different social contexts in which the pursuit and
achievement of vital goals are more or less feasible.
Despite such approaches certainly accommodating the different ways in
which people might perceive their objective circumstances, Griffin’s list
conception of well-­being still does not seem optimal in terms of capturing
how my condition has impacted upon my life. Maybe, again, well-­being is
not quite the right way in which to assess the impact of the condition upon
me. List theories of well-­being by definition need to offer a general
account, that can capture the myriad of ways in which these values might
figure in the lives of individuals. More work would need to be done,
 Health, well-being and sport   89

perhaps with reference to those values above, or indeed to other theoretical

frameworks, in order to fully explicate the role of the condition in my life.
In Kay Toombs’ phenomenological account of a life with multiple scler-
osis she describes illness as a ‘limit situation’. In such situations, the body,
normally taken for granted, is ‘apprehended as a material, physical entity’
(1993: p. 70). Take a recent (fairly minor) experience of my condition. Pre-
viously I had used a computer mouse unreflectively, almost as an extension
of my own hand in directing the cursor. More recently due to a tremor in
my right hand I have begun to experience subtle problems in pressing the
buttons or directing the mouse smoothly. This inconvenience is not enough
to affect significantly my life, or indeed those goals I aspire too. Neither is
it, you might think, enough to affect my well-­being directly, understood in
terms of those values on Griffin’s list. What this does do, however, is offer
a reminder as to the frailty of the body, and of possible more significant
episodes in the future.
Currently I am in good health, very active and enjoy a number of sports
activities: yoga, football, running, cycling. I have not had much time off
work (only during the occurrence of the spasms). Our discussion of the
effect of the condition on my well-­being, and health, has led to some inter-
esting, but incomplete accounts of how the condition has affected or
indeed changed me. For me, the most significant aspect of the condition is
the manner in which it has affected my perception of the future. The uncer-
tainty concerns every aspect of my life. Will I be able to get a mortgage?
(Recent applications for a range of insurances were rejected.) Will I be able
to be physically active? What level of disability might follow? Is there any-
thing I can do? In this sense Cassell’s definition of suffering gets much
closer to illuminating my experience. Cassell defines suffering as follows:
‘Suffering can be defined as the state of severe distress associated with
events that threaten the intactness of person’ (1991: p.  33). For Cassell
persons suffer rather than bodies. At times of greater distress, I could be
said to be suffering from the condition, even though there are no symp-
toms associated with it at present. The suffering concerns how the con-
dition leaves my future uncertain, whether I will be able to work, whether
I will be in pain, whether I will be able to play football with my kids.
Cassell requires that the person must feel a threat to their intactness as a
person. Both normative and naturalist theories of health can be said to
neglect the phenomenology of illness, concerned as they might be with the
pathology or science of the condition, or with whether the individual is
able to realise their central goals.

Sport, physical activity and the relief of suffering

I undertook a number of physical activities as I sought to restore con­
fidence. I have developed a love for yoga, started playing competitive
90   A. Bloodworth

football again and started lifting weights! Yoga, with its focus on the
experience of the body as you move through a number of positions, with
its meditative nature, has provided a space for me to enjoy rather than feel
threatened or distrustful of my body. It is an activity in which rather than
contemplate the future, you are encouraged to enjoy and experience the
sensations associated with certain, often challenging movements. In some
ways, this offers a direct response to the low-­level suffering associated with
regular contemplation of what the condition might mean in the future.
Initially on experiencing the condition, as I have discussed, the striking
experience was of a body failing. As Toombs describes I began to perceive
my own body as a malfunctioning thing or at least as potentially so. Of
course, we cannot detach ourselves from our bodies, even if we do perceive
them as an object, or as Toombs suggests as alien to us in some way.
Taking up football briefly in order to participate in a staff varsity football
game helped restore some level of trust in my body.
I began to consider why playing football had seemed to foster this
positive change. During the few games and training sessions I had particip-
ated in I had torn my hamstring and was racing to be fit for the varsity
game itself. Having considered some of Toombs’ work on ‘The body as
object in illness’ these are some first thoughts.
Toombs notes that at times considering the body as an object can be
beneficial, even helpful to the ill individual. Toombs refers to instances in
which seeing the body in a mechanistic fashion can be beneficial in identi-
fying what can be done or parts that need replacing. Toombs also refers to
how a patient referring to removal of ‘the breast’ rather than ‘my breast’
might be experienced as less traumatic. This may have some mileage in
explaining my own attitude. In this sense playing football (and getting
injured) for at least a short spell of time encouraged me to think of my
body as a tool, whether it would be fit for the purpose of playing in the
(almost) big game. Treating the body as an object, and focusing on the
restoration of function of my torn hamstring, not only allowed me to think
of my body as improving rather than as in decline. It also created a reas-
suring, if somewhat illusory concern for the body as merely a tool, for
sporting performance in this sense.
Toombs also describes the experience of the body in the clinical encoun-
ter and I will use this account to help explain my experience of the sport-
ing encounter while suffering from neurological problems.

Moreover, in the clinical encounter the body is objectified not only as

a material, physical entity but as a being-­for-the-­other. Under the
‘gaze’ of the physician, the patient perceives his or her body to be an
object of scientific investigation. In the experience of being looked-­at
by the physician, one recognizes not only one’s being-­an-object for
the  Other but the brute fact of one’s being as a biological entity.
 Health, well-being and sport   91

To undergo the experience of being taken as an ‘object’ by the Other is

to experience concretely the ‘ambiguity’ of own-­body (i.e., to experi-
ence strange duality of being at once subject for oneself and object for
the Other).
(Toombs 1993: p. 74)

First, as Toombs goes onto say (referring to Sartre) we comprehend our

own illness in terms that are shared. We understand ourselves and our
illness both in scientific terms and in terms that we have learnt elsewhere. I
have found it somewhat reassuring to describe and understand my own
condition in terms I had previously used in lectures. I used to refer to the
taken-­for-granted nature of the healthy body while teaching potential
medical students. In some ways in might be fair to say that using such
terms and concepts can keep from the direct experiencing of the fears asso-
ciated with such a condition. A third person analysis of my own experience
again creates an illusory distance between myself and my body. As an
aside, clinicians (and indeed friends) must be careful of this intellectual
analysis limiting our ability to empathise or, more ambitiously, to ‘tran-
scend’ (in Cassell’s terms) our own experience, to directly experience the
pain of another.
In sport, and indeed in my football participation, I experienced myself
as playing, while at least at times contemplating my own potentially
limiting condition. I was also aware, however, that outwardly, there was
nothing wrong with me, and I was being assessed purely in terms of my
sporting performance. Here the gaze was not that of the clinician, but of a
coach and teammates, who did not know me particularly well, and were
contemplating me as an object, either in opposition to their sporting
efforts, or in terms of the role I might play in facilitating a famous victory!
The strange duality that Toombs refers to, in which I am a subject for
myself, and an object for the other, is reflected not just in a clinical encoun-
ter, but also in the context of sports performance. Here I found the view of
my teammates and opposition players somewhat reassuring. This view-
point of myself as a functioning biological entity, serving a sporting
purpose, offered a different way to understand myself, as I tried to nego-
tiate the initial shock of suffering from multiple spasms. Interestingly, in
light of Toombs’ reference to the strange duality above, I found myself
talking about my health problems to teammates before and after the
training sessions. This could be indicative of my trying to negotiate and
reconcile the disjunct between my own experience of the game and others’
interpretations.
The advantages of this objectification, noted by Toombs, were likely a
product of a fairly unique set of circumstances for me. I am lucky enough
to be in the position at present where the only source of my suffering
(which is probably too severe a term) stems from my own projections of
92   A. Bloodworth

possible futures. At present I feel healthy, and presumably look healthy

too. In the future, of course, I may crave the opposite – feeling awful, with
the gaze of others failing to recognise this, because of the absence of
outward signs of illness. Or indeed I may crave an understanding of the
complexities of a condition, and how it makes me feel, and its implications
for me, rather than an assessment in objective terms. The purpose here has
been to propose some ideas as to why I experienced football in such a
positive fashion, using some of Toombs’ work in a clinical setting, rather
than to make any general claims about the utility of such a view.

Conclusion
In short, I have outlined briefly how my condition might be understood,
both in terms of noted conceptions of health and disease, and as a source of
suffering. I have also offered the beginnings of an explanation of why I
found football to be beneficial in restoring a confidence or trust in my body.
This, I claim, is associated partly with a focus on what my body can do for
me and others, rather than a focus on its decline. It is also, I suggest, associ-
ated with an objectification of the body that, as Toombs accepts, can be
useful. Here playing football has helped foster, even for a short time, a view
of myself as others see me. The experience of being an object for the other,
was helpful as I sought to undertake activities that helped me trust my body.

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Carel, H. (2008). Illness. Durham, UK: Acumen.
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UK: Oxford University Press.
Diener, E. (1984). Subjective well-­being, Psychological Bulletin, 95, 3: 542–575.
Griffin, J. (1986). Well-­Being Its Meaning Measurement and Moral Importance.
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Griffin, J. (2000). Replies, in Crisp, R., Hooker, B., eds. Well-­Being and Morality
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Nordenfelt, L. (1997). Talking about Health: A Philosophical Dialogue. Amster-
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Nordenfelt, L. (2007b). Establishing a middle range position in the theory of

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Nordenfelt, L. (2007c). Rationality and Compulsion Applying Action Theory to
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Schramme, T. S. (2007). Lennart Nordenfelt’s theory of health: introduction to the
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Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Part II

Emersion in the leisure

environment and the
recosmologisation
of sport
Introduction to Part II
Bernard Andrieu and Alessandro Porrovecchio

In the second part of the book, the body ecology of emersive leisure is geo-
graphically situated in leisure environments which favour the exaltation of
sensibility in various ways (see especially Chapter 8 by Jean Corneloup,
Philippe Bourdeau and Pascal Mao). This is mostly produced in non-­
competitive recreational activities that do not seek measurable perform-
ance (see especially Chapter 9 by Bernard Andrieu, Terezinha Petrucia da
Nóbrega and Olivier Sirost and Chapter 10 by Florian Lebreton and
Bernard Andrieu), while competitive sports bring about different kinds of
body activation and emerging feelings (see Chapter 11 by Irena Martínk-
ová and Jim Parry). The last two chapters discuss two environments which
enable the recosmologisation of the world – naturism (in Chapter 12 by
Olivier Sirost) and encounters with otherness in an academic environment
(Chapter 13 by Gilles Lecocq).
In Chapter 8, the theme of transitions is discussed, highlighting oppor-
tunities for new forms of recreation. A reading matrix is presented, to
examine how the notion of transition can be used to grasp various ways of
understanding contemporary recreational dynamics, including body
culture. They suggest two possible transitions – towards transhumanism,
opening the sphere of post-­human and post-­nature virtual worlds and the
development of cybersports, and an alternative ecological transition, pro-
moting sustainability and better connections to humans, nature, organisa-
tions and technological universes, which means games, ecotourism,
activities in ‘wild’ nature, etc. in the context of recreation. Finally, the
authors pose a question concerning a middle way between these two
extremes, i.e. a median transition, and discuss its possible manifestation.
With their reflections on ‘naked surfing’ in Brazil in Chapter 9, the
authors demonstrate how attention to the relationship between the body
and nature is essential in studies of corporeality and body ecology,
articulating ethical, social and educational issues. Based on French
and Brazilian bibliography, this chapter presents a reflection on the immer-
sion of the body in nature, within the context of solar naturism and the
practice of naked surfing on Tambaba Beach in João Pessoa, Paraiba,
98   B. Andrieu and A. Porrovecchio

Brazil. Naturism is presented as an ecologically friendly practice highlight-

ing aspects of body ethics, hygiene, leisure, nudity and modesty.
In contrast, parkour is an activity that represents immersion in the city
environment, as described in Chapter 10. This kind of environment enables
mobilisation of the senses of practitioners and generates intense sensory
experience. It highlights skill development (jumping, running, climbing,
balancing, etc.) resulting from dynamic interactions between the body and
street ‘furniture’ (stairs, roofs, walls, etc.) but also suggests a certain play-
fulness. Parkour has a strong connection with Hébert’s Natural Method
and it is generally performed in urban cultures with a strong emphasis on
self-­expression, in non-­competitive forms, with the desire to conquer urban
public spaces, and through group self-­organisation.
Again, this is quite different from our engagement in traditional com-
petitive sports, which are social practices based on pre-­agreed rules – a
completely different kind of self-­immersion. As described by the authors in
Chapter 11, this set-­up forms a kind of artificial social environment,
whether performed outdoors or indoors. Sports direct athletes’ attention
away from themselves, generating intense emersive feelings, such as
accompanying joy or challenge, with respect to the situations faced and the
tasks performed within the given contest. This means that athletes tend to
focus away from themselves and from the emergence of more subtle
sensations.
Of course, there are much more radical possibilities. The kind of re-­
theorisation of the cosmos considered in Chapter 12 by Olivier Sirost is
important for our ability to appreciate new possibilities – a sine qua non of
our imaginative development towards self-­ecologisation. Central to such
imaginings have been the experiments of social explorers such as the cos-
micers in Monte Vérita, who defied convention to exhibit, investigate and
test out the effects of such places and community experiences and to dis-
cover modalities of new leisure.
Finally, in Chapter 13, Gilles Lecocq discusses the importance of travel-
ling to foreign places, within an educational environment which highlights
possible self-­discovery, with respect to body ecology. An immersion into a
foreign place brings about an encounter with foreign-­ness and otherness.
Travelling to unknown lands means accepting the emergence of an inner
crisis which will force the student to find her own vulnerabilities which lie
deep within her. It is a way of self-­discovery and also an opportunity for
the student to admit the sometimes disturbing otherness within her
own body.
Chapter 8

Ecological transition and

recreative leisure in nature
Jean Corneloup, Philippe Bourdeau and
Pascal Mao

Our world is in a state of constant flux as we endlessly strive for innova-

tion and the creation of new products, services and amenities. Territorial
reforms follow one after the other as policy-­makers scramble to rethink
public action. The media keep us informed of the precarious geopolitical
state of our world, ever shifting, nearly always unsettling. Alongside this
seemingly perpetual acceleration in economic, cultural and technological
realms, other actors are committed to slowing down the race for ‘pro-
gress’– an almost mindless thirst for more and bigger and better – and are
thinking about transitions in energy, food and policies that will cool down
our entropic overheated societies. At the heart of the ambivalence we find
on both sides, the body is profoundly affected by these issues and move-
ments: some actors are focused on enhancing physical performances in
various social, leisure, sporting and professional situations, whereas others
have chosen the path of a gentler body ecology and are searching for more
respectful relationships with the eco-­biosystems around us. Although tran-
shumanism and the cyborg culture open interesting, challenging – and con-
troversial – perspectives on amplifying how we relate to movement, motor
skills, biological health and the sensible, other orientations prefer to
explore the notion of recreational transition in relation to a mutating body
ecology.
The theoretical objective was to inspire discussions on the different
ways of employing the notion of transition, since, as with any notion, the
meaning given to the word gives rise to interpretations and social practices,
which are thus sometimes quite different. In this chapter, we will present a
matrix to analyse how the notion of transition can be used to grasp the
different ways of understanding contemporary recreational dynamics.

Matrix for the analysis of transitional practices

This chapter explores the notion of recreational transition as it relates to
body ecology. A transition, at first glance, intensifies the dynamics in a
system of action, with the effect of causing a transformation and for this
100   J. Corneloup et al.

reason it is important to take into account the possible and desired direc-
tions for transformation. If we speak about a recreational transition in rec-
reational practices, sports cultures readily come to mind, and these cultures
are subject to recomposition according to the internal and external
dynamics that characterise them. By using the term recreation, we are able
to encompass all the practices of leisure and tourism, thereby avoiding the
traditional separation between the leisure practices carried out in the daily
space of sedentary life and the touristic practices for holidays. It is also
important to avoid reducing the activities of free time to the practices of
entertainment, relaxation, discovery and sports, but instead to include all
the so-­called cultural practices, whether artistic, spiritual or sociocreative.
Our intention is to associate the recreational transition underway cur-
rently with reflections on body ecology as a way of exploring the place of
the body in its environment during recreational practices. Therefore, our
key question is about the place that should be accorded to body ecology in
thinking about and engaging in recreational transition. Can we envisage a
global transition – on economic, energetic and urban levels – without asso-
ciating body ecology? Can we think about a recreational transition without
rethinking and redefining bodily practices? Are competitive, motorised,
technological and tourist practices legitimate? And will the bodily practices
engaged in a recreational transition produce new specific recreational cul-
tures (techniques, practitioners, game codes, symbolics, etc.)? On an epis-
temological level, we also need to plan for other research frameworks for
observing and accompanying these recreational transitions. Objectivity is
crucial to all scientific paradigms (Corcuff 1995; Dosse 1995), and these
paradigms have been dominant and legitimate for long periods of history
and according to the degree of scientific sophistication. We hypothesise
that it might be possible to match the transitions in society and recreation

Retreat Ecological
transition

Median
Contemporary world
transition

Transhumanist
Movement transition

Figure 8.1  Matrix for the analysis of societal transitions.

 Ecological transition, recreative leisure   101

with a transition in science that would allow us to imagine somewhat

differently the links among the objects of research, society, organisations
and individuals.
For a reading of transitions, it is important to reflect on the definition
and approach to this notion. The literature and the practices that deal with
transition reveal striking differences that result in quite different uses. For
this reason, it is crucial to have a matrix for analysis that takes into
account the various frames for reading transitions. The differences between
those who want to slow down, those pushing for acceleration, and those
who want to completely change course become easily observable.

Change in the midst of continuity

The first scenario is focused on stability. The current recreational practices
in sports, culture, tourism and art reflect the modern principle of expan-
sion: expanding one’s place in society, mastering development and increas-
ing social receptivity. Transition is not perceived as a need, and the general
thinking is that the best course is to consolidate the gains to date and hold
on to one’s place in the current system. When reference is made to trans-
ition, it is usually to stand out in some way by borrowing a fashionable or
marketing term. This is seen in an array of contexts: Transition cooking
products, Transition extreme for militant activity, Transition sports and
fitness for the sports coaching field, Cycle Transition (Transition bicycle
company) or Music with J Coltrane (Transition).
The second scenario is a kind of retreat, by refocusing on the most
emblematic practices in the recreational field while avoiding all excess,
controlling for false innovations and reducing spending and futile and
superfluous consumption. Transition is thus a way of restoring a certain
stature to the work surrounding leisure, the sports run by federations and
the Olympic movement and the works clearly defined as ‘art’ and exhibited
in galleries and museums. Transition serves to uphold the values of hard
work, good taste, solidarity and respect for sporting rules. From this per-
spective, some have evoked the notion of renunciation (Delsol 2011; Godin
2014) in the sense of avoiding waste and returning to a controlled Puritan-
ism in the mores and usage of free time. For others, however, renunciation
means getting away from the world when faced with the fatigue of being
oneself (Erhenberg 1998) or of erasing oneself through the practice of
whitening (Lebreton 2014).
Finally, in the third scenario, transition is constant acceleration and
taking advantage of any innovation that will increase productivity, quality,
services and recreational enjoyment. This vision of transition is reflected by
a sharp rise in recreational and tourist demands and an ever-­growing
expectation of new developments, technological advances and games that
are increasingly scripted and unusual. In conjunction with new digital
102   J. Corneloup et al.

applications, technological, playful and virtual mediations are expected to

anchor practices in ecstatic and eccentric universes, which will constantly
increase demand for more experiential practices. With digital game crea-
tors and their marketers, the market for recreational practices has grown
and is today contributing to the emergence of intensive body ecologies via
the exponential rise in techno-­ludic mediations. Drones, GoPro cameras,
ballistic devices and equipment (wingsuits, catamarans, etc.), sensory
rooms and flight simulators are all amplifiers that can be considered as
passage points in the direction of the bodily transition now underway.
Several research projects have already investigated the cultural universes
around thrill-­seeking practices (Andrieu 2014b), digital technologies (Lebas
2016), connected sexual practices and spaces for artificial board sports.
In the realities augmented by technological mediators, the body opens
up to new spaces for action and for exploring post- and hypermodern body
ecologies (Gombault 2011). Digital technologies (playful and scripted
applications) and technological equipment and facilities (play parks, elec-
tric bicycles, via ferrata, etc.) have contributed to the fragmentation of the
body and the proliferation in technological interfaces. The immersive arts,
as described by Andrieu (2014b), make it possible to engage with the
deepest part of self through this invasion of the space frequented by a per-
son’s body, opening up to the possibility of body emersion. This is the
basis for the feeling of being in osmosis or symbiosis with the lived
environment and of amplifying the expression of one’s sensory intimacy.
The purpose of interactive contemporary art is to put the person at the
heart of the work and thereby give life to new sensory and imaginary
experiences. These renewed relationships between art, heritage and bodily
practices have been the subject of numerous digital applications that renew
cultural mediations in both rural and urban environments. Considerable
work is being done in this new field of research.

Radical transitions
The world must change and move towards forms of recreation that provide
a response to the vulnerabilities that threaten balance in the world. Trans-
ition in this case is seen as an invitation to change the system of action in
order to respond to the challenges of our contemporary situation. For a
range of social and institutional practices, transition appears to be a state
or an intermediate period, like a transition between two systems of action.
Democratic transition is, for example, a political process characterised by
the gradual transition from a non-­democratic regime (e.g. dictatorship) to
a democracy. In architecture, transition is an intermediate period between
two styles, each linked to a school of thought, just like an economic
transition may be an intermediate period between a planned economy and
one that is dominated by the market economy of a capitalist system. For
 Ecological transition, recreative leisure   103

recreational practices, we can refer to transition as a process initiated by

various actors to move from one system of action to another. Concerning
body culture, two scenarios come to mind from this perspective: one asso-
ciated with transhumanism and the other with the alternative ecoculture.

3.1  Transhumanism
The first scenario refers to the shift from modernity to transhumanism as
the technosphere becomes a utopia for imagining a viable and sustainable
future. The digital revolution and new information and communication
technologies are the most credible solution for emerging from the impasses
of the contemporary world. In the economic world, the uberisation of
markets and consumer practices (Airbnb, Le bon coin, BlaBlaCar, Face-
book, Wikipedia, etc.) is part of this redefinition of management principles.
More generally, the infatuation with virtual worlds hints at leaving the
human universe behind in favour of post-­humans, bionic humans and
cyborgs. The radical digital transition is part of this cultural reconfigura-
tion, with geeks the representatives of the virtual world, disconnected from
earthbound and human cosmogonies. Concerning recreational practices,
digital games, whether sports-­oriented, adventurous, military or pure
entertainment, are all also part of the configuration. In addition to devel-
oping artificial universes, these games can re-­enchant the real by redefining
codes, imaginaries and uses of places. Pokemon GO, City Tag, Street Wars
or Manhattan Story Mashup are examples of digital applications that rede-
fine imaginary bibliography of places by creating virtual techno-­digital cos-
mogonies, disconnected from traditional territories and local resources and
their imaginaries.
Digital art practices are opening up bionic aesthetics that jar the bodily
and sensory reference frames. Post-­human and post-­nature virtual worlds
begin to dominate when the environments and characters are disconnected
from the real world. In connection with net art, the digital arts produce
bodily avatars that transport the individual to virtual scenes open to mul-
tiple aesthetic amplifications. Artistic cyberworlds reformulate the ques-
tions about and contents of aesthetics through an opening towards
symbolic, corporeal and environmental digital connections. It remains to
be seen how this aesthetic screen world will affect the thinking on and cre-
ation of contemporary aesthetics, both present and future, in connection
with emerging body ecologies.
Parallel to this movement, the passion for cybersports, worldwide and
especially in Asian countries like Korea, is reflected by the presence of
eSports in the cultural landscape. In the same way that indoor soccer has
modified soccer culture and has even become autonomous in relation to
the original practice, cybersports are building their cultural world discon-
nected from modernity and postmodernity (Corneloup 2011). Alongside
104   J. Corneloup et al.

the repetition of the classic sports games (football and basketball, for
example), which remain for the moment connected with real sports, the
e-­games of war or adventure propagate around scenarios and fictions that
may take the real environment as a reference (industrial wastelands, street
guerrillas, projection into ancient games, etc.) but may just as well play out
in future virtual environments disconnected from the human and terrestrial
world. In the not too distant future, the bionic body will be activated by
the links between prostheses, synthetic biology and digital technologies.
Beyond health restoration to enable the individual to regain a lost body
balance (illness, fracture, depression, etc.), the focus on performance aims
to increase the human potential in the direction of transhumanity. There-
fore, in the years to come the Paralympic Games may surpass the perform-
ance levels seen in the traditional Olympic Games.
Similarly, the Cybathlon (October 2016 in Munich, Germany) was the
first competition of cyborg athletes equipped with bionic equipment. The
most advanced robotic arm and leg prostheses, wheelchairs, exoskeletons,
bicycles and brain-­machine interfaces competed as much as the athletes
did. Bionic body ecologies are moving in the direction of humanoid robots
as well as avatars that will represent humans in the world of digital games,
amplifying forms of bodily, sensory and imaginary expression. One can
thus note the emergence of a fictional world in which the individual is no
longer only in a dream, at the cinema or in the projection of a novel, but in
the reality of the fiction of a virtual world. Virtual bodily experiences are
thus managed, opening up a whole field of exploration of a second body
and personage to which the individual has access. The challenge concerns
the nature of the links and relationships between a lived reality and a
developed fiction (in this supra-­world) based on the connections and inter-­
relations that are now emerging. A strong cultural transition is underway
that will shake up many ways of thinking about the present world and
contemporary cultural practices. Hackers, many of whom are engaged in
various re-­creative scenes, will be the ambassadors of games 3.0, the digital
games disconnected from human reality and engaged in the emergence of
transhumanism.

An alternative ecoculture
In contrast to this movement, another world is in the making and is often
associated with transitions in the practices concerning energy, climate,
finance, society and politics. Faced with our current vulnerabilities, the
actors of this movement advocate a radical change and the reinvention of a
future that will be more sustainable and better connected for humans,
nature, organisations and technological universes. The new principles for
action have a common frame of reference, with movement members
uniting around the social economy and solidarity, governance, the sharing
 Ecological transition, recreative leisure   105

economy, short food supply chains, slow attitude, renewable energy, coop-
eratives, cooperation, conviviality and resistance. All of these practices
make room for a broad range of actors intent on raising awareness and
renewing action frameworks to build a society that is more respectful of
social and ecosystem balance. Innovations have been key in this regard as
these actors think about effective ways to slow down our lifestyles, rede-
fine what constitutes good living and well-­being and change consumption,
habitation and production practices. Value chains are recomposing with
the emergence of the principles of circularity and functionality in respons-
ible green and blue economies, as people rethink how to manage waste and
the impacts of industrial production on human and nonhuman ecosystems
to radically reduce negative externalities.
Many initiatives have been launched to encourage people to take part in
transitional practices and participate in a societal renewal. The approach
consists of deconstructing the inconsistencies in the current system and
proposing transitional practices for change towards a post-­growth, wiser,
more democratic, less speciesist and less energy-­hungry society. The repre-
sentatives of this movement offer education and training to anyone inter-
ested in changing modes of action. Transition workshops have been set up
within the contexts of agriculture, housing construction, food production,
health, local currencies and local town planning to teach people how to
effect change through the sharing of know-­how and best practices. Con-
cerning recreational practices in nature, the initiatives for supporting trans-
ition have flourished, often with the aim of changing body ecology. The
political perspective consists of enhancing transmodern recreational prac-
tices (Corneloup 2011) as a condition for this transition. Many people
have thus proposed practices that represent alternatives to the dominant
culture and that require a change in approach: serious games, cooperative
games, ecotourism finding ‘elsewheres’ nearby, practices in ‘wild’ nature,
cultural mixing, carpooling and connecting with people on deeper levels,
among others.
All these initiatives, whether in the form of workshops, personal prac-
tices or events, seem to arise from the same principles of action related to
neo-­social movements (Sommier 2003) that encourage this transition. The
preferred places for encounters seem to be ‘gratiferias’, open forums
around organic products and meals, under local versions of palabra trees,
on ecological and art hikes and so on. The ecological city of Ham Nord in
Quebec offers education and practical training for the development of
ecovillages by teaching ecoculture: knowledge of oneself and others, social
entrepreneurship, reconnecting with nature, personal and collective well-­
being and socially committed spirituality. Other structures like l’école de la
nature et des savoirs (the school of nature and knowledge) in the Drôme
region of France proposes managing this transition on the basis of ‘struc-
turing fields’: the art of living in the wild, bow-­making, living off the land,
106   J. Corneloup et al.

ancestral fire, etc. Many more examples of projects for developing altern-
ative recreational practices that bring us closer to a societal transition
attest to the power of this radical movement.

Critical reflection
A reading of these two universes reveals the tension between two poles for
engaging in transition: transhumanism and the alternative ecocultures. For
the moment, the research has mostly concentrated on the second move-
ment, especially around the issues of post-­tourism (Bourdeau 2007), cul-
tural creativity, climate change and leisure migrations. These themes fit
with the body ecology studies conducted within the context of research
projects from GDRI-­ECAPAS. In its practices of ecological immersion,
how does the body interact with and receive these invitations to recrea-
tional transition? Does the emersion that these intense immersions in
nature produce, contribute, as Andrieu (2014a) posits, to the dynamics of
transition? Is the sensible body modified, giving rise to other sentiments
about self (Vigarello 2014) that let us glimpse other ways of relating to
nature, ourselves and others? Is a transmodern aesthetic emerging and, if
so, in what way is it more propitious for advancing this transition?
Researchers have many questions about observing the cultural, bodily
and recreational specificities of these two movements: is there a marked
difference in the strong body ecology found in ecovillages set up in themed
residences and that found in rural villages appropriated by neo-­rural
people – especially with regard to thinking and experiencing the inhabita-
bility of places? Are there big differences between digital games and nature
games? Between digital arts and eco-­art and immersive art? Between parti-
cipation in Dreamhack and the Boom Festival? Between a lifestyle around
Pokemon Go and the paleo lifestyle?
Our studies on recreational cultures and those of other sports scientists
(Duret and Rouseel 2001; Pociello 1995) have shown the strong cultural
differences between sports that engage specific world visions. The presence
of the body or its absence, an aseptic or uncertain environment, real or
virtual social interactions, relational or combative symbolisms – all are
vectors of cultural differentiation. These transitions do not produce the
same effects on how we think and experience society, and a certain number
of the works presented on the recreational transition raised questions
about the recreational dynamics currently underway: the effects of ampli-
fied immersive experiences (headsets, mobile technologies, ubiquitous
experiences, etc.) on body ecology, rethinking public spaces via contact
sociabilities, partnerships in body ecology and recreational resistance,
among others. As part of our work on mountain sports (Corneloup
2016b), a study on practice styles revealed social, cultural and symbolic
differences based on the technologies used and the kinds of spaces that
 Ecological transition, recreative leisure   107

were frequented. Depending on the material mediations (spaces arranged

or not, ‘surface’ nature or ‘deep’ nature), the representations in symbolic
universes were found to oppose masculine and feminine, confrontation and
contemplation and commitment and play, in this way providing insight
into the different kinds of recreational alpinism based on the styles of
practice.

The median transition

Between these two extreme and antagonistic positions, is there a third way
that might be called a median transition, situated at the midpoint between
the other two? If so, it would imply a truly transitional society in which
transition is itself a reference frame for societal practices. In this case, the
transition is not between two systems, it is in the system – or to take this
even further, it is the system in the sense that the reference principles for
action are themselves transitional. There is no longer a stable system, but
rather systems in perpetual motion, in unstable equilibrium, engaged in
adaptation processes in connection with changing environments. In this
case, transition becomes the disposition to change state according to the
present and engaged frameworks for action. This requires modularity,
adaptability and flexibility. Exemplary examples that come to mind are
Transition1 glasses and basketball.2
This configuration would be in step with the evolution of our societies,
which would become transitional because of perpetual turbulence, the
interdependence of economies, the permeability of borders and the promi-
nence given to floating identities. The rules for action would become less
rigid and would follow pragmatic principles (composition, agreement,
negotiation, governance, applied ethics, mediation, etc.). We would no
longer speak of the individual but of individualisation, not of territory but
of territorialisation, not of inhabiting but of inhabitability, as if the process
were in itself a reference principle for understanding the logics of action.
Personal trajectories become transitional, to borrow an idea from Win-
nicott (1971), from the moment individuals manufacture spaces and trans-
itional objects to facilitate adaptations in different social scenes. From this
perspective, ‘third places’ (Bazin 2013) can be seen as border spaces for
adjusting differences and building acceptable arrangements among actors.
Third places are areas of symbolisation around transitional objects, making
it possible to connect and mix elements into a new combination of mean-
ings. The theoretical bibliography for this notion are Laplantine’s modal
anthropology (2005), Berque’s mesology (2000), Piette’s existential anthro-
pology (2014) and Grossetti’s sociology of social worlds (2004).
This median transition at the midpoint between transhumanism and the
alternative ecopractices may offer an acceptable framework for action for
these two divergent orientations. Unlike Le Breton’s theoretical approach
108   J. Corneloup et al.

(2013), which almost bids farewell to the body with the emergence of the
post-­human, or Azam’s position (2015) inciting us to remain human to
fight transhumanism, this third way is concerned with how the bionic body
will associate itself with the ecological body to give rise to the twenty-­first
century human. These techno-­human hybrids in the making allow us to
glimpse the way cultural, social and institutional scenes will be constructed
in relation to the political scenes in which acceptable orientations will be
discussed, negotiated and selected. Recreation laboratories (Corneloup
2016a) will become sites for experimenting with emerging techno-­human
practices in order to design this median transition in greater detail. Delib-
eralism, to use a word from Dacheux (2016) and Lefort (2007), will be
one of the ways of thinking about adjusting opposites within collectives,
guided by the principle of transitional democracy.
At the June 2016 symposium in Le Pradel, various papers dealt with
this theoretical and societal perspective as a way of addressing our research
questions. How can we investigate the sensible, the aesthetic, recreation
laboratories, policy-­making and digital and itinerant practices in terms of
recreational identities and the development of collective practices? How
will this combination of transcultures allow room for the creation of a
median body ecology that invests in ecopractices while still tapping into
the potentials of the digital technosphere? The outgrowth of digital culture
is reflected not only in new ways of managing information about practices,
places and possible uses in real time, but also in practitioners’ bodily pro-
jection into fictional scenes in which the body is active and experiences the
virtual uses of practice spaces. Many research projects can be imagined to
observe how this transcultural alliance will develop to give rise to new rela-
tions to practice spaces.

Conclusion
The mountains and mountain practices are not exempt from the transitions
in progress. While some have chosen the path of retreat to protect them-
selves and preserve the traditions and recreational heritage of the valleys
and mountains, others are investing in digital technologies to redefine com-
munication mediations with the mountain.3 Digital maps, playful and geo-
graphic applications and community websites have already had an impact
on modes of travel, managerial logistics, risk management and the declina-
tion of social links via the web-­sociability of specialised social networks.
On the other hand, the followers of degrowth and those simply seeking a
change in approach have become invested in responsible practices and
rethinking the ecosystem chain of mountain practices. More generally, the
imaginaries of the mountains are being transformed by the immersion of
the transcultures, which participate in redefining mountain body ecologies.
A new recreational mountain culture is in the making in which the world
 Ecological transition, recreative leisure   109

of digital games, play spaces, virtual communities and cyborgs will parti-
cipate in the declination of emerging cultural forms.
To take the example of winter sports resorts, hyperstations have been
emerging (Tignes, La Plagne, Alpe d’Huez, Val Thorens, etc.) that are on
the road to technological and festive excesses,4 unlike the hypostations (the
Queyras resorts) that put the accent on alternative practices in line with a
relational and social ecology. Between these two extremes lies a midpoint
solution offered by the resorts that play the adaptability card. It is here
that acceptable orientations for a carefully chosen and composed develop-
ment have been discussed. The Peisey Vallandry resort in the Tarantaise
Valley is an example because of the way this village resort (located between
Les Arcs and La Plagne) and its northern domain have been thought out. A
median transition is offered between naturalness and urbanity, territorial-
ity and inhabitability, the wild and the domestic and tourism and recre-
ation, striking a nice balance between the hyper-­resort model and the
immersion in alternative ecological practices (dogsledding, snowshoeing,
cross-­country skiing, ice climbing, etc.). Considerable reflection and studies
have been carried out to culminate in a recreation laboratory that will
allow the creation of a mixed culture. Other resorts that have suffered the
effects of global warming have not known how or have not been able to
embark on this recreational transition and are in decline, showing little
resilience, like the Borée resort in the Ardèche mountains.
The recreational transition has thus become a source of controversy,
opposing, among others, the more-­is-better camp and the post-­tourists
(Bourdeau 2007). More generally, opinions in the public debates on the
mountains (Corneloup 2016b) are structured around four positions:
accept reality (‘artificial snow is necessary’), go even further (‘let’s have
more equipment: ski domes, scenario scripting, spas’), get on the path of
alternative practices (‘we need to invent a new recreational world’) or
retreat (‘let’s slow down and manage what we have’). Social and political
interactions therefore occur but they nevertheless leave room for man-
oeuvre for the local actors and the mountain practitioners as they build an
acceptable framework of action. A pragmatic sociology (Latour 2010) is
thus emerging to observe the way these mountain compositions are
constructed.

Notes
1 ‘See life in the best light with Transitions® adaptive lenses. Our everyday lenses
automatically adjust from clear to dark and every shade in between’ (No authors
listed. Transitions. www.transitions.com/en-­gb/.).
2 Basketball is an excellent example of a transition game. All the players are
continually in transit – that is, moving from one state to another, whether
they are attackers or defenders. In fact, not a second goes by without the
players switching from ball carrier to noncarrier, or from defender on the
110   J. Corneloup et al.

team with the ball (carrier or noncarrier) to defender on the opposing side, or
more generally from attacking to defending or vice versa (from defender to
attacker).
(Lefrère 2013)
3 The game STEEP (Ubisoft US. Steep Trailer: Announcement – E3 2016 [US].
www.youtube.com/watch?v=t32yR-SNW6s.) has announced the development of
virtual games in the mountains.
4 One might cite the SKILINE project in Tignes, la Folie Douce festival site in Val
Thorens or the project for 8000 beds in Plagne for high-­end clients.

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Chapter 9

Naked surfing in Tambaba, Brazil

An example of body ecology
Bernard Andrieu,
Terenzinha Petrucia da Nóbrega and
Olivier Sirost

The context
The archaeology of the human body outlines an understanding of nature
based on Merleau-­Ponty’s thinking (da Nóbrega 2014) and the shift from
a phenomenology of perception to the ontology of the wild being. It does
not operate by established meanings but instead presents itself as a guiding
principle for body ecology and bodily practices.
According to Guattari (1989), this context of decentralisation, multi-
plicity, antagonisms and singularity processes raises new ecological ques-
tions at both individual and collective levels, particularly regarding
everyday life and processes like the reinvention of democracy, urbanism,
artistic creation, sports and leisure. Ecology is not mere discourse but a
practice that engages us in daily responsibility, connecting to body aware-
ness through reflection on our actions and their consequences.
‘Body Ecology is a practice of self-­care that shows responsibility for the
care of others through lifestyle choices’ (Andrieu 2011: p. 12). This is not
a return to an ideal state of nature but an observation on our lifestyles, our
ways of producing and consuming. From this perspective, the material ele-
ments of air, water, sun and earth penetrate our bodies, such that we
become ecological at the very moment we breathe or feel the warmth or
depth of water, for example, in naturist or artistic pursuits.
Unaware of the ecology of our own bodies, we observe in nature a
harmony that is actually within us: our microcosm no longer corresponds
with the macrocosm. We look to the mountains, beaches and countryside
as so many landscapes between the body and nature. Walking, breathing
in air, transforming solar energy, tasting the products of the earth are
everything. When the body feels the effects of the elements without suffer-
ing, interaction with nature can no longer insulate us from the need for an
ecological restoration of the environment.
Body ecology is a micro-­ecology. It is by transforming individual
practices that ecology transforms us. The idea is to create micro-­situations
and experiences. With cosmotic body ecology, in a setting of the natural
 Naked surfing in Tambada, Brazil   113

elements, nature is neither good nor bad. It simply makes us question our
unceasing physical interactions with it through the limits of our body and
the green inventiveness of our techniques.

The problem: recosmologisation of the world

Rousseau and the myth of the state of nature was the inflection point,
where the senses were no longer seen as a system but were instead seen as
actively operating in us through an ongoing dialogue with experience
(Duchet 1995). This opened the way for a recosmologisation of the world;
it is one way to read the Protestant Awakening. By attributing to humans
the same status of sensibility as plants and animals, the Protestant reform
in eighteenth century England seems to have grounded the ecological sensi-
bilities of today according to Keith Thomas (1983). While avoiding the
hierarchisation of beings, meaning was thereby released and gave shape to
the fads for tourism, nudism, vegetarianism, boating and ballooning. This
enhanced attention to the senses opened up new spaces, such as mountains,
beaches, gardens and forests, filled with mystery and emotion.
The recosmologisation of the world can also be read as an abundant
symbolism, like that of the plant in the German youth movement, animal
totems in scouting or wildlife in Indian studies and naturism. From the
experience of recreational practices, a dream of space emerged, with
Gaston Bachelard (1957), for instance, shedding light on the ontological
character of such original refuges as caves, nests or shells. The feeling of
liberation thus gave birth to a culture where a variety of recreational habi-
tats emerged, such as associative gardens, campsites, hunting and fishing
sheds, garden cities, beach huts and so on. Through these historical
examples, we intend to show the immediate relationship between polysen-
sorial immersion in the natural environment and the proliferation of life-
styles. The campers who massively invaded the coast of France in the
1960s are a good illustration of this phenomenon.
In the context of colonial exploration, scientists and artists became
involved on the military side and rediscovered the senses through the exoti-
cism opened up by such travelling. The figure of the ‘noble savage’ was
thus reworked by the Enlightenment philosophers, who saw it as the link
between the primitive and the civilised and discovered a sense of question-
ing. The Society of Observers of Man (1799–1804), which included natu-
ralists, zoologists, botanists, archaeologists, geographers, geologists,
Hellenists, teachers, many military men, politicians, doctors, philosophers
and explorers, is thought to have embodied the transition of general know-
ledge to a knowledge focused on humans (Chappey 2002).
These field observations supplied philosophical treatises, particularly
around the issue of wild nature as essentially good. According to Rousseau
in his Essay on the Origin of Languages, one finds in the noble savage an
114   B. Andrieu et al.

articulation of meaning that constitutes language and society. As he wrote,

the ‘delicacy of the senses’ reflects the state of nature that men encountered
(Duchet 1971: p. 335). Rousseau applied this observation to his theory on
education presented in Emile, which is considered as a springboard for
new pedagogies. He argued against swaddling babies in order to let them
feel the air, their own movements and emotional sensations (storm, night)
and to fully hear the sounds of the countryside, all as learning experiments
in nature. In the philosophical debates about ‘natural man’ and the birth
of society there was the presence of a sixth sense. Rousseau emphasised the
importance of an education in sensibility and therefore an organic direc-
tion around the heart, understood as the expression of noble sentiments.
The Zeitgeist and the ethnographic observation of the senses spread art-
istic techniques. Vernet, Chassériau and Gautier helped develop this
‘ethnographic art’ contained in sensory savagery (Peltre 1995). The vast-
ness of space, the heat of the sun, the indigo blue of the sky, all contributed
to the viewer’s immersion in landscapes through the senses: this was an
intimate experience of a journey. Through the colour palette and grada-
tions, the topography and details, new combinations of knowledge-­related
discoveries in optics, physics, geography and anatomy emerged. The
environment was apprehended through the senses. The latter complement
is also the naturalistic work of the Barbizon School, which participated in
the birth of Impressionism (Peltre 1995: p. 79). With Guillaumet and Fro-
mentin, the artist’s ethnographic work attempted to capture sensual experi-
ences, such as in the bath and the hammam, through steam, opium, sports,
hunting or outdoor dining. Capturing the moment in a sketch, or recon-
structing it from impressions recorded in a book, doubled as a field journal
for painters like Fromentin.
Ethnography was preceded by an eighteenth-­century sense of the exist-
ence and sympathies of the universe, which led the way to sensory psych-
ology. It was in the multidisciplinary context of reviewing the historical
synthesis of the evolution of humanity that new history saw its project
emerge. It developed the state of mind of the historian Lucien Febvre, espe-
cially reflected in his book Earth and Human Evolution. This work crossed
geographical and biological methods of understanding natural settings and
the ways of life of human societies, especially hunting, fishing and gather-
ing. Rather than sacrificing the prejudices of the primitive and the savage,
Febvre offered a historical geography of the body freeing itself from Dur-
kheim’s sociology and human geography. This intuition was later deployed
in his study of unbelief in the sixteenth century when he wrote: ‘As well as
keen hearing and a sharp nose, the men of that time had, no doubt, keen
eyesight. But specifically, they did not set aside the other senses’ (Febvre
2003: p. 403). Here the historian joined the anthropologist Levy-­Bruhl in
arguing that the non-­intellectualisation of the senses was characteristic of
the mentality of an era and a human group. He even made this animality,
 Naked surfing in Tambada, Brazil   115

‘proven as superior to culture’, a programme linking psychology and

history to the analysis of sensitivity (Febvre 1992: p. 238).
In his Sociology of Leisure, Joffre Dumazedier (1974) saw in this redis-
covered wild a perspective for interpreting the leisure boom in France in
the years 1950–1960, a period when a ‘wild thought is at work’ in playful
behaviours, nudity, picnics, organised evening campfires and the like.

Method
The geography of sports and recreation was created in 1962 by Terence
M. Burley (1962). At the Valley Research Foundation in Australia, he
investigated a means of locating body practices before they became a
reflection on the effects of territory and land on the practitioners’ bodily
experiences. He defined five aspects of this geolocalisation of sport: the
economic impact of the activity, the social models, the effects of sport on
society, the analysis of the cultural origins of practitioners and the geo-
graphic dissemination of a sport’s practice.
In 1969, John Rooney put forward the idea of sports regions when he
published an atlas of American sports. John Bale (1978) even located the
geographical origins of the players and measured the impact of sports on
the landscape. Under the influence of Edward Relph, who in 1976 intro-
duced the term ‘placelessness’, Raitz (1995) demonstrated how the inter-
action between the sports landscape and a game itself contributes to the
bodily experience. This mapping approach to sports practice was quant-
itative and touristic for an economic market, but we can also understand
the interaction through an emotional map like the one Tuan (1974)
invented with the concept of Topophilia. Tuan (1974) established the
study of environmental perception, attitudes and values according to a
humanistic model of geography but with the goal of better understanding
the emotional connection between a place and a leisure practice.
Territorial changes in sports practices, their spatial patterns of distribu-
tion, and socio-­spatial sports studies have revealed how the embodied place
and local space change the bodily experience of practitioners, just as Bernard
Jeu (1977) described. But the land for the purpose of personal entertainment
is not the logic of sensory immersion in nature (Augustin 1999). The feeling
of space is built by contact with the earth and the elements that is produced
on a given territory. New questions have therefore arisen pursuant to this
emotional eco-­psychology of sport: how are sports facilities built at the
regional level? What is the spatial behaviour of practitioners? How can one
characterise the geographical expression of one sport across a district? With
territorial analysis, embodied sports practice has found the means to analyse
the influence of practitioners’ curricula on their choices. In a thesis written in
1997 and published in 1998, Loic Ravenel showed how the football geo-
graphy in France distinguishes spaces as a function of territories.
116   B. Andrieu et al.

These geolocational sports practices also engage the body with nature in
a sensitive way (Augustin et al. 2008). A particular vision of nature
through land practices in the mountains lies between idealism and
hedonism:

The relationship between sports cultures and territories has constituted

a burgeoning field of research in France since the early 1990s; a socio-­
spatial reading grid is applied to a corpus of geographical, sociologi-
cal, historical and ethnological texts on this issue. This approach is
oriented in four conceptual registers (space, spatiality, territory, terri-
toriality) and interactions (physical, functional, organisational, exis-
tential) that put into perspective the thematic focus and theoretical
point of view of the work taken into account.
(Bourdeau et al. 2004: p. 35)

A grid was developed for a socio-­spatial reading of the interactions

between sports cultures in natural settings and practice spaces. This grid –
by Bourdeau et al. – made it possible to enter ‘interactional territoriality’
by accessing lived emotional experience (Di Méo 1998) as the practitioner
describes the relationships between the perceived and dreamed living area
and his or her territorial situation.

An approach of phenomenological practices can also help capture the

lived experience and proximity interactions that contribute to the
development of sports practices and their spaces. Multiple inter-
actional variables (social visits to sites, weather conditions, the psycho-
social context, sensitivity to places) constantly punctuate the daily
action. Not to mention the weight that may represent the personal
experience of the site, established or avoided emotional relationships
with the experiences, and real and imaginary relationships with routes
involved in the individualisation of territoriality.
(Bourdeau et al. 2004: p. 44)

The geography of sport promoted the analysis of embodiment and practice

not only through the geolocalisation of a given sport in an environment or
nature, but also through body ecology: an internal description of percep-
tion and emotions in the process of immersive experience in a sports prac-
tice. An ecologically friendly practice implies immersion in nature and
associative cooperation in delimited spots. Moreover, the physical effect of
the sport on the practitioner’s body depends on his or her ecological link
with the natural elements and the other practitioners. The feeling that we
belong to the same community in a special place in nature facilitates
exchanges. Body solidarity can be observed, as we describe in our research
on naked surfing.
 Naked surfing in Tambada, Brazil   117

The object: naturism, an ecologically friendly

practice on Tambaba Beach
Naturist beaches are considered new sociability places for collective nudity,
as noted by the French geographer Barthe-­Deloizy (2003) in her study of
naturist spots. Overall, these spots are chosen by the flow of vacationers,
the major tourist flights or official holiday circuits. As public beaches are
regulated by the state, the status must comply with all laws applicable to
coastal use. In a ‘textile’ context, the various naturist federations have been
fundamental in standardising naturism in many places.
The naturist centre or naturist beach belongs to the type of space in
which nudity is encoded and shared by a collective of individuals. This is
the context we find for the practice of naturism in Brazil. According to the
Brazilian Federation of Naturism, there are now 16 associations, five clubs
and nine affiliated partner organisations. On the official maps of naturism
in Brazil, the states of Amazonas, Bahia, Espírito Santo, Goiás, Pará,
Paraíba, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina São Paulo and
the Federal District have regular organised activity.
In Paraiba, there is Tambaba beach, the first beach to have benefited
from a law authorising naturism in the country. When we visited the
beach, we found aspects that exemplified the practice of naturism. The
structuring of space on the beach indicates a break from the usual bodily
practices and this starts with the entrance: the entrance is long and narrow,
with sand dunes, a wooden staircase and specially planted bushes delimit-
ing the border between the ‘textile’ (wearing clothes) beach and the natur-
ist beach. A panel displays the regulation: ‘From this point nudity is
obligatory’. Some people stop at the panel, read it and then do not enter,
disguising their embarrassment with a very big laugh. For these visitors, a
panel with the word ‘naked’ and the incredible picture of a ‘real’ naked
person seems to be the attraction and is sometimes photographed.
The observation of people taking photographs of nakedness, the naked-
ness of a body other than their own, suggested to us that they had no
naturist experience or that they think going naked in a public space is
shameful or against their cultural habits. The naked bodies on the panel
are stereotyped ‘full form’ top-­model mannequins, which does not neces-
sarily correspond to the actual state of our bodies. Contrary to these
figures, in fact, it should be noted that on this naturist beach, as on all
beaches of this type, all bodies are acceptable and are accepted in line with
a very specific code of naturist ethics, as detailed in the brochures available
in the naturist space.
At the entrance, for example, there is a kiosk that sells souvenirs, but it
also provided us with local information and guidance on where we could
find the person who takes care of guarding the border. One day on the
weekend during our visit to the beach, we met a man at the kiosk who was
118   B. Andrieu et al.

returning from the naturist space and complaining about people failing to
respect the rule of nudity. Who was he to warn of a failure to comply with
a naturist ethics rule? The guardian invited him to send an email to the
president of the naturist association responsible for the activities on
the site.
Just after the wooden staircase, there is a changing room to undress and
put away backpacks, especially for those who will stay in the only hostel
available on site but also for those who will just spend the day on the
beach. The naturists walk along the beach holding their bathrobes in their
hand, expressing that they are mere visitors. In general, we found that
when visitors carried their bags and backpacks, they were expressing a
certain modesty, hiding their sex with only the chest showing.
The naturist beach, which is generally connected with an association, is
defined by occupation zones. Although we observed that there are naturist
walks along the beach, other categories of naturist activities are distributed
over three well-­defined spaces, even though there is no physical boundary
between them. There are nevertheless symbolic borders that delimit the
spaces and practices: regular practice, community practices and practices
here called ‘flirting’.
Posadas are found on the beach: spaces that often function as inns offer-
ing conveniences like tables, chairs and umbrellas in the form of coconuts
for those who come just to spend the day, isolating themselves from others
while enjoying the beach. The posada where we stayed is generally occu-
pied by couples (legitimate or not), gay or straight, young or older, as well
as by groups of friends, family, or, as in our case, researchers. The weekend
we were there, a young couple that had abused alcohol and other sub-
stances was expelled from the inn. The rules are clear: drugs are strictly
prohibited, although moderate alcohol consumption is acceptable.
Those who sleep at the inn could be distinguished from those coming
just for the day, alternating between sea bathing, sunbathing and enjoying
the refreshing shade provided by the trees. In this space, we could recognise
the regulars, generally around 50-years-­old, who spent the day lunching,
drinking beer, playing racquetball, bathing in the sea, some of them taking
the opportunity to read. Photographs are not allowed, so there was also
time for contemplation of the sea, the sun and the frequent beach-­goers.
These regulars are welcoming toward naturists of passage, as noted in a
situation where an elderly lady with a curved spine and difficulty walking
accompanied a child, perhaps a young friend or a relative, to the beach
and bathed despite her limited mobility. A naturist helped her by carrying
her to a beach chair so she could sit down after enjoying her swim. This
scene confirms the solidarity and friendliness of naturists; it showed an
enactment of the ethical principles of naturism.
Some of the naturists passing by, mostly couples, enjoyed the bar to
take a break before heading to the transgressive part of the beach, out of
 Naked surfing in Tambada, Brazil   119

sight, sheltered among the rocks and other natural hiding places for
privacy. Away from the inn and through the dunes amid cliffs and rem-
nants of the tropical forest lies a ‘wilder’ space, where we observed flirting
and transgressive freedom from the naturist standards for sexual
behaviour. It is a space for encountering other couples and a visitor may
well be propositioned.
One of the usual beach-­goers, a member of one of the naturist associ-
ations, discreetly informed us about this territorial division. Some of these
members are present to monitor and advise the naturists of passage or
those naturists staying at the inn, like us. On one of our trips, we were
approached by a couple of naturists with very tanned bodies who live near
the beach.
On Sunday morning, another naturist spent a considerable amount of
time retracing the same route along the beach, collecting the waste left by
unthinking beach-­goers or those less concerned with the environment. As
he walked quickly along the beach, picking up trash, he protested against
such widespread disrespect for the ecological rules. In fact, around five
o’clock in the morning as we walked along the beach, the remains of a
festive week (beer cans and condoms) were everywhere, covering the sand.
The far side of the beach is accessible, especially at low tide, by climbing
the dune and scrambling over rocks. It is primarily a gay dating space and
on the day of our visit, it was all male. At this far end of the naturist beach,
single men or groups of men offer sexual services in the hidden landscape.
This part of the dunes and cliffs offers numerous hiding places. The phys-
ical distance between the naturists of passage and the regulars is more or
less great.

Results and discussion

The naked physical activity typical of naturism, and as it is described in the
literature, was evident on the beach, without the tanning connotation,
eroticism or seduction.

Thirty kilometres away from the capital of Paraiba, João Pessoa,

Tambaba was the first beach in the Northeast to be devoted to nudism.
Protected by large trees and cliffs, it has calm water and rock formations
with pools. The natives were already unclothed on the sands of
Tambaba long ago, but naturism was only made official in 1989. The
beach is divided into three areas, with only one of them exclusively for
families and couples. In another area, unaccompanied men are welcome.
(Brazilian Naturism Federation 2015)

In Tambaba, we observed the activity of the Sonata groups, Makushi

Territory, Naked Tambaba and Naked Movement. The United Naturist
120   B. Andrieu et al.

Movement organises the practice of ‘Naked Surfing’ and systematically

hosts the Tambaba Open Naturist Surf. The group seeks to awaken ecolo-
gical awareness and consolidate and disseminate naturism as a philosophy
of living close to nature. We were able to informally interview the Presi-
dent of the Naked Movement association, who had set up a tent on the
beach one weekend. The association aims to spread naturism and ecology.
On that day, the anniversary of the association was celebrated by practi-
tioners with cakes, fruits and soft drinks.
The divisions in the beach areas reinforce the naturist code of ethics, as
disclosed by the Brazilian Federation. In this sense, the code of ethics con-
siders ‘serious misconduct’ as:

1 having ostensible sexual behaviour and/or acts of a sexual or obscene

character in public areas;
2 practising physical violence;
3 using fraudulent means to gain advantage for oneself or third parties;
4 carrying or using illegal toxic drugs;
5 causing damage to the public image of naturism or naturist areas.

The same code recognises the following acts as ‘inappropriate behaviour’:

1 contributing to discord through inappropriate proposals with sexual

connotations;
2 photographing, recording or filming other naturists without their
permission;
3 using audio equipment at high volume that interferes with other peo-
ple’s tranquillity and/or disrespects the regulations;
4 causing embarrassment through inappropriate attitudes;
6 leaving garbage in inappropriate places;
7 provoking damage to the flora and fauna or to the image of naturism;
8 satisfying physiological needs in inappropriate areas or exceeding
alcohol intake, causing embarrassment to other naturists;
9 using common-­use seats without proper sanitary protection.

This code of ethics stresses moral behaviour and the respect of rules about
sexual behaviour. In this sense, it downplays sexuality and, to some extent,
the sexual organs. It shows a concern for maintaining a healthy, polished
image in interactions with other beach-­goers, as well as attention to
hygiene and the preservation and care of the environment. These aspects
are in line with the principles of the European naturist movement and its
hygienic and moral sources, the German nudist movement, known as ‘free
body culture’ (FKK).
Naked surfing is an ecological practice in which the ocean waves free
the body. This freedom of movement is the main value and nudity is just
 Naked surfing in Tambada, Brazil   121

part of the sports experience, with no need to worry about showing any-
thing but one’s skills in surfing, an activity that is admired by the other
naturists on the beach. The naked surfer heads directly into the water,
without lingering on the beach and remains there for as long as possible, at
least as long as there is enough light to spot the good waves. On the beach
are the young adolescents who have come to practise surfing, showing their
skills and the freedom of their naked body.
Naked surfing develops a relationship of closeness to the elements. The
risk of nude surfing is getting hurt by the surfboard, but injury is also pre-
vented by regular practice. We observed the solidarity between those who
were surfing and those whose boards had been released when they fell. We
saw many instances of possession of a surfboard changing from one naked
surfer to another with none of the sense of ownership that can be observed
on textile beaches.
With little technical hierarchy, novices and experts use the same surf-
board, sharing the pleasure of being together despite differences in age and
experience. The main objective is not athletic performance but the sharing
the practice of naked sports. On the blogs of naked surfers, testimonials
express that the first thing to overcome is shyness. Then, without clothes,
naked surfers feel lighter, in harmony with the elements, with their body
and the waves becoming one.

Conclusion
From the perspective of body ecology, we envision a new composition or
an intimate sensibility towards the spaces and practices that favour the
immersion of the body and the awakening of deep sensations. This is an
investment in a new philosophical body intelligibility that interacts with
different and multiple lifestyles and existential perspectives. We show here
how solar naturism has favoured the creation of clubs, centres and naturist
villages that are gradually becoming tourist resorts promoting leisure and
well-­being, as we can see today in Europe and some of the Brazilian
beaches.
We understand that the practice of naturism offers the possibility of a
body ecology connected to an outdoor lifestyle, solar power and, since its
appearance in nineteenth century Europe, hygienic practices. It is also con-
nected to art and philosophy through aesthesiology, which is able to
increase our sensitivity and create new social sharing, new lifestyles that
value intercorporeality and an ecological perspective.

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Chapter 10

Body ecology and urban sports

Parkour as an interdisciplinary
immersion in the city environment
Florian Lebreton and Bernard Andrieu

Introduction
The urban world, as a place for expressing pleasurable impulses (Thomas
1901), evokes different ways of using the body to inhabit this world and
‘become one’ with its environment. Today more than ever we see bodily
and sports practices invading the urban space: skateboarding, in-­line
skating, scootering, rooftopping, urbex, parkour, street workouts and
others. The development of ‘urban training’, for example, illustrates this
desire to exploit the urban furniture, rather than going to gyms and other
specialised sports spaces. But do these logics and practices change our rela-
tionship with the city and our representations of it? City dwellers adapt
their bodies and sometimes constrain them, and their behaviours, habits
and sensibilities often open only onto an outside world composed mainly
of concrete and a certain amount of greenery. Body ecology in urban areas
is therefore concerned with apprehending bodily and sports practices
through comprehensive approaches. The empirical data presented herein
to illustrate our thinking are drawn from ethnographies collected in
previous research on urban sports. Our objective is to introduce body
ecology as it manifests in the urban environment. Our focus is mainly
interdisciplinary, and we particularly combine sociology, geography and
anthropology to study urban corporealities.

Parkour as immersion in urban inhabitability

To support our theoretical stance, we refer to the sport of parkour to illus-
trate the immersion of self in the inhabitability of cities. We conducted
semi-­directive interviews with about 40 French parkour practitioners and
collected their narratives. We also met with a dozen institutional actors
(sports administrators, urban sports members), whether or not they recog-
nised this sport as legitimate.
‘Tracers’ use park benches, stairs and many other objects to practise
their sport, parkour. Parkour has been described as a mix of gymnastics,
 Body ecology and urban sports   125

art and dance, featuring both freestyle movements in a typically urban cor-
poreality and highly specific movements. Although the motor skills
required for parkour are not new, the framework for action and the ulti-
mate goals are. The idea of non-­competition is important, although sporti-
fication seems to occur at different levels. Moreover, parkour has a very
strong connection with Hébert’s Natural Method, which is central to the
activity and its definition. Parkour originated in the French banlieues, on
the outskirts of France’s big cities, where it grew into an authentic sub-
culture in the 1990s. Today it has gained international recognition, in great
part due to massive coverage by the media and social networks. Parkour is
often defined by the original practitioners as an urban sport that consists
of moving quickly and efficiently through the city streets, developing indi-
vidual skills and capacities to confront and overcome a range of obstacles.
Parkour shares certain characteristics with other athletic and urban cul-
tures like skateboarding: the refusal of official competition, the strong
emphasis on self-­expression, and the desire to conquer urban public spaces.
The central feature of all these urban lifestyles has been the self-­
organisation of the groups, at least in the beginning. Despite this principle
of autonomy, however, there are increasingly more parkour associations
offering formal and regular lessons to promote the activity. Given the
growing popularity of parkour and its international recognition, different
modes of institutional regulation of this sport have emerged.
Urban sports are often paralleled by an introspective philosophy of the
body and a tendency to listen to the body, as has often been noted in the
literature on the sciences and techniques of physical activities and sports
(Sirost 2009; Andrieu 2011). From this perspective arises the idea – which
we support – that how cultures treat the body provides a major explana-
tion for the differences between them. The city as a ‘natural space’,
however, has not been considered in sociological research. It thus seems
that, rather than a functionalist reading that focuses on urban sports in
terms of traditional economic, political and social concerns, it is time to
take a much broader and sensible view of the ties between a body in move-
ment and its urban environment.
What is bodily immersion in the city telling us and what does it tell us
about our presence in the world? To go further, one might then wonder
about the senses that are mobilised by immersive city practices and the
sensory pleasures they procure – for we assume that athletes immersed in
urban nature also aspire to intense sensory experience. Although the urban
environment creates ‘disembodied’ spaces with its social and aesthetic
forms (De Certeau 1990) and sometimes gives rise to negative sensations,
especially visual and olfactory (Corbin 1982), it also generates positive
sensations. This duality of city content and form provides us with a vision
that is both pessimistic and optimistic, according to Simmel (2007), if a
critical and distant stance is taken. Within the framework of the kind of
126   F. Lebreton and B. Andrieu

terrain that we will look at in this chapter, modifications in the representa-

tions of urban spaces and their effects on the body and the psychosomatic
field appear to be unavoidable.
Of course, the field of body ecology of sports in the urban environment
remains to be further explored, expanded and completed by the examin-
ation of other bodily practices that aim at sensory modification in the city.
In its modern sense, body ecology is an ‘ordinary breathing’ (Sirost 2009)
– that is, a way of ‘ecologization one’s own body on a daily basis’ (Andrieu
2009). We do not mean to suggest that such spaces are cut off from all
‘naturalisation’; in fact, quite the contrary, we propose to consider them in
terms of the dynamic interactions that arise between the city environment
and the bodies that live there, and behind this ‘residential’ perspective is
the fundamental question of urban naturalisation.
Indeed, ecological anthropology (Ingold 2000) takes into account the
pragmatic conditions for adaptation to the environment, including body
immersion. We refer here to the work of Tim Ingold (2000) regarding the
analysis of the activities to appropriate one’s environment. The author pro-
poses a unified analysis of human beings with their organic, social and cul-
tural components, and especially the key concepts of ‘dwelling perspective’
and ‘skill’, which can be defined as a ‘mindset to inhabit the environment’
and ‘know-­how’, and which guide its reflection towards a restitution of an
almost phenomenological approach to the perceptual and practical experi-
ences of the individual. As seen for outdoor sports, the urban landscape
also suggests techniques for ecologising the body. The thesis developed
here is that parkour in particular, by being so deeply immersed in urban
nature, participates in a form of body ecology in the city. The first section
of this chapter presents body ecology, its origins, components and different
meanings within the sociology of leisure. The second section then intro-
duces body ecology in urban areas, combining perspectives from sociology,
philosophy and geography.

The foundations of urban body ecology

Immersion in body ecology

Body ecology (Andrieu 2011) is a micro-­ecology. We transform ecology by
transforming our individual practices. The idea is to create micro-­situations
and micro-­experiences. It is a genuine bodily practice that engages us in
responsibility as we reflect daily on our gestures and their consequences for
others and for nature. Just as with body ecology, cosmotics (ecology in rela-
tion to the cosmos) is not held at a distance, nor does it imply the idolatry
of natural elements; nature is neither good or bad, but it constantly chal-
lenges us to question how we physically interact with it through the  very
limits of our bodies and the ecological inventiveness of our techniques.
 Body ecology and urban sports   127

Outdoor sports are supported by maritime, coastal, alpine or outdoor

sports cultures. But the cartography and geography of these sports analyse
the territorial effects on city ecologisation: by transforming the city through
the hybridisation of sensorialities and motricities and by promoting bodily
immersion in the urban architecture, which becomes the body’s space for
perception and action. Body ecology is a means of situating bodily practices
through experiential reflection on how territory and terrain affect the prac-
titioners’ physical experience and, in the urban environment, on the eco-­
semantic transformation of walls, buildings and spaces. In this sense, it is a
hybridisation of body practice and urban space. In many types of space,
whether permanent or ephemeral, the idea is not to externalise but to inter-
nalise. Ecologising the body by walking or strolling through the city is also
a way of becoming one with the city and making it a part of our bodies:
city-­nature interpenetration, energy mix, complementarity in modes of
travel, hybrid houses and buildings, hybrid urban design.
What is important is to create a breach in the perceptual habits in urban
practices and projects by giving new value to an urban aesthetic through
eco-­parkours. This concept of body plasticity in the city is expressed in
terms of modularity with transport (city nomadism, independent of cars,
with buses, trams and walking). As we interact with others in urban public
spaces, urban socialisation makes different body rhythms compatible. The
hybrid architecture of the city changes the meaning of usages by signs of
ecologising. The challenge underlying this reflection on urban corporeali-
ties concerns the fundamental role of the public space and its various uses
in the constitution of a city-­making society.

Towards a body ecology of the city

The city shows us different ways to inhabit, frequent, watch and even
oppose it (De Certeau 1990; Porteous 1990; Sennett 2003; Simmel 2007).
Although city dwellers may adapt their bodies and sometimes constrain
them, their behaviours, habits and sensibilities are openings on to an
outside world of concrete. Many theses have been put forward about how
to think about the direct environment so that we can better understand
what its constraints are and how we can both accept them and circumvent
them. Some of them point to the relevance of an urban design that is at
once aesthetic and playful (Barbaux 2010), affecting our bodies and the
way in which we use them in everyday life (Paquot and Marzano 2006).
Others advance the hypothesis that urbanisation comes to surround the
environment (Paquot and Younès 2010). In any case, the notion of the city
as a constraining space is increasingly giving way to actual practices to
beautify it: the green city, smart city, happy city and so on.
What this means is that people living in cities are no longer merely in
this ‘urban nature’ by a kind of fatalism, but rather they are seeking ways
128   F. Lebreton and B. Andrieu

to practise and experiment with city living in line with their resources.
Consequently, the concepts of body ecology (Andrieu 2011) and inhabita-
bility are pertinent to decipher these trends. We can see the collective desire
to stop ‘bearing up’ under a constraining environment. This new repres-
entation of the city actually describes the sensory harmony of body and
mind with the elements that make up a city. The creation of recreational
spaces, especially within the city limits, refers to the idea of an immersion
in it, the aim being to become incorporated into it. From this viewpoint,
parkour highlights a playful urbanity (Lebreton 2010) that nevertheless
requires remarkable motor skills (jumps, running, quadruple moves, climb-
ing, balancing, etc.) that emerge from the dynamic interactions between
bodies and street furniture (streets, stairs, towers, roofs, walls, etc.).
The designers of public spaces have understood this idea of seeking to
‘re-­insert users into the heart of their environment’, where diversion, the
‘street’, idle strolling and greenery are the major components. Such rup-
tures are modes of action against the routinising of our bodies:

this sensory apprehension is perhaps made possible not only in what

performances show, but also and more ‘simply’ because they ‘awaken’,
the senses, as one spectator noted: ‘It clears the sensory sensors!’ These
artistic actions bring the senses to life, as they may have become
perhaps a bit ‘numb’.
(Aventin 2006: p. 2)

An object at the intersection of several disciplines

Environmental sociology
Environmental sociologists investigate bodily practices and their sensitive
relationships with urban spaces. The idea is to analyse how a body space
interacts with the urban ecological space up to the point where the urban
space produces a new possibility of leisure practice for the body. In this
process, the urban space acquires deeper meaning and its label as a space
of diversification is at least temporarily suspended, as we have noted. With
regard to urban sports, environmental sociology elucidates the relation-
ships of societies with their living environment. The social approach to the
urban environment is therefore important for apprehending the practices
related to an urban body ecology.
Also called ‘eco-­sociology’, this framework allows a social analysis of
environmental issues – that is, it is used to understand environmental
problems and how they are perceived in a given society. Sociological and
ecological themes can be developed around the concepts of socialisation,
restoration and integration that nevertheless differ qualitatively, by the
description of the internal effects in the body, from human and social
 Body ecology and urban sports   129

ecology in the strict sense. Indeed, according to Simmel (1999), space and
the spatial organisation of society are among the most instructive
sociological phenomena. Thus, the interactions between natural and social
phenomena reveal certain ‘spatial conditions of socialisation’ (Simmel
1999: p. 601).
Park went so far as to develop an urban ecology in which the city is
regarded as a ‘natural phenomenon’ subjected to various points: territorial,
economic and cultural (Park 2004). The objective of this conceptual frame-
work is to grasp the meaning of the environment in relation to the action
of urban bodies in general and the bodies of urban athletes in particular.
This urban ecology assumes that we take into account the context in which
the phenomenon being observed originated. Simmel’s ‘excursus of the soci-
ology of the senses’ (1999) has relevance here. Let us not forget his psycho-
social approach to some of the affective states that intervene in the
processes of socialisation. The great interest of his thinking indeed lies with
this approach to the psychic states provoked by urban or metropolitan
contexts and the forms of social relations or ‘physical experiences of inter-
action’ (Boudes 2009). Simmel’s environmental sociology (1999, 2007)
situates space, especially big cities, as a context favourable for the action
of bodies. This theme extends, to a certain extent, the questions about how
we move from a constrained bodily state to a body lived in an experimen-
tation with urban structures and architectures. The relationship of a popu-
lation with its territory can be interpreted in body ecology.

Ecological representations of the environment

These elements of nature suggest several interpretations about the uses to
be made of them. Skateboarding, because of its capacity to develop its
practitioners’ ‘imaginability’, is also a way of acting on urban objects
(Laurent and Gibout 2010). As an ecological process, the ecology of per-
ception means first that any activity picked up in the direct environment
could be considered an adequate affordance. The concept of affordance
(Gibson 1979) encompasses all the possibilities for action related to an
environment. Affordances are objective but are always related to the indi-
vidual who can use them. This is the famous perception-­movement cou-
pling of ecological theories, which explains, for example, how tracers
(people who use their urban leisure to design an original urban space) are
able to perceive what the environment allows them to do according to their
capacities (Lebreton 2010).
They therefore do not detect information and then process it according
to representations – they simply pick it up. But perception is an intrinsic
function of the individual. The perception of the results of town planning,
for example, differs from one individual to another. Depending on the
individual’s physical and morphological possibilities and degrees of motor
130   F. Lebreton and B. Andrieu

and perceptual development, he or she will overcome urban obstacles

differently. This intrinsic perception of the environment is possible because
people perceive affordances. These possibilities for action allow them to
adopt appropriate behaviour and develop a sensory harmony between their
own bodies and these elements. In this way, tracers give their environment
a sports-­related meaning that does not exist in itself.
The idea of urban body ecology is to live sensorial modifications in the
urban space and to use the reality of the city to develop new and playful
relationships with it. Some of the artistic or festive processes in public
spaces illustrate this, showing how closely perception and movement are
related. The idea that we need to move in order to perceive led Gibson
(1979) to think of learning as a dynamic process in which the subject
learns by acting in a given environment (Marsault and Cornus 2004).
From this perspective, the ecology of perception characterises the parkour
activity described in the practitioner’s discourses.
Gibson’s approach to ‘perception’ has been widely debated in the field
of human and social geography (Hussy and Lopreno 1985), and the
concept of ‘spatial representation’ (in relation to affective and emotional
aspects, not only reduced to a physical and material conception of the
space) may be more useful for thinking about the contemporary relation-
ships of individuals or social groups and their environments (see Bailly
1985). This geo-­localisation of sports practices assumes that the body
engages with nature according to a certain mode – the lived and emotional
base – through the territory experienced, perceived and dreamed.
In the same vein, we might mention those works referring to a recrea-
tional territoriality where the ‘here-­elsewhere’ dialectic today presents the
city as a kind of nature, in which recreational practices once reserved for
the mountains now take place, for example. (Bourdeau et al. 2011). The
practices of space associated with the urban environment are thus built
through the recreational practices of an elsewhere that is interpreted in the
‘social construction of meaning elaborated in a compensatory way by city
dwellers in reaction to the dissatisfactions and/or frustrations associated
with the everyday urban environment’ (Bourdeau 2003).

Experiential and aesthetic spaces of sport

From this perspective, Shusterman (2007, 2011) focuses on the body and
the somatic experience of it. Somaesthetics, according to this author, gives
a central place to personal and immediate experience in body learning.
Experiences are not single but are plural. The way space is understood is
thus represented and embodied differently, depending on the individual
and the environment. The subterranean parts of urban space contribute to
developing a body experience that takes on meaning by coming into
contact with the historical vestiges that mark this underground space.
 Body ecology and urban sports   131

Somaesthetics refers to a way of understanding the body in which aes-

thetics and body practices are inseparable. The philosophical task is thus
to explore the relationship between somaesthetics and architecture by elu-
cidating the impact of architecture on the body schema (Shusterman 2011).
According to Shusterman, there is a strong link between architecture and
the development of somaesthetics. The physical environment contributes
greatly to developing in different sorts of practitioners a state of ‘aware-
ness’ as a dimension of experience that is physically felt. For example,
tracers conquering roofs or urban speleologists exploring subterranean
sites illustrate the contemporary dynamics of ‘appropriation’.
Evoking somaesthetics and what connects it to urban architectures is a
way of re-­centring the body at the heart of any practice that reconstitutes
everyday life. Spatiality thus is a central focus of this type of study. The
geography of sport reveals spatiality but it also points to the different
meanings that the relation to spaces for sports implies. This is partly
addressed by Bale (1989) and Eichberg (1998) concerning physical activ-
ities and more broadly by Soja (1996) with the notion of trialectic spatial-
ity (see especially Lefebvre 1980).
Introducing an urban body ecology only makes sense if we articulate
these different concepts so as to think more globally about the body in
movement as ‘spatialised, socialised and subjectivised’ (Di Méo 2010), and
thus as an original place for the individual (Andrieu 2006). If we assume
that body ecology deals with acting on one’s own body (Andrieu 2011),
motor behaviour evokes mainly the practitioner’s reflexivity with regard to
his or her own body, mental representations, capacities and ways of acting
– that is, all that connects an individual to his or her life environment.
If the city and its physical characteristics generate a semiotics of space,
as Bachelard has shown (Bacherlard 1961: p. 215), it is therefore a space
for action conducive to bodily experiences – whether sports-­related or art-
istic – and for playing with the elements. What place then do such ‘playful’
sports as parkour have within this concept of body ecology? Experiment-
ing with the urban furniture means mobilising perceptual and reflexive fac-
ulties. The ‘somaesthetic approach to architecture’ (Shusterman 2011)
develops aptitudes for discriminating architectural elements, especially
kinaesthetic and proprioceptive elements. This approach directly echoes
the discourses collected in the field because for these individuals, the urban
setting and its furniture are vectors for representations, discourses and
practices where mobilising the body is central. Tracers and even urban spe-
leologists, for example, develop a somaesthetic sensibility, as expressed by
instinct, senses and basic notions about the body. According to Thibault
(2010), urban architecture possesses an emotional vocabulary that can
reveal the sensible or conflictual relationships with the city. Moreover,
tracers place high value on the freedom acquired through the different
interactions with the streets and their spatial organisation. Playing with the
132   F. Lebreton and B. Andrieu

normative organisation of the streets also confers many possibilities, move-

ments and techniques that can be used in unexpected ways.
The exploration of sports in the city and the associated logics or modal-
ities would no doubt be enriched by pooling sociological, geographical,
anthropological and architectural approaches. The Anglo-­American liter-
ature has demonstrated the interest of distinguishing, for example, between
skateboarding in the normative framework of skateparks and the practice
of street skateboarding, a style in which the practitioner sets out to
immerse himself in the city (Borden 2001). The logics of practice and the
associated values are not the same. An emotional vocabulary is thus
defined according to the theoretical models used for spatial planning and
the choices of policymakers (Lebreton 2016).
The interest of bringing together sociological, urban and geographical
theories to describe recreational and urban territorialities is mainly to gain
insight into how urban sports are also constructed in diverted and reap-
propriated territories. From this perspective, we have tried to present
another way of doing ‘sports’ in the city, of using and enjoying the urban
space through physical and sports activity. While parkour has attracted the
attention of public policymakers because of its educational and health
potential, more than anything this sport is a way for its practitioners to
experience the urban living environment differently. In this sense, parkour
participates in a greening or ecologising effect by flooding the senses and
offering new sensations, an effect that can be obtained in the middle of
nature or in the city. This urban ‘body ecology’ is both intimate and ecolo-
gical because the practices show the relationship with a reflexive and moral
body, a body in movement that acts and expends energy.

Conclusion
The flexibility and plasticity of the body can be lost because of urban
specialisation, as Hébert and Simmel demonstrated, and capacities to
move, act and communicate can be reduced through technology delega-
tion. We may not be able to resist nature, but we certainly can and should
become acculturated to it by regular immersion: swimming in rivers rather
than pools, walking in forests rather than on footpaths. Hébert’s (1936)
Natural Method, with its virile exercise and emphasis on polyvalent
strength, remains a kind of naturism rather than a body ecology. Fortifying
and improving oneself through body culture or physical education was the
opposite of the life project in anarchist and utopian communities like
Monte Verità, where people settled into the earth as a way of life (Sirost
2010). To immerse oneself in nature is different from transforming one’s
body to interact with nature by agility, strength and adaptation, and the
immersion of nature in the body implies an ecologisation of natural tech-
niques, habitus and matter through plasticity, without dominating the
 Body ecology and urban sports   133

natural elements but by building knowledge of our bodily relation to them.

To leave the natural world out of our lives is to cut off the naturalness of
nature by developing a conquering style, rather than an immersive style.
The possibilities for perceiving urban spaces determine the quality of life
for urban inhabitants. By emphasising the city and the urban body, we
must also address the theme of well-­being. The quality of movement in a
constructed environment depends on the physical quality (or potential) of
the city.

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Chapter 11

Heidegger, sport and body ecology

Irena Martínková and Jim Parry

Introduction
With respect to body ecology, the body is always immersed in some kind
of environment, and through this activation of our living body various
bodily experiences arise (see different types in Andrieu and Loland 2017).
While non-­competitive practices are often emphasised in this connection,
this chapter discusses the ‘environment’ of competitive sport. Sport pro-
vides a specific environment for our bodily activity in two senses: (1) sport
is always practised in a predefined environment and (2) it is a specific
socially constructed environment. Immersion into sport can offer us new
experiences through specific activations of our living body, which are
different from our pragmatic life, and also interesting from the point of
view of ontology.
To describe the ecology of this kind of embodied activity, we will first
outline the early work of Martin Heidegger’s ‘fundamental ontology’, that
is his ontological account of the human being (‘Dasein’), with reference to
the human body and its emergent features within the context of the
sporting environment. Starting with a brief introduction to the main char-
acteristics of Dasein’s existence (including some relevant ‘existentialia’),
the chapter highlights the phenomenon of understanding (‘Verstehen’),
focussing on the practical (instrumental) understanding of Dasein,
i.e.  readiness-­to-hand (‘Zuhandenheit’). This mode of understanding,
which is characteristic of our pragmatic daily life, is then discussed as
it  applies within sport, and the specific instrumental nature of sport is
described. Finally, the role of the body within the sporting experience is
also discussed.

Dasein
Heidegger’s early philosophy focuses on his project of ‘fundamental onto-
logy’, which investigates the most fundamental of philosophical concepts –
the ideas of ‘being’ and ‘existence’. He begins his enquiry by placing special
 Heidegger, sport and body ecology   137

emphasis on an analysis of the ‘being’ of the human being, since he sees

this as a prerequisite to an understanding of all other modes of being.
For various entities in the world, Heidegger (2001a: p.  12) describes
different ‘modes of being’: the term ‘life’ means the mode of being of
animals, ‘readiness-­to-hand’ (‘Zuhandenheit’) means the mode of being of
instruments and tools and ‘presence-­at-hand’ (‘Vorhandenheit’) means the
mode of being of objects. All these modes of being (as well as others) are
understood from within the mode of being of the human (‘Dasein’), which
he calls ‘existence’ (‘Existenz’). In other words, it is the human being that
can understand the above-­mentioned modes of being, based on the charac-
ter of its own existence. Heidegger approaches the human being from a
description of human experiencing from the first-­person perspective, thus
avoiding the traditional concept of the human being conceived as the body
and mind, and thus avoiding dualism (Martínková 2017).
The technical term ‘Dasein’ means ‘Being-­here’ (‘Da’ means ‘here’, and
‘sein’ means ‘be’), a term that Heidegger uses to refer to this ‘Being-­here-
of-­human-experiencing’ – the human being. His philosophy attempts an
ontological description of what it means to be human. This ‘being human’
(at the ontological level) is what manifests in every human being. So, the
ontological level must be differentiated from the level of the individual
human being, which describes an individual person living ‘one’s own life’
in one’s own concrete circumstances, at what is called the ‘ontic’ level.
(Heidegger 2001b: pp. 3–4)
At the ontological level, the outcome of Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein is
an account of the ontological structure of Dasein, which he calls ‘Care’
(‘Sorge’) – capturing the idea that Dasein is concerned with its own being
and takes care of its own being (e.g. Heidegger 2001b: chapter VI, 2007:
p. 159). Dasein is ‘my own being’ and it takes care of itself. This self-­concern
enables things and other beings to matter to Dasein. Dasein is situated – it is
a being that exists from within its ‘here’ (see below for an account of the
‘existentiale’ of ‘thrown-­ness’) and has a temporal and dynamic character.
Temporality is characterised by Heidegger as three ‘ecstases’ (‘Ekstasen’)
– the ‘future’ (‘Zukunft’), the ‘having-­been’ (‘Gewesenheit’) and the
‘present’ (‘Gegenwart’) – and all these three ecstases temporalise in unity:
Dasein’s past (the ‘having-­been’) projects into the future, which together
yields the present (Heidegger 1978: pp. 65, especially 377). So, the present
is not disconnected from the past and future but includes them within
itself, and as such enables the specific dynamic character of human being.
So, Dasein in the present projects itself from its situation towards the open-
ness of future possibilities, on the basis of its ‘having-­been’. This present
situation is more or less intelligible and familiar to Dasein, which then con-
ditions its choice of possibilities. Dasein, in its presence, is concerned with
its own being and with things around, and it deals with them in ways that
are familiar to it, with the aim of some future benefit.
138   I. Martínková and J. Parry

Dasein at the ontological level is described in more detail by Heidegger

in terms of ‘existentialia’ (‘Existenzialien’, also translated as ‘existentials’).
These are the essential features of human existence, which can be sepa-
rately identified and described in theory, but which always manifest insep-
arably together in the whole human being. Among the main existentialia
that are important for the discussion of the human within the context of
sport are:

• Being-­in-the-­world (‘In-­der-Welt-­sein’) designates Dasein’s ‘openness’

to the world and means the condition for encountering things and
other beings.
• Thrown-­ness (‘Geworfenheit’), i.e. having been ‘thrown’ into the
world, which means the aspect of ‘being here’, the ‘situatedness’ or
‘dwelling’ of Da-­sein in its ‘here’ (Da), which forms the basis of
openness.
• Attunement (‘Befindlichkeit’) designates ‘how Dasein is’ and ‘how it
finds itself ’ in the world, and this enables things to be of concern to
Dasein (in some way or other).
• Understanding (‘Verstehen’) designates the fact that this openness, and
Dasein’s possibilities, are always already intelligible to Dasein (in some
measure) – that Dasein is the being that ‘understands’ – and that the
world can be familiar to Dasein.

These features manifest in every concrete human being in the various situ-
ations that we experience in our lives, including the experience of sport.
However, various kinds of situations and their environments can highlight
some aspects of Dasein more than others. We believe that human parti-
cipation in sport may manifest and clarify the practical instrumental under-
standing of Dasein, thanks to the specific character of sporting activity.

Attunement and understanding

Understanding means the intelligibility of the openness of Dasein’s world.
Dasein ‘always-­already’ understands and interprets its situation, and this
understanding is enabled through its attunement (Heidegger 2001b: p. 29)
and self-­understanding and self-­interpretation (ibid.: pp. 31f.).
Attunement opens the world of Dasein as affective. It opens the world
in its totality in terms of ‘how I feel’, ‘how I find myself in the world’ or
‘how I sense myself in situations’ (see also Gendlin 1978). Attunement
affords the basis of Dasein’s concern and interest in the things and being in
the world, which modifies or ‘colours’ its openness to the world, and as
such enables human moods and feelings to arise at all.
Understanding opens the world of Dasein as intelligible. Dasein always-­
already understands the world and beings to some extent. So, we in our
 Heidegger, sport and body ecology   139

concrete situations already know (more or less) what we need, what we

like, what to do, how to communicate with others, how to deal with this
or that, etc. We may at any time fail to understand some particular thing
but this is within a wider context of a more or less intelligible situation.
For a concrete human, this means that I always in some way understand
my own situation, in my concrete circumstances, and choose my possibil-
ities accordingly.
However, Dasein’s understanding does not have to be ‘adequate’ or
‘appropriate’ – for even though Dasein always ‘understands’, it can under-
stand imperfectly and understanding can also be quite superficial. Here,
Heidegger distinguishes between ‘authentic’ and ‘inauthentic’ under-
standing: authentic understanding means understanding that is appropriate
to the being of Dasein, i.e. that is based on my clear understanding of what
it means to be human (that derives from Dasein’s understanding of its own
being). In my own concrete life, I live in line with and make decisions on
the basis of a clear view of the human situation, of ‘what it means to be
human’.
On the other hand, inauthentic understanding derives from unclarity
about our humanity, i.e. an understanding of Dasein that does not derive
from an understanding of Dasein’s own being but rather from what is
generally socially acceptable – from ‘what they say’ (‘das Man’) – and our
tendency to disperse ourselves into things, forgetting about our human-
ness. Das Man provides general interpretations that might enjoy a certain
social acceptance, and to a certain extent they also stem from the human
condition, but what is missing is the clarity about what it is to be human
that can come from deep reflection on the nature of our existence, and on
the human condition.
So, it is important to note that ‘what they say’ is not fully accidental,
since even the most banal interpretations of das Man in some way or other
derive from ‘Care’ (see also Keller and Weberman 2002: pp.  277–281).
That is to say: even when understanding inauthentically, Dasein is an issue
for itself – it is concerned with itself – and this is in some way or other
reflected in its interpretations and choices.
Some attunements open the world in a way that enables authentic
understanding to a greater degree than others. For example, the attune-
ments of ‘anxiety’ (‘Angst’) (Heidegger 2001b: p.  40) or deep boredom
(‘die tiefe Langweile’) (Heidegger 2004: pp. 19ff.) defy Dasein to relate to
things, since they are no more of concern to it, and therefore they do not
promote our dealing with things, nor the usual ‘dispersing’ of self into
things. In this way, these attunements may halt our usual pervasive prag-
matic dealings, which enables us to pause and take a look at our human
situation.
On the other hand, the attunement of daily life does not lead to indiffer-
ence but rather it enables interest in and captivation by what is happening.
140   I. Martínková and J. Parry

The attunement within sport is similar to that of a busy daily life. Sport is
not compatible with the attunement of anxiety or deep boredom. If at all,
these attunements would rather arise after the sporting performance itself.1
Athletes do sport because they enjoy doing it, because it is captivating and
attractive for them.

Practical understanding
The fact that being is an issue for Dasein, and thus that Dasein is con-
cerned with its own being, and cares for itself, enables the primary specific
understanding of entities within the world. Dasein’s care for its being
manifests itself in ‘practical understanding’, which is oriented towards sus-
taining its existence, e.g. the use of things and accomplishing various tasks
for meeting one’s needs and bibliography. This happens within the context
of a familiar world within which Dasein necessarily dwells, while being
involved with various things and with other humans (Heidegger 2001b:
p.  54). Heidegger (2001b: pp.  15ff.) calls this mode of understanding of
the being of entities ‘readiness-­to-hand’ (‘Zuhandenheit’) and the entities
viewed in this way are termed as ‘ready-­to-hand’ (‘zuhandene’), i.e. they
are termed as ‘equipment’ (‘das Zeug’).
‘Equipment’ means entities that humans use for some purpose, usually
in relation to sustaining their existence. Heidegger describes the character
of the ‘ready-­to-hand’ entities with the phrase ‘in-­order-to’ (‘Um-­zu’),
meaning: ‘leading to an end’. This expression is incorporated into other
vocabulary that depicts readiness-­to-hand (Heidegger 2001b: pp.  14f.):
being busy dealing with things is termed ‘dealings’ (‘Umgang’); the ‘sight’
used in this context is called ‘circumspection’ (‘Umsicht’); and existence
that is immersed in dealings does so within an ‘environment’ (‘Umwelt’),
which is the world of everyday Dasein – here, the German ‘um’ also means
‘around’, which also points towards Dasein’s spatiality (ibid.: p. 66).
So already we can begin to see the necessarily ecological perspective
being developed by Heidegger: we humans are ‘thrown’ into an ‘environ-
ment’, which we seek progressively to ‘understand’, with which we must
‘deal’ and which enables our specific (primary) view of things (through
‘circumspection’, which prompts us to look around for ways of sustaining
our existence), and these are not accidental or contingent facts – this con-
stitutes the ontology of the human.
Readiness-­to-hand goes hand in hand with the character of equipment,
which is essentially characterised by the phrase ‘in-­order-to’ (‘Um-­zu’),
depicting its instrumental character. From the view of Dasein’s existence, a
single case of instrumentality (completing a task) is not accidental but is
founded in its very existence. That is to say: every instrumentality is ori-
ented towards Dasein and it is disclosed through Dasein’s understanding
of its being. A single case of instrumentality, such as completing a task, is
 Heidegger, sport and body ecology   141

described by Heidegger by the phrase ‘towards-­this’ (‘Dazu’) (e.g. driving

in a nail). This is not a solitary accidental event, but it is oriented towards
achieving some end for Dasein (e.g. building a house) – which Heidegger
terms ‘towards-­which’ (‘Wozu’). (Heidegger 2001b: pp. 18, 31) Heidegger
emphasises: ‘This primary “towards-­which” is not just another “towards-­
this” as something in which an involvement is possible. The primary
“towards-­which” is a “for-­the-sake-­of-which” ’ (1978: p. 116). This means
that driving in a nail is a part of an effort to build a shelter, which arises
from the fact that Dasein’s being is an issue for Dasein and needs to be
taken care of. All the ends for which Dasein strives go ultimately back to
the primary ‘for-­the-sake-­of-which’ (‘Worum-­willen’), which means the
focus of Dasein on sustaining of its own being. In simplified form this can
be described in the following way:

‘towards-­this’ (‘Dazu’) – completing a task (e.g. driving in a nail)

↓ ↓
‘towards-­which’ (‘Wozu’) – achieving an end for Dasein (e.g.
providing a shelter)
↓ ↓
‘for-­the-sake-­of-which’ – for sustaining Dasein’s existence
(‘Worum-­willen’) (for the sake of the being of Dasein)

Readiness-­to-hand is characteristic of familiarity and closeness to things –

the equipment is ‘at hand’ (Heidegger 2001b: p. 15). Equipment is charac-
terised as dynamic, and as serving or functioning for us, in meeting the
concerns of our existence. This serviceability, or usefulness, is depicted by
three ontological characteristics of equipment: ‘involvement’ (translated by
Macquarrie and Robinson 1978) or ‘relevance’ (translated by Stambaugh
1996) (‘Bewandtnis’), ‘assignment’ or ‘reference’ (‘Verwiesenheit’) and
‘inconspicuousness’ (‘Unauffälligkeit’).
‘Involvement’ or ‘relevance’ means the ontological characteristic of
equipment to be a sufficient means to the desired end. It means a relevant
involvement in some activity, which the equipment is mediating and facilit-
ating. For example, driving in a nail demands an adequate hardness of the
two surfaces and just enough power so that the task can be completed, and
an accurate and secure attachment can be achieved.
‘Reference’ means relating to something else. This characteristic means
that we cannot talk about ‘equipment’ as one piece of equipment but only
as a totality of equipment (Heidegger 2001b: p.  15). However, this does
not mean that equipment can be understood in the plural as a sum
of  objects, i.e. as a set of separate single pieces of equipment, because
there  is always a ‘totality’ of equipment, which is necessary to describe
the  ‘co-­operation’ of a series of different ‘in-­order-to’, inter-­relating and
142   I. Martínková and J. Parry

intertwining, leading to some function or another. For example, an object

– a hammer – is not a piece of equipment, but equipment rather means the
‘function or effect’ (see Harman 2002: p. 20) of hammering and attaching
together something previously disconnected.
‘Inconspicuousness’ means that equipment is invisible. As opposed to
the visibility of objects (presence-­at-hand – ‘Vorhandenheit’), the equip-
ment is not graspable and therefore identifiable. The various forces at work
cannot be untangled, without their character being changed into objects
and all the forces at work abstracted. Heidegger (1978: p. 110) says:

The experiencing of a Thing requires a definiteness of its own [ihre

eigene Bestimmtheit], and must be contrasted with coming across a
manifold of equipment, which may often be quite indefinite, even
when one comes across it as especially close.

Dasein, as attuned and understanding being-­in-the-­world that is con-

cerned with its own being, is fascinated by the world and is drawn to it;
and as such Dasein ‘falls’ into the world – it is ‘dispersed’ into those things
and beings of its concerns. It deals with things, creates new things, com-
municates this with others – and in this way, provides for its existence.
This movement of Dasein is termed ‘falling’ (‘Verfallen’) – it means the
tendency to ‘fall towards’ other entities, and to ‘fall in with’ already-­
existing social patterns and common ways of thinking and doing things,
understanding them according to what ‘they say’ (das Man) (Heidegger
2001b: p. 27). From attending to these concerns, Dasein comes to under-
stand both those things and itself, but this is mostly inauthentic self-­
understanding, since it does not arise from the being of itself (Dasein) but
rather from the being of things in the world.
However, it is important to note that ‘what they say’ is not fully
accidental, since even the most banal interpretations of das Man in some
way or other derive from Care (see also Keller and Weberman 2002:
pp.  277–281). That is to say: even when understanding inauthentically,
Dasein is an issue for itself – it is concerned with itself.
Heidegger considers readiness-­to-hand to be characteristic of the level of
Dasein’s everyday existence – ‘proximally and for the most part’ (‘zunächst
und zumeist’). Let us now turn our attention to sport, since it has a specific
relationship to this way of understanding.

Sport and instrumentality

So, Dasein primarily understands its basic daily engagement in an instru-
mental way. Let us now see how human existence manifests itself within
an engagement with sport, and how this is related to the phenomenon of
practical understanding.
 Heidegger, sport and body ecology   143

Importantly, it is now necessary to emphasise that sport does not change

the ontological structure of Dasein. Sport is a specific ‘environment’ that
humans may immerse themselves into, and all the aspects of existence (Exis-
tentialia) described above also manifest themselves through sport, as they
do in other human activities. Nevertheless, different kinds of activity may
(according to the nature of the particular activity, including sports) bring to
the fore certain features of existence and make them more visible and recog-
nisable for us. Also, different kinds of sports may bring to the fore different
aspects of existence. (See more in Martínková and Parry 2016.)
If we wish to describe human experiencing within sport, we need to first
ask: what is sport and what kind of ‘environment’ it offers to the human
to immerse into? If we define sport from the point of view of Zuhanden-
heit, we can highlight its structure of ends and means and define sport as:
‘organised, rule-­governed competition, in which completing a task includ-
ing the manifestation of human movement abilities and skills is contested’.
From this point of view, sport is an activity that has two levels of ends –
an objective (i.e. a task or set of tasks to be completed, which is set out by
agreed rules) and an aim of winning or overcoming the opponent with respect
to the given task. So, the first level of ends contains some pre-­given objective
(a task) that athletes strive to fulfil within the given sport, for example to
score a goal or to jump as far as possible. This feature of sport stems from its
character as ‘test’. Completing a task requires learning various means (honing
one’s skills) that will help the athlete to fulfil the task (e.g. to learn to pass a
ball, to acquire a jumping technique, to prepare a distance run strategy, etc.).
The second level of ends contains fulfilling of the given task within a
competitive setting – it is an intrinsic end of sport to perform better than
an opponent: to win, or to strive to win, to achieve the highest position in
the ranking or at least not to lose or to be last (Martínková 2013). This
feature of sport stems from its character as a ‘contest’ in which two or
more parties try to achieve a mutually exclusive end. (For the distinction
between test and contest see Kretchmar 1975.) Both, the objective (a test)
and competition (contest) are intrinsic to sport.
Now, let us see this instrumentality in sport explained in more detail
with the help of the above described aspects of equipment – ‘involvement’
or ‘relevance’ (Bewandtnis), ‘reference’ (Verwiesenheit) and ‘inconspicu-
ousness’ (Unauffälligkeit).
The aspect of ‘involvement’ or ‘relevance’, i.e. being a sufficient means
to the desired end, can be demonstrated in sport in the following way:
sport is set up in a way to fit the human. So, to be able to score a goal, the
ball needs to be ‘kickable’, to be of a size and composition to be kicked
around by the human as well as to fit in between the goal posts. Equip-
ment necessary for a sport is prepared with regard to fitting the pre-­agreed
task, to contribute within the desired scope and with respect to the humans
who are involved in it.
144   I. Martínková and J. Parry

The aspect of interrelatedness of equipment (termed ‘reference’) is, for

example, described by Breivik (2008: p. 341), who emphasises that the ball
in football itself is meaningless, unless it fits in with the overall football
‘equipment’, the totality of the sport of football, which can render a foot-
ball be understood as a part of the sport called football and its overall
structure of ends (scoring and/or not letting in a goal and other ends sub-
ordinated to these). This does not mean that a football is an object, next to
other objects (football shoe, football pitch grass, etc.). Rather,
‘Zuhandenenheit’ means ‘equipment in their dynamic interconnectedness’.
As sport is a bodily activity, the human body is interwoven into these
relationships. In his ontological description of equipment, Heidegger is
very thorough in his description of the mode of being of equipment, whilst
there are only a few remarks with respect to the human body. Within the
context of instrumentality, it may at first seem that the body just fits nicely
among the other equipment, fulfilling the various tasks that the human sets
to herself/himself as just another part of the required equipment, referring
to the other parts within the whole context (Heidegger 2001b: p. 17). The
hand and the racket in tennis are intertwined, in balanced cooperation and
mutual dynamics, in hitting the ball – and so hand and racket might look
like entities of the same kind (i.e. of the same mode of being). However, it
is important to emphasise that the human body is ontologically different
from equipment, belonging as it does to ‘existence’.
The term ‘inconspicuousness’ describes the invisible effect of equipment
that is used for any action in sport. For example, to achieve the passing of
a ball to a teammate or a strike at a goal, many forces are at play and they
are all working together, hidden from our sight. Also, again, we might be
tempted to see the body as fitting in amongst the other equipment. For
example, the striking of the football could be taken just as another force
amongst others. However, according to Heidegger, Dasein is ontologically
different from equipment, so this cannot be the case. Unfortunately,
Heidegger does not elaborate on this point2 and therefore the precise status
of the body in this context remains a problem (Cerbone 2002).
So, the sporting equipment is instrumental in the same way as equip-
ment that helps us to sustain our existence but with the difference that the
sporting equipment is not designed to sustain the human existence – it is
non-­pragmatic, i.e. the instrumentality in sport does not intrinsically lead
to an end that sustains human existence, we might say it does not lead to a
useful end. This is what Bernard Suits (2005) highlights when claiming
that sport is constituted in such a way as to achieve its ends by ‘over-
coming unnecessary obstacles’ and, with respect to the vocabulary of the
above definition, we also need to add: ‘achieving unnecessary tasks’.
And so, when sport is ‘played for sport’, the afore-­mentioned founda-
tion of ends in human existence changes – it lacks the ‘for-­the-sake-­of-
which’ (‘Worum-­willen’), i.e. for the sake of sustaining one’s being is
 Heidegger, sport and body ecology   145

missing, and even the ‘towards-­which’ (‘Wozu’) is changed – it is not just

any end for Dasein to achieve for itself but an artificial one that is set by
an agreement, i.e. by the rules:

‘towards-­this’ (‘Dazu’) – completing a task (kicking, passing a

football)
↓ ↓
‘towards-­which’ (‘Wozu’) – achieving an end (towards scoring
a goal)

This is no small change – this is something very unusual for our over-
whelmingly pragmatic life. From the point of view of praxis sport may
look like a useless waste of human effort. Running a given distance faster
than opponents, or scoring more goals than the opposing team does not
sustain our existence, but rather exhausts it. So, while the two ends are not
intrinsically pragmatic, the athletes must find the activity in some way
meaningful, otherwise they would not do it at all. That is why we often
attribute extrinsic values to sport, since various intrinsic aspects of sport
translate into achieving some values we hold high in life, but they are
extrinsic (or arbitrary) to sport, i.e. they can be achieved by different
means as well and sport can function without them. So, for example,
athletes may find meaningfulness in victory, which serves as a means
towards extrinsic values, such as fame and finance, or they may find mean-
ingfulness in the fact that during the given sport people move vigorously
and they find a value in its health benefit, relaxation or recreation.
However, even if we earn money for sport victories, and it becomes profes-
sion and therefore pragmatic, it still does not change the uselessness of the
task athletes try to achieve. Here, the instrumentality is different:

‘towards-­this’ (‘Dazu’) – completing a task (kicking, passing a

football)
↓ ↓
‘towards-­which’ (‘Wozu’) – achieving an end (towards scoring
a goal)
↓ ↓
‘for-­the-sake-­of-which’ – for sustaining Dasein’s existence
(‘Worum-­willen’) (professional football – providing a
reward, and a livelihood)
(non-­professional football – ‘recharging
batteries’ to be able to work more or
work better for sustaining Dasein’s
existence)
(for the sake of the being of Dasein)
146   I. Martínková and J. Parry

Here we can see a different perspective on sport. The extrinsic value that
founds the sport practice modifies the character of sport (as non-­pragmatic)
and thus the whole human engagement in it.

Immersion in sport and emersive ecology

This characteristic of sport, being instrumental (since an athlete achieves
tasks, in a similar way as he or she achieves pragmatic tasks), yet not prag-
matic (since it does not lead to sustaining our existence but is rather a free-­
time activity), provides a significant and specifically sporting ‘environment’
within which activity takes place.
Now, it is important to distinguish two kinds of environments within
sport. First, sport can be practised in various ‘concrete’ environments –
natural (open water swimming) or more or less artificial (gymnasium or
outdoor playing field). These environments will obviously be different
within individual sports and will affect the athlete in different ways. Some-
times, this environment may vary within one sport (such as lawn tennis
and clay-­court tennis), and sometimes its environment is a distinctive
characteristic of a sport (such as the difference between volleyball and
beach volleyball, which are two different sports). The practice of the same
activity in a different environment is a challenge and can, for example,
disturb the athlete’s concentration (e.g. pole vault outdoors and indoors
brings different challenges).
Second, whatever ‘concrete’ environment sport is played in, still it does
not change its instrumental and non-­pragmatic character. In this respect,
sport is also formed as a ‘social’ environment – an environment of an activ-
ity that is socially constructed and the result of human negotiation and
agreement. For example: to be able to see ‘a football pitch’, we need to
understand sport and to know what football is, otherwise we just see grass
and some white lines. Without an understanding of the game of football,
one will wonder what this kind of environment could mean and what
people do on it. This was nicely depicted by Lucian in Anacharsis in the
second century bce:

ANACHARSIS: Solon, what are your young men doing? Some of them
are all wrapped up together but trying to trip each other; others are
strangling and tackling one another, and grovelling in the mud, wal-
lowing around like pigs. But in the beginning, as I saw for myself, as
soon as they took off their clothes they oiled themselves and took turns
rubbing each other down quite peacefully. But I don’t understand what
has happened to them, for now they push and tug at one another and
butt their foreheads together like rams.…
(Lucian 2012)
 Heidegger, sport and body ecology   147

Anarcharsis did not understand that he was seeing people wrestling. So,
what is the understanding of an athlete within a sport situation? Obvi-
ously, the existentiale of understanding is a necessary precondition. Being
an athlete (at the ontic level), I understand more-­or-less what it takes to be
an athlete, I understand myself in relation to other athletes (as teammates,
as opponents, etc.) and I understand what I have to do and how to do it
and I understand the overall athletic environment. I know there is a pre-­
given task to be accomplished and I need to try to be better in it than the
opponent – that is why, especially if the competition is tight, I have to train
for it, and all my training aims for improvement in achieving the task –
this futural modality of sport training, following on Heidegger’s emphasis
on the analysis of time, is described in a paper by Morgan (1976), who
emphasises training as planned activity, characterised by its linear direction
towards a determined end. (See also Martínková and Parry 2011.)
Sporting events generate an array of activities that are uncommon in a
daily life, e.g. trying to jump as high as possible, throwing a specific kind
of a ball into a basketball ring, football referees running along a line
waving their flags, etc. and they also permit attitudes and behaviours that
would be unacceptable in daily life – barging in football, tackling in rugby,
running to exhaustion, exposing oneself to hurt and harm, etc. Sport activ-
ities also activate my living body in variety of ways, enabling various emo-
tions, feelings and sensations. The sport environment, with its orientation
on a given task, makes athletes focus outside of themselves, while under
pressure to perform.
This situation generates strong and intensive feelings and sensations and
often the more subtle feelings and sensations can be overridden by inten-
sive ones. The tension of a competitive athletic encounter brings about joy
and challenge and the ‘sweet tension’ of the uncertainty of outcome
(Kretchmar 1975), which are relative to the given situation in the game/
race (winning or losing and in any case under stress and pressure). For
example, the athlete tends to feel only severe pain but often does not notice
(or ignores) a more common sensation of pain that she would usually
notice in a daily life. Of course, it goes without saying that the elite ath-
lete’s body is trained to be capable of absorbing efforts and pains that
would be beyond the normal.
These many and various concrete and social sport environments have
been found attractive by millions of participants, who value the opportun-
ities for self-­development, the ethical challenge of performing under
pressure in an emotionally loaded environment, and the experiencing of
the intrinsic goods of particular sports as enriching potentials for sensa-
tions that emerge, while they are immerged in various kinds of sporting
environments.
148   I. Martínková and J. Parry

Conclusion
This chapter tried to describe the specific ‘environment’ and activity that
sport is, based on the phenomenological analyses of Heidegger in his early
works. While being instrumental, sport is non-­pragmatic, but it also can be
easily included in our daily concerns and therefore changed. To maintain
this specific ‘environment’ we have to first understand its specific character,
and second to safeguard it from efforts to set it amongst the instrumentali-
ties of our pragmatic daily life, because if we lose ‘sport for sport’, we
could also lose an opportunity to immerse ourselves in this specific kind of
environment and activity. If so, we would lose the specific ecology of sport
that can give us new bodily experiences through the activation of our living
body, but also that offers a different take on our life, possibly revealing to
us some aspects of existence that are otherwise difficult to access. This is
important for the continuation of sport – because, since being non-­
pragmatic, sport cannot be taken for granted; it is not an ‘environment’
necessary for our lives but an enrichment of it.

Notes
1 The phenomenon of anxiety is not the same as pre-­competition anxiety. Athletes
are anxious since they very much wish to achieve the desired end (to perform as
well as possible), but for Heidegger, the phenomenon of anxiety rather brings
indifference to the things and tasks around.
2 Indeed, Heidegger does not speak about the body very often at all. He himself
says in Being and Time that the theme of the body is outside the scope of the
book. (Heidegger 2001b: p. 108)

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Chapter 12

The recosmologisation of
the world
From Monte Verità to naturism
Olivier Sirost

Monte Verità’s tale is a recosmologisation of the world. We do not have

many archives about this movment but many stories have been told by the
people who lived there (Szeemann 1978). By using this term, they mean to
imply a reversal of the long domination of humans over their environment,
with the primacy of the individual ceding before the power of nature and
our basic instinct to be one with nature regaining its deepest meaning. This
reversal implies the rediscovery of an inner world that has long been neg-
lected and yet now shapes the outer cosmos (forms and techniques),
prompting the remark that psychoanalysis was the soul botany of the
twentieth century (Sloterdijk 2005: pp. 28–29). This sensibility has drawn
heavily on the cosmic imagination since the Renaissance (Koestler 2012), a
time in which the Heraclitean open world (river flowing metaphor) and the
Parmenidian closed world (Earth as centre of the Universe) coexist. In the
conceptions of the Universe during the Renaissance, astrologists opposed
chaos (astral bad influences beliefs) and harmony (a perfect and closed uni-
verse). The mythic root for this recosmologisation found its source in
Plato’s philosophy (his dialogues in The Republic, Timaeus and Critias),
where Eros is the articulation between the philosophy of Nature Parme-
nides and Heraclitus (Gordon 2012).
In the eighteenth century, the natural philosophers plunged deeply into
the exploration of cosmic questions about human nature and the founda-
tions of our social world, revisiting the classical texts of Hesiod, Plato,
Virgil and Ovid. Fervent debates on creation myths and the ages of human-
kind brought new life to natural philosophies and theosophies. Notably,
they restored the soma of naturism as opposed to the corpus of experi-
mental medicine. The body is a whole with soul and spirit – and this is far
indeed from the corpuscular division typical of the urban industrial life-
style. It is in just this context that Franz von Baader built the foundations
for an erotic philosophy that reconnected with the Hesiod’s Theogony
(birth of the world story) (von Baader 1982).
The works of Carl Gustav Carus on landscape, who notably explored
‘the meaning of life on earth’ (Friedrich and Carus 1988), and those of
 The recosmologisation of the world   151

Goethe and Lorenz Oken (Richards 2002) all extended the intuitions of
Baader. Oken went so far as to formalise them by developing an erotic
cosmogony. Later, in the vein of Mallarmé’s Tuesday salons, the poet
Stefan George, along with Alfred Schuler and Ludwig Klages, formed the
Cosmic Circle in Munich, extending this tradition to artistic elites, social
reformers, theosophists and anarchists. Bohemians, artistic communities
and naturists moved to the forefront of this movement.
These existential, mystical quests seemed matched by a whole series of
bodily experiences of immersion in nature: travelling, nudism, vegetarian-
ism, camping, heliotherapy, balneotherapy, gymnosophy and so on. To
this fascination with spiritism and the body were added serious attempts to
bring new life to the mind through the arts (especially dance, music, paint-
ing and architecture), psychoanalysis and depth psychology, social reforms
and discussions on ethical culture. We can here read a Westernised way to
express the savage mind (Levi-­Strauss 1960) and the chaosmos promoted
by the anarchists and various Bohemians of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries essentially came down to a desire to live the Hesiodian narrative
of the birth of a new world through bodily experiences in nature. It was
assumed that the immersions in an outer cosmos of water, air, earth and
sun would revitalise an inner cosmos revealed by sensations and emotions.
The founding anarchist community of Monte Verità seemed to crystallise
these many community initiatives throughout Europe.

The kosmiker in search of Gaia

In 1900, a circle of bohemians dreaming of this kind of world emerged in
Munich. The mythologist and writer Karl Wolfskehl discovered Stefan
George’s magazine in 1892: Blätter für die Kunst (George 2012), which
advocated the defence of art for art’s sake, symbolic poetry and the advent
of a new world. In 1898, Wolfskehl married Hanna de Haan, daughter of
a conductor in Darmstadt. At the time, a cultural colony was forming in
Darmstadt, promoting ‘Jugendstil’, or art nouveau, and architectural
bibliography to antiquity, as well as music, sculpture, the ‘arts and crafts’
movement and lithographs celebrating nudity and nature. Isadora Duncan
founded her school of dance in this city. Karl Wolfskehl and his wife
moved to Munich, where their apartment became a meeting place for intel-
lectuals and artists, much like the Tuesday salons of Stéphane Mallarmé
(Lehnen 2010). It was in this Munich apartment in 1900 that Karl Wolf-
skehl, Alfred Schuler, Ludwig Klages, Stefan George and Albert Verwey
founded the Cosmic Circle (Müller 2007). Deeply impressed by the work
of J. J. Bachofen on the anthropology of matriarchy, they wanted to remy-
thologise the world, proclaiming Novalis’s maxim: ‘the world must be
romanticised’. The path of paganism (somewhat like the anthropology of
primitive mentalities) was chosen, with Friedrich Gundolf insisting on the
152   O. Sirost

symbolic power of primitiveness in all art. The Circle widened with the
addition of personalities like the theosophist Franziska zu Reventlow, the
philosopher Martin Buber and the painters Paul Klee and Franz Marc
which would gradually spread their ideas and experiences through all of
Europe.
Brought up on the psychology and aesthetics of Carus, Ludvig Klages
(Klages 1976; Thibon 1933) based his work on the study of personality.
He created the German Graphology Society in 1896 and maintained a rela-
tionship with Reventlow. He believed that the formation of character was
inseparable from the cosmos, which brought all its weight to bear on the
body-­soul-spirit, an entity threatened with separation and schizophrenic
opposition by modernity. Thus, it would be by the polarities of rhythm,
the religion of Eros and the spirit of matriarchy that humans would find an
alternative path and reconnect with the cosmos. Klages, as well as other
members of the Munich Circle eventually settled in the Swiss canton of
Ticino.
The Monte Verità colony was founded in 1900 by a small anarchist
community with close ties to the ‘Lebensreform’ or life reform movement,
and it marked an alternative to the social bourgeois values of work and
urbanisation. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Ticino, along
Lake Maggiore, was an attractive place for anarchists like Bakunin and
Carlo Cafiero in Locarno, for writers and intellectuals like Nietzsche in the
Brigasso Islands and the theosophists Frantz Hartmann and Alfredo Pioda,
who founded the Fraternitas group on the hill of Menoscia. The keen sense
of an old world that was dying and a modern world that was denaturing
humans and their environment made it all the more urgent to leave every-
thing behind for the chance to build an alternative life. The fishing village
of Ascona thus became the epicentre towards which exiles, artists, intellec-
tuals and tourists from Western culture were converging.
This ‘world of truth’ that prefigured Nietzsche’s The Twilight of the
Idols in 1888 came through introspection and destitution. According to
Schopenhauer, it was a quest for a predetermined harmony between the
represented world and the objectively existing world. It was fully crystal-
lised in the bohemian lifestyle and its communities, natural philosophy,
education reforms and the Lebensreform.

The incarnation of the Nietzschean world of truth

Martin Green characterised Ascona as a small village in Ticino between
Lake Maggiore and the Alps, on the border between Switzerland and Italy
(Green 1986). It was the meeting place for well-­known intellectuals to
exchange ideas and share lived experiences. Feminism, pacifism and
psychoanalysis took root, influencing such movements as Dadaism, Surre-
alism and modern dance. The enthusiasm for this small alpine village was
 The recosmologisation of the world   153

in great part prompted by the striking urbanisation of Germany. This phe-

nomenon was noted by Max Weber, who wrote of the iron cage and the
disenchantment of the world (Whimster 1999); and Sigmund Freud, who
wrote of the discontents of civilisation (Glaser 1995). The anarchist Kro-
potkin, who later stayed in Ascona, perceived in this refuge a way to
breathe strength into the brewing storm that would lead to social revolu-
tion, so that true justice would ultimately triumph over urban misery.
This dream of a new social order, which would reform all social rela-
tions, was revealed in 1880 in his book L’esprit de la revolte. Although
Ascona was described as a refuge from urban misery, the first migrants
lived there precariously, in huts that they built themselves, in humble guest
rooms offered by the village peasants or by sleeping under the stars. The
relationship between pioneers and an immense nature was paralleled by
the many religious representations of the Madonna scattered across the
mountains. A different spirituality – that of motherhood – was thus juxta-
posed with natural cures and a refuge for the century’s tormented spirits.
In fact, the analogy drawn between the matriarchal principle and the myth
of the begotten world led many to compare Ascona to the Indian culture
of the Himalayas, a true sanctuary for spiritual resistance and physical
effort. Travelling to Ascona became an initiatory pilgrimage in the pres-
ence of the deity Mother Nature.
This new emphasis on a feminine and natural spiritualism had much in
common with the ‘Wandervögel’ and the thinking of Hans Blüher (1994),
the inspiration for this youth movement. Ascona became a place for
acquiring erotic knowledge of the world, and several works were dedic-
ated, each in its own way, to the theory of Eros. In 1918, Gerhart Haupt-
mann’s novel The Heretic of Soana was published and became famous for
its story of a young believer who leaves Christ for Eros. This literary genre
soon took off with D.  H. Lawrence’s novel Women in Love. But Haupt-
mann’s novel had an even longer reach, inspiring the psychoanalytic the-
ories of Otto Gross and the choreography of Rudolph von Laban and
Mary Wigman.
Paganism took hold in the ideas and lives of many and Hauptmann
revived the cult of Dionysus. Moreover, Ascona was well situated to allow
the notion of a utopic spiritual mountain to flourish. The first little group
that baptised this idyllic place was none other than the seven anarchist
friends around the couple Henri Oedenkoven and Ida Hofmann. Hofmann
was a committed feminist and music teacher. Oedenkoven was the son of a
rich Belgian industrialist. Sensitised by his origins to the ills of the century
and by poor health, he opened a vegetarian centre and a sanatorium in
Ascona. Hofmann, already sensitised to the new harmonic paths of the
body, was a vegetarian and in the habit of practising her rhythmic exer-
cises naked in her cottage with the windows thrown wide open to let in air
and light. The couple was deeply influenced by this culture of the body,
154   O. Sirost

which was free for contact with nature. The foundations of their utopian
world were a set of very basic bodily practices. They spent their first nights
camping and then built huts of wood. They gardened on the hill, with new
plant species and trees confirming Ida Hofmann’s conviction that vegetari-
anism was an ideal (Hofmann-­Oedenkoven 1905, 1906).
Their new ‘church’ took form against the sounds of Wagner, himself a
vegetarian militant. Soon, the neighbouring forest became the theatre for
expressions of the body. The Zoppot Theatre became the physical mani-
festation of Wagner’s operas among the trees, reconciling nature and art-
istic culture. The New Age, with the ideal of fusing humankind with the
universe, was never more promising. Romantic ideas and the educational
experiments with the body had finally been brought together in a once lost
but now regained paradise. Here could be found an idealised Middle Ages
and Antiquity.
Ida Hofmann practised the nature cure, presenting herself naked to the
air and light as she went about her rhythmic exercises. Many of the pio-
neers who settled in Ascona were also fervent practitioners of naturism
and vegetarianism. One such pioneer was the anarchist Gusto Gräser, with
his reformist clothing and long hair and beard. A devotee of orientalism
and mysticism, he set about translating Lao Tzu. His discourses and pre-
cepts of life had a powerful impact on the youth of that time. He spoke to
the young Wandervögel at several of their gatherings, preaching antimilita-
rism and encouraging an initiation to orientalism. Like his comrades, he
advocated a new age of cosmic fusion between humankind and nature. He
had a powerful impact on Hermann Hesse, who honoured him by model-
ling the character of the barefoot prophet after him. Gräser was part of the
harsher trend of the ‘Naturmenschen’. He lived in a cave with his wife and
eight children, following the precepts of a simple life in nature and refusing
all offers of accommodation from his friends.
Since 1910, Ascona also became a centre for anarchist thinking, a place
where artists could meet and Dadaism would develop, the cradle of
modern dance, a hotbed of feminism and psychotherapy. Above all, this
small village in Ticino would become the Promised Land and a land of
adventure. Among the friends of Oedenkoven and Hofmann were the
anarchists Gusto Gräser and Erich Mühsam. Both were perceived as
prophets of the new world. Also, it should be recalled that Russian anar-
chists were travelling nearby. Hence, it is no coincidence that the utopia of
communal living amidst nature and a deep respect for agrarian traditions
would take root here. In addition to a life ethic based on bodily practices,
community and healthy food, the Asconians wanted an egalitarian and
peaceful society.
Influenced by the naturalist theories of Spencer and Darwin and the
romanticism of Nietzsche and Wagner, Laban had founded a dance school
in Ascona. Here he discovered Isadora Duncan, who had been shaped by
 The recosmologisation of the world   155

Emile Jaques-­Dalcroze’s eurhythmics. They set out to discover a primitive

rhythm that would give voice to the language of the body. By rejecting
contemporary individualism and approaching the ideas flourishing in
Ascona, Laban advocated a communal dance as a way to fuse with nature.
In this ‘dance of the soul’ each dancer sought to experience the telluric
forces that governed him or her. Dancing is like being connected with
natural elements like the human plants of Rikli, who shows in his naturism
vision the importance to walk in bare feet to be connected to the soil and
the cosmos (Rikli 1905). The dance festivals that Laban organised, like the
Hymn to the Sun or The Demons of the Night, were based on this kind of
knowledge (Guilbert 2000).

Eros as chaosmos
In the nineteenth century world of domination by men and discrimination
against women, the home came to be seen as a ‘vital centre’ and the idea of
liberation through eroticism took hold as a ‘source of moral and physical
plenitude’. The emerging feminist movement in Bavaria latched on to this
erotic notion just as it did to the philosophy of life ‘that worshiped the
values of life, intuition and instinct, which spread like wildfire throughout
Europe in a stand against scientific materialism and positivism’ (Green
1979: p. 23). The cult of Eros, borne by feminine values, therefore intensi-
fied attention to the senses and the sensible. At the heart of the women’s
revolt, the sexual freedom in utopian communities and the brief and fickle
or foolish love affairs were signs of a certain liberation.
Similar to the experiences of Monte Verità, we note in particular the
amorous escapades of the von Richthofen sisters with the intellectuals Otto
Gross, Max Weber and D. H. Lawrence. We should also mention Isadora
Duncan’s naked dances at an advanced age, a way of fighting against the
dictates of thinness imposed on the women of her time, and her fascination
with hermaphroditism in cultural works. Through the evocation of these
few figures, we see that there was not one way to eroticism for these
women, but many. The language of the senses could be mobilised in art
(from the dancer to the muse), in taking a lover or in clamouring for
another form of knowledge based on sensibility.
In Stefan George’s literary circle, homosexual love blossomed among
the intellectuals and poets. The idea of a spiritual guide to accompany the
awakening of a younger member partly regulated these amorous relation-
ships (Norton 2002). Inspired by romantic thought – especially Oken’s
erotic cosmogony – Stefan George proposed something akin to the matri-
archy of Bachofen, with relationships (physical and psychic) with others
and with the world based on the feminine nature. This affirmation of the
feminine principle reached its apex in 1900 with the creation of the Cosmic
Circle, which was entirely devoted to matriarchal ideas.
156   O. Sirost

Among the founders was the philosopher Ludwig Klages, who theorised
this experiment in his book De l’Eros Cosmogonique published in 1922.
At a time of intense psychoanalytic thinking, Klages denounced the termi-
nological confusion between love, drive, leanings and sexuality. The return
to a primitive Eros, in which maternal love evoked deep sensory messages
like maternal touch or culinary taste, was fitting for the philosopher.
According to Klages, it was appropriate to recover the Platonic Eros of
antiquity, as embodied by the figures of the winged ephebe or platonic
love. These two figures were derived from the theogonies of Hesiod, in
which the incarnations of love and the senses arose from the original
trinity: Gaia, Chaos and Eros. Eros was therefore the sensible and magical
power that allows one to give birth to oneself and that must spread
through maieutic relationships, in reference to Plato’s Symposium or Phae-
drus. This was how society should be conceived, founded on affinities,
recognition of the Other and fusion with the beloved. This intuitive recog-
nition of the forms of love (virile friendship, kinship, sexuality, sympa-
thetic attraction) had to be sought, according to Klages. Humans had to
seek the atmosphere, the sensation, of the prenatal matrix in reconstruct-
ing the social environment:

the nature of Eros is such that it awakens in us, at the moment we

encounter those few people gifted with an unusual resonance to these
ideas, the remembrance of what we once saw, so that – discovering
beauty, goodness, excellence, all invisible to the senses, in their perish-
able simulacra – we become enamoured.
(Klages 2008: p. 71)

This conception of Eros would be modulated in various ways in educa-

tional reforms such as those in the Steiner Waldorf schools, Foerster’s
active schools, Lietz’s country boarding schools and Dalcroze’s rhythmic
gymnastics. Gustav Wyneken saw in Eros a great educational principle
for the youth of his time. He offered a sensory education in the country-
side to fortify bodies, but Wyneken became the apostle of the communal
school, with a good part given over to cultural openness, amorous friend-
ships and sexual attraction. In this context, homosexuality was merely a
natural tendency, like any other, and the educator’s role was to awaken
youth to love in its many forms. Dance, nudism, sport and physical
culture were part and parcel of this awakening to sensory activities
(Wyneken 1922; Cauvin 1970). Hans Blüher as well supported this prin-
ciple, advocating Spartan love within the youth movement, theorised
along the lines of Plato. A good part of the Wandervögel (boys and girls)
openly embraced homosexuality, sometimes arising from friendship, other
times arising from the relationship with a guide in their outdoor educa-
tion (Blüher 1994).
 The recosmologisation of the world   157

This sixth sense – matricial, original, coordinating, interior – that was

Eros would subsequently create a certain posterity. The predisposition to
elective affinity that Max Scheler (1996) called empathy in Ordo Amoris
(‘Logic of the Heart’) is today an object of investigation in the neuro-
sciences. It should be remembered that for Scheler certain spaces of erotic
choice were hereditarily innate and produced ‘schemes of erotic destiny’
(Scheler 1951, 1996: pp. 84–85), thus conditioning the sensible life and the
use of the senses. For example, one might see the posterity of Monte Ver-
ità-type utopian gatherings in the more diffuse eroticism of the Californian
alternative culture of the 1950s and the rise of Flower Power of the hippie
years (Kennedy 1998). Eros is in this sense the messenger of the language
of the senses through disruptions of our sensoriality passing through
environments as diverse as the experience of the seaside, urbanisation or
the cultural revolutions of the 1960s.

A naturist cosmos
The anarchist-­vegetarian community founded in Ascona in 1900 brought
together different experiences of life reform in Europe. Henri Oedenkoven
and Ida Hofmann met in 1899 in the atmospheric cure establishment
founded by Arnold Rikli in Veldes. Having worked in the leather dyeing
industry, Rikli suffered from pleurisy and dysentery (Zupanic-­Slavec and
Toplak 1998). He discovered the health benefits of hydrotherapy and soon
extended this therapy to air and sun bathing, convinced that a healthy
atmosphere would allow the heart of vitality – the soul – to reinvigorate
the worn-­out parts of the body. Baths, altitude, aeration and sunshine were
the ingredients for regeneration, with bare feet firmly reconnecting the
human body to the telluric powers. Without medical training, Rikli was
repeatedly accused of charlatanism (no fewer than seven court trials). His
vision, more utopian than scientific, was shared by the Oedenkovens, who
wanted to make Monte Verità a utopia for the European intelligentsia to
be financed by a sanatorium set in the heart of the Swiss Riviera (Schwab
2003). Conversely, Karl Diefenbach became the mentor of the young
Gusto Gräser. Diefenbach was the figurehead of the Naturmenschen, with
his long hair, sandals and tunic of raw wool. A pacifist rejecting mono-
gamy, advocating life in harmony with nature, theosophy and the vegetar-
ian diet, Diefenbach founded the artistic community Humanitas in 1897,
which spread the symbolist movement throughout Europe. The paintings
by Diefenbach and his pupil Fidus, depicting prayers to the sun and scenes
from the Garden of Eden, embodied the spirit of life reform. His aura
made a great impression on Gusto Gräser, who represented a resistance to
the utopia of the Oedenkovens in Monte Verità. He lived as a hermit in a
cave and constantly criticised their sanatorium projects, preferring to live
his naturist spirituality.
158   O. Sirost

These tensions revealed the incarnation of a recosmologisation of the

world. As Marx wrote in 1844, Europeans have been deeply affected by
the humanisation of nature and the naturalisation of culture (Marx 1999).
This intuition strongly influenced the Tolstoyan communities that Ida
Hofmann belonged to. Other anarchists passed through, including Michael
Bakunin, promoter of a classless society. Other utopian communes had
preceded Monte Verità, notably the botanical garden of the Russian
baroness Antoinette de Saint-­Léger and the theosophical secular convent
‘Fraternitas’ of Alfredo Pioda. The fusion with a luxuriant and Edenic
nature, like the presence of female divinities – especially the Madonna –
marked the spirit of these undertakings. The quest for the feminine in this
transformation of social values can be read as the search for an alternative
to modern society with its mechanistic vision of industrialisation and
paternal authority.
Theosophists, naturists, educational reformers, anarchists, feminists and
the artistic and intellectual elites turned to a different model of society that
gave full value to the senses (Green 1979; Le Rider 1990; Landmann 2000;
Schwab 2003). Behind the fashionable use of the terms degeneration, neu-
rasthenia, neurosis and taedium vitae, a nascent psychoanalysis was point-
ing to a state of overexcitement caused by the changes in modern lifestyles.
According to Freud, another of the major causes of these nervous diseases
was the strong repression of sexuality (Hellenberger 1994). One can thus
understand the rise of these liberated circles as a way of escaping Civilisa-
tion and Its Discontents and more generally legitimising the uses of the
body to liberate the senses.
Mühsam distinguished these wealthy curists from the pioneers like
Oedenkoven, ‘a fine man, sensitive to aesthetics’, and his sanatorium. He
was captivated by one of the founders of the community, Gusto Gräser,
who with his wife lived:

on a rather extensive property, made habitable by their own work.

Their pride is to produce as much as possible for what they need to
live. Thus they are satisfied with the most rudimentary means, and it is
almost on principle that they refuse the usual money exchanges with
the outside world. Of all the men I have met, Gräser is the first to put
into rigorous practice all that he considered just in theory.… It is in
nature that he finds all that is good, beautiful, strong, and pure in its
ultimate completion; that is why the maxim Return to Nature!, which
the feeble minds of the vegetarians in their schematism preach without
rhyme or reason, has become for him a vital aspiration. Therefore, all
his desires, all his actions, have the sole objective of making him
resemble in words and deeds, as much as possible, nature – the symbol
of all accomplishment.
(Müsham 2002: pp. 30–31)
 The recosmologisation of the world   159

The gallery of portraits continued: Lotte and his eccentricity, mystique and
his use of spontaneous energy; Elly and her sexual freedom; a crudi-­
vegetarian who ‘… claims that grapes act on the sexual nerves, for even the
ancient Greeks celebrated the feast of Dionysus at the same time as that of
Aphrodite’. It was indeed the alternation between the nervous pathologies
of the modern world and the calming of the senses by the secret language
of nature that made this place so original. Later, in a letter to Freud,
Müsham recalled Dr. Gross’s cure of his sensory pathology:

I suffered from severe pathological symptoms: extreme irritability that

led to bouts of rage ending in nebulous states during which I remained
stretched out, all sensory control suspended, unable to muster the
energy to move and change the situation. Sometimes the attacks turned
to states of total mental confusion and even led to the dysfunction of
certain senses, such as complete temporary blindness.…
(Müsham 2002: p. 61)

Otto Gross, a dissident disciple of Freud, advocated a utopian communism

based on the liberation of sexual impulses. Opium smoker, occasional
alcoholic, polygamist and enthusiast for excesses of all kinds, this son of a
celebrated criminologist applied his doctrine to a life tormented by the
intoxication of the senses. He also found shelter for a time in Ascona,
where he became acquainted with Carl Gustav Jung (Gross 1988).
The musician Ida Hofmann, the choreographer Rudolf Laban, the
dancers Mary Wigman and Isadora Duncan and the philosopher Ludwig
Klages met there, giving music and painting a large place in the language
experience of the senses. Ida Hofmann was trained in music by Emile
Jacques Dalcroze, the inventor of eurhythmics. Dalcroze created his method
in the wake of new pedagogies of free expression, such as those of Decroly,
Montessori, Dewey, Claparède or even the Eurythmy of Rudolf Steiner. For
Steiner, it was a striving to express interiority by gesture, dance, theatre and
mime, as the soul or heart uses a language of variations in sounds, lines,
colours, lights and songs (Steiner 1979). His first Waldorf school opened in
1919, based on a pedagogy in support of the different births of the indi-
vidual (etheric body, astral body, self ). Steiner noted, in particular, that
humans belong to the supra-­sensitive world and the physiological situation
of young children makes them ‘sensory organs’ (Steiner 2006: pp. 20–21).
Through rhythmic gymnastics based on music, dance and theatre, it was a
matter of ‘ordered body movement to throw a wide bridge out over the
abyss that separates the mind and the body of Man today; to ensure the
harmonisation of the different functions of being by directly addressing its
elementary motor forces’ (Steiner 2006; see also Hanse 2010).
By the unlearning of the superficial rhythms of work and urban life,
Ludwig Klages expected to free modern man from his condition (Klages
160   O. Sirost

2004). Learning and rediscovering the original rhythm of nature would

also guide the choreographic experiences of Duncan, Laban and Wigman
in the rise of contemporary dance. For Isadora Duncan, it was the heart
(with reference to Nietzschean philosophy) that would ensure this harmony
between the interior and exterior in choreographic language (Duncan
1932). She thus distinguished profane dance ‘that expresses the physical
being and the joy of the senses’ from sacred dance that ‘expresses the
aspirations of the mind to a sphere higher than the terrestrial sphere’
(Duncan 2003: pp. 72–78). The magic of movement became a way to free
the individual from the social context and the roles of the senses imposed
by society, with its usual gestures and work. In 1913, the choreographer
Rudolf Laban created his art school at Monte Verità based on all the
modes of expression of ‘human genius’.
The pioneers who settled in Ascona from 1900 onwards each brought
new bodily practices to experiment with. It seems particularly appropriate
to examine Monte Verità in this light. Although other kinds of archives
have been widely exploited in recent years, the archives pertaining to the
body remain largely unexplored. We know the place for such bodily prac-
tices as medical cures in the sanatoriums and the nature cures of sun and
air, nudity, vegetarianism, dance and gardening; dwelling, tourism and
excursions; sexuality, art and writing; alternative therapies, etc. These are
so many generic domains of the founding experiments that need to be
studied closely, as does Monte Verità, where some of the greatest figures of
European culture expressed themselves. It is as if bodily experience in all
its boundless expression was to precede the advance of culture itself.
If the scientific works on Monte Verità have a point in common, it is
with regard to the original configuration of the site, where several layers
overlap. The geographical situation is a conjunction of dense vegetation,
altitude, generous exposure to the sun and the lake. But it is also the con-
junction of pure air favourable to the remission of disease and disorders,
an extraordinary landscape offering magical views and magneto-­telluric
fields from the strong presence of open-­pit mines.
The site also offers a juxtaposition of religious signs: the Madonna, the
Cross, the secular convent project, the theosophists; and then the signs of
Romantic reverie: islands, caves, pathways, cottages and bungalows,
gardens, all ineluctably pointing to a place of ineffable mystery, charged
with religiosity.
As Kaj Noschis (2011) pointed out, an inner ecology corresponds to an
ecology exteriorised by the genius of the place, revealing the diversities of
bodies, souls and spirits. This link between exteriority and interiority
undoubtedly explains the existence of other Monte Veritàs, like Eranos,
the Esalen Institute, Children of the Sun, Monte Sol, to name only a few.
The notion of inheritance raises other more disturbing issues. The Monte
Verità property was bought in 1926 by the banker Eduard von der Heydt,
 The recosmologisation of the world   161

an emblematic figure of the Third Reich. Klages did little to hide his anti-­
Semitism in his philosophy. The Naturmenschen, like the youth movement
of the Wandervögel, very much brought up on these experiences, would go
on to become the armed wing of Nazism. Although the savage mind at
work in this period may have hinted at a certain barbarity to come, this
time and place was utterly unique and could be transposed elsewhere
(especially in the values and practices of hippie culture) to continue recon-
necting us to our inner nature. Peter Sloterdijk (2005) saw in this primitive
and intimate life a way of overcoming the curse that Scheler pointed out in
his day as the human condition in the world.

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Chapter 13

Body ecology and academic

well-­being
What sustainable health can be
offered to adolescents through the
practise of body art activities?
Gilles Lecocq

Introduction
A truly sapient man is therefore not one who blindly pursues the truth,
but only one who is always cognizant of all three paths, that of being,
that of nonbeing, and that of appearance. Superior knowledge – and
all knowledge is superiority – is given only to the man who has known
the buoyant storm on the path of being, who has known the dread of
the second path to the abyss of nothing, but who has taken upon
himself the third way, the arduous path of appearance.
(Heidegger 1961: p. 113)

Travelling to a new land is the opportunity to take in new colours and

lights, scents we have never breathed in before and flavours that are far
from familiar. It is the opportunity to hear sounds that force us to listen to
the unintelligible. The lineaments of a journey set the stage for two real-
ities: one enabling us to cling to the familiar and the other taking us
towards the unknown. Together they incarnate the two core facets of body
ecology that allow an individual to exist: self-­discovery and self-­exposure.
To ensure a safe encounter with the unknown, a migrant in a foreign
landscape has the means whereby he/she can indulge a fascination with the
intercultural dimensions of incarnated knowledge. Immersion in a different
cultural context lets the individual physically participate in unfamiliar cul-
tural activities. Involving the body during the migration process develops
paradoxical cross-­cultural skills: the genuine learning of a foreign language
cannot be dissociated from the carnal bond that allows the individual to
feel the orality of a language before writing it.
A geographical change is a good opportunity to experience inner escape,
and we will highlight why going to another place gives individuals the
chance to forge a connection between their personal worlds and other cul-
tural worlds. It is our claim that training individuals about the world else-
where is a responsible and professional act that requires the development
of original teaching processes. In order for these to serve the student, the
 Body ecology and academic well-being   165

teacher needs to accept and understand that the student undergoing this
preparation for the unknown will become an exotic person endowed with
a new-­found autonomy and indefinite abilities that stretch far beyond a
university qualification.

Travelling to unknown lands: a buoyant storm on

the path of being
Wanderer, it is your tracks which are the road, and nothing else.
Wanderer, there is no road, walking makes the road.
By walking, the road is made,
and when glancing back you contemplate the trail which you will
trample no more.
Wanderer, there is no road, only a ship’s wake on the sea.
(Machado 1973: p. XXIX)

Travelling gives the student an opportunity to discover the treasures of the

outside world and to measure the delicate nature of his own world. The
foreigner’s encounter with his foreignness fosters a fruitful union between
oneself and ourselves. By feeling the foreignness within himself, the student
will undergo a similar life experience that will test and affect him deeply.
Scattered feelings will enable him to reveal the expressiveness of a virtual
reality and to rediscover resources left to lie fallow. There is no better way
than the experience of the clash between the familiar and the unfamiliar to
challenge this virtual universe and to transform fallow land into a breeding
ground for unforgettable embodied knowledge. However, if travelling is a
way to gain access to the otherness of the foreigner, he needs to know how
to do so, in order that the uncertainty of the path of transformation may
lead him towards confidence, which, in turn, will guide him towards the
contented acceptance of his own weaknesses.
This contented vulnerability appears whenever the student’s bearings
disappear and unusual sensations disrupt his manifold intellect. So he dis-
covers the lot of the vulnerable person:

whose existence has suddenly become transformed: from a play of

light and shadow it has become both an exigency of absolute clarity
and an encounter with heavy darkness, the summons to a true speech
and the trial of an infinitely silent space.…
(Blanchot 1969: p. 142)

It is then that the student realises that studying abroad is a paradoxical

acknowledgement of a life potential of which she was previously unaware.
The temporary void of an unfamiliar life actually transforms an ordeal into
a stepping stone and momentary weakness into lasting strength. There is at
166   G. Lecocq

that moment a gratitude for life that the ultimate travel experience alone
can bring. The contented vulnerability of the human condition is that
through which the student recognises a state of dependency keeping him
alive and maintaining a link to people who, until then, were strangers to
him. However, the rich and healthy relationship with others cannot be
envisaged without some contemplation in a self-­oriented space and time.
This self-­encounter is a prerequisite for trusting and confiding in others.
Travelling to unknown lands means accepting the emergence of an inner
crisis that will force the student to find in his own vulnerabilities the for-
eignness that lies deep within him. It is the opportunity for him to admit to
the disturbing otherness still foreign within his own body. A body in
motion is a stage that brings a student forth into the world and enables
him to imagine it, not from the outside, but in a totally involved and incar-
nated manner. To do so he must feel the urge to take a leap into the dark
in order to experience his body’s full potential. ‘Corporeality knows no
boundaries: not only, as Bergson said, does it “reach to the stars”, but
also, according to the words of Valéry, it spreads out into “the aesthetic
infinity” of our ability to feel’ (Bernard 2002: p. 534). The recognition of
these body sensations, caused by their immersion in a foreign environment,
affords the student the chance to fully take in the emotions brought on
temporarily by both the change of scenery and desolation. Resulting from
their encounter with otherness, they foster the emergence of unexpected
embodied knowledge where before lay only banality.

Being educated Elsewhere: a dread of the path to

the abyss of nothing
In April 1335, Petrarch began the ascent of Mont Ventoux with his
brother. Ever since he had been old enough to perceive the world around
him, the giant of Provence, standing at 1912 metres, had been calling him
(Lecocq 2014). When he finally made this trip and discovered the imposing
view at the top, the strings of his emotional consciousness, echoing the
actual experience, struck notes of meditation and contemplation. Before
climbing down, he took the time to read a random passage from St Augus-
tine’s Confessions wherein he remarked that when we do not tire of admir-
ing mountain peaks and wide-­flowing rivers, we forget to look at ourselves.
Petrarch was overwhelmed by what he read and sensed that a voyage is
above all an encounter with timelessness that transcends usefulness and
practicality. St Augustine’s voyages themselves were prompted by a vital
dissatisfaction that led him to seek happiness in a surprisingly unsettled
existence.
It was by breaking free from his inner self that he was able to reconnect
with a vital fervour that allowed him to see the physical voyage as a meta-
phor to be shed when undertaking the true journey. When Augustine no
 Body ecology and academic well-being   167

longer felt the need to leave, it was because he had arrived at this Else-
where where his wanderings were converted in the hollows of his body,
where an innermost part of self was revealed. Travelling does not, there-
fore, only imply being captivated by one word while refusing to hear the
whole sentence and thus being doomed to never understanding its
meaning.

Seduced by the sweetness of a dish, the smoothness of a flavour, we

refuse to be guided by these good and true pleasures all the way to the
source from where they are given to us. We refuse the passing time
taking us elsewhere, inviting us on a journey.…
(Canévet 2003: p. 556)

An unfamiliar experience can only liberate useful knowledge when in pro-

portion to its worth, which itself is defined by the opening up of a field of
ever-­increasing possibilities.
By emulating the ‘homo fractalis’, a student can potentially become
someone else by living somewhere else (Baudrillard 2004). The journey
connecting people who are learning how to find their bearings forms the
supreme method of experience-­based education, while acting as an allegory
for every possible relationship that produces moments of communion. The
instructive nature of a journey is dependent upon the possible difference
between the culture the traveller is leaving behind and that of the country
he is discovering. At the same time, however, this is exactly what compli-
cates its appraisal, for only with the help of his past experiences is the
student able to comprehend every new one. Just as Dewey was able to
judge the difficulty of understanding the Japanese and Chinese cultures,
there is for the student only one way to find himself in relation to a culture
that makes him feel like a stranger to herself, and that is by shedding his
customary clothing into a creative dissolution and consequently immersing
himself in a new language (Berthier 2012).
Learning a new language is nothing if not the student’s attempt to
achieve, to a conscious degree, a subjective, relational form of expression
that differs from the way he speaks in his mother tongue. What matters
then are the social relationships that are formed, the perceptible experience
of a different way of life, a practical know-­how and an adaptation to new
spaces and new temporalities. So, it is not the acquisition of a foreign lan-
guage that characterises the purpose of travelling but rather a new rela-
tionship with oneself. The link between oneself and the other becomes
(again) the unifying element of the student and forms his most living and
vital core. Just as Petrarch, Augustine and Dewey before him, he too can
become a citizen of two worlds: the personal world and the cultural world.
These will thus enable him to imagine himself in those forgotten dimen-
sions of secrecy and vulnerability, where human beings are fulfilled not
168   G. Lecocq

only by what they achieve, but also by what they are no longer and what
they have yet to become. It is time then for students to build their relation-
ships with others while sincerely and genuinely asserting their freedom and
singularities. Implicitly they must acknowledge the fact that their self-­
esteem cannot be dissociated from a genuine respect for others (Deroche
and Lecocq 2012).

The nostalgia for the return journey: the arduous

path of appearance
The protean path I describe of individual people reaching toward global
belonging is a path of hope. One may experience that hope, and even a
modest personal liberation, in consciously embracing that direction. The
embrace is an act of imagination and, as such, a profound beginning
(Lifton 1993: p. 232).
Upon his return, the student’s virtual world will be challenged by the
discovery of new places that somehow he thought he knew but that now
seem foreign. In the gap appearing in the landscape of his memory, a new
multisensory reality, hidden behind the virtual reality, becomes visible.
Thus, the pursuit of happiness brought about by a voyage beyond oneself
is enmeshed in a complex contradiction. The search for happiness acknow-
ledges that happiness consists in a life lived beyond the self but remains
trapped within the orbit of false self. The promotion of happiness as an
individual good promotes and encourages the idea that happiness can be
produced by a series of practices of self-­monitoring that objectify emotions
in order to produce the goal of a happy life. Then false happiness turns
into a form of sickness.
Faced with this false happiness and this false self upon his return, the
student may thereby experience that feeling of melancholy at having
become a foreigner, as if an abyss, visible only from one side, has been dug
between himself and the others. Had he not travelled, the student would
never have experienced nor imagined such a realm of emotions. Thus, the
strange visit into the heart of this Elsewhere fills his new life with a linger-
ing fragrance, intoxicating threnodies and luminous darkness. The students
who come back from the Elsewhere keep, in their bodies – the lived and
the living – such a vast space that nothing visible will ever be able to fill it.
The evident superhuman reality is a feeling where boundaries have momen-
tarily dissolved and where the pull towards the limitless is the work of a
twofold reaction: an inward movement towards the black hole of the
psyche and an outward movement towards an infinite need of self-­creation
in the world.
It is within the sway of these two movements that the traveller will
become the creator of his own autonomy by being confronted with a new
vision of reality opening up. He will achieve autonomy if he accepts to
 Body ecology and academic well-being   169

bring his life back into play and to take sound initiatives. The voyager
from within becomes a student capable of producing knowledge and bring-
ing about changes. More important than the journey, which is the neces-
sary outcome of the human tendency to develop outwith one’s own body,
is the encounter with a virtual reality that remains the path to under-
standing life itself (Lecocq 2015b). On this path the individual can find a
voice he thought was lost. By dropping the social masks that made him
utter words that were not always his, he will become an author able to
reject determinism set from the outside and to express a new link to the
world:

The depth of my understanding about what is required to excel has

changed. When I first started working in the performance enhance-
ment field, I thought that the path to excellence was to work, work,
work; to shut out the rest of my life; and to live only for the dream. I
was wrong! You do have to work extremely hard but you don’t have
to shut out the rest of your life and you don’t have to live only for the
future. You can achieve the highest levels of personal excellence
through a high-­quality focus and still have a balanced, happy life in
the here and now. The path to personal and professional excellence is
the self-­directed focused path with heart.…
(Orlick 2008: p. 300)

Then, the idea that people are created free and equal is both true and mis-
leading: we are created different and we lose our social freedom and indi-
vidual autonomy in seeking to become like each other (Riesman 1961).
Between autonomy and conformity, a new journey between the two sta-
tuses will present itself to the voyager from within who is feeling nostalgic
about her return: that of a personality capable of controlling reality by
repressing other possible identities, or that of a richer and more versatile
personality who nevertheless lacks the necessary stability to cope with
daily routine (Honneth 2012). Two additional postures will also become
markers for the traveller seeking to win back a territory she once knew but
no longer recognises (Balint 1979).
The philobat who needs to express a transgressive and liberating sub-
jectivity allowing him to assert himself in what now makes him different
from others.
The ocnophil who refuses to give up situations where he feels safe, even
if the reassuring landmarks are no longer the same.
By sailing between these two statuses and postures the voyager from
within can open up to a new identity, both evanescent and weakened. He
then realises that the nostalgia for his return paradoxically contains a life
potential that was until then unknown to him. The path with heart offers
access to a labyrinthine quest for meaning (Watzlawick 1986). Just as in
170   G. Lecocq

Ulysses’ voyage, the entangled paths of the labyrinth represent the allegory
of life with its dead ends, uncertainties and questions. The labyrinth illus-
trates a daily progression of enigmas and new questions, transforming an
ordeal into a stepping stone and momentary weakness into lasting strength.
Consequently, there is a gratitude for life that only the temporary exile
during a voyage can bring. When the meaning of a life is questioned, the
search for one’s own place lies within the necessity to explore areas of a
yet to be exploited identity.
The voyager from within will then become aware of a confrontation
with his own fears and contradictions and this, by accepting new cultural
realities that come into his mind, including those he thought he already
knew. By accepting to gamble that which founded his identity, the indi-
vidual is giving himself permission to be himself by giving new sense to his
life and new life to his senses. This permission is an act of courage: the
courage to be oneself among others. This act of courage is also a risk.
Entering into the Authentic Self is indeed a moment when an overflow of
emotion can create emptiness in reasonable thought (Varela et al. 1991).
This vacuum then gives voice to perceptible thoughts allowing an indi-
vidual to feel safe and to accept his personal conflicts, without also alienat-
ing his creative potential and intimate needs.
The individual who has become the citizen of two worlds will discover
new reasons to cross a no-­man’s land where a carnal relationship between
the visible and the invisible is being forged. Indulging in a journey that
leads to what is unusual within oneself thus becomes the chance for the
voyager from within to face feelings that will bring him back to a pre-­
language psychic world where only emotions matter. Thus, the sublime of
the voyage essentially becomes a strange experience where paths are drawn
but never meet, in an assembly where the human self is no longer affected.
The journey therefore says something about the infinite and whenever the
student is able to feel the aesthetic infinite within his own body, he no
longer bears any resemblance to what a teaching body expected of him.
Indeed, the student is no longer just a bearer of objectivised, coherent and
systematised knowledge; he is also the author of remarkable unpublished
life experiences. A student’s acknowledgement of this foreignness lying
deep within him is a wonderful opportunity to get closer to the origins of
creation. Is not that, after all, how to passionately create nothingness
(Schauder 2008)? In any case, the student is given the task of coping with
the intricacy of a unitas multiplex, thus turning him into a complex char-
acter endowed with contradictory reasons, emotions and passions. The
nostalgia for the return journey gives new voice and vitality to many who
would otherwise be silent and deadened and provides new byways to
human connection (Lecocq 2015a).
Teaching bodies are responsible for accepting that serendipity – this
form of creation that emerges from chance and nothingness – may become
 Body ecology and academic well-being   171

a path towards personal fulfilment for the student and a path towards
organisational ecology for social organisations concerned with psycho-
logical environments that favour academic success. In order to firmly
establish an academic practice in a creative process, it is necessary to fight
for an ethics of vulnerability and weakness that will be of help to those
vulnerable students who are not exceptional (Paperman 2005).
This is how a living academic institution is developed, born of multiple
plans and driven by multiple aims, yet with no plan or aim in mind
(Elias 2010).
This is how a living person is revealed, overcome by powerful feelings
that enliven the depths of the fleshly being (Andrieu 2016).
The incarnation of a student in the academic world is then made pos-
sible from the moment he takes into account the gap between his living
body and his lived body, with no wish to fill it. A democracy of merit can
therefore come about when the student is able to find his inwardness,
bringing him closer to others, and to face up to his outwardness, which
sets him apart from others (Tognon 2016). Through this double encounter,
the student, nostalgic for the comfort of the familiar, can identify the
mental and corporal marks left by the cultural shock he has lived through.
So, against the background of the cultural connection that took place
during the journey, it is no longer a question of enhancing the cultural con-
notations of an intercultural creation, but rather of understanding the
intercultural consequences of it. This preparation for the Elsewhere takes
for granted the intercultural complexity of each individual, who, when
immersed in a cultural experience, resorts to knowledge that was initially
lacking to make original syntheses. Neither the blending nor the juxta-
position of cultures is achieved at this moment and the combination of cul-
tures produces exoticism and resiliency (Lecocq and Dervaux 2014).

Conclusion
This exoticism, once accepted at the conclusion of a journey, becomes
apparent first by acknowledging that it is impossible to resemble that
which is so very different and thus accepting human diversity and, second,
by admitting that one is not unique. It is by combining these two stages
that the power of exoticism can express itself in the ability to imagine
oneself as being different (Segalen 2002). Now exotic, the student can open
his eyes and see spaces and stages in life he had always considered to be
out of bounds. Therefore, every journey involves more than a certified
document validating the acquisition of solely objectifiable skills. The stu-
dent’s escape to a new land goes far beyond that, aiming for open-­
mindedness, new developments and the desire to pursue education on an
outward-­bound course. Nothing will ever be the same for the student who
has visited the arcana of a foreign land. A journey is not the end of the
172   G. Lecocq

road, it is the road leading to a higher link where understanding the self is
not a return to oneself but the path to becoming oneself, while becoming
someone else. Allowing a student to be educated Elsewhere implies that the
teacher is sufficiently qualified to be able to trust him to be autonomous. It
is then that the student fully realises that a realistic science of humankind
can only be created by those who are most aware of their own humanity
(Devereux 1967).
A student who has been educated Elsewhere, by accepting to become a
common bond between the familiar and the foreign, is the person who, by
daring to cast off, is free to ask two fundamental questions to whomever
he meets on his Path: Where are you going? Where are you from? Freud
would surely have loved to be asked these questions when haunted by the
desire to spend an Easter week in Rome, which seemed to him like the
Promised Land compared with Vienna, his beloved prison (Haddad and
Haddad 1995). Rome, this eternal city of great historical memory, comes
to mind with its wealth of images, sounds and insight. Rome is not only
the ideal destination for the learning traveller, but it is also the epicentre of
an inner geography with a constantly renewing passion: that of accepting,
today and tomorrow, that a student’s life is worth living, Here and
Elsewhere.
We follow some roads hoping they will delve deep and bright into our
memory. Any pathway is first hidden deep within oneself, before fading
away beneath the steps; it leads to the self before leading to a specific
destination, and sometimes, finally, it opens the narrow gateway which
leads to contented self-­transformation (Le Breton 2012: p. 158).

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Part III

Emersive leisure and

aesthesiology
Introduction to Part III
Bernard Andrieu and Jim Parry

Emersiology consists of identifying the degrees of awakening of conscious-

ness. Emersion is the action of emergence of sensations up to the conscious
surface, through immersion into a specific or new activity or/and environ-
ment. Aesthesiology expresses a philosophy of the senses – of sensations,
feelings and affects. A plunge into nature allows the body to feel modifica-
tions uncontrolled by the will, within the context of suitable emersive
leisure activities. 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, leading to the development of the senses,
the emergence of new sensations and an exaltation of the senses. The living
body is active before the consciousness of the living body perceives it, as is
shown especially in the examples of apnoea (Chapter 16 by Mary Schirrer)
and circus arts (Chapter 18 by Bernard Andrieu and Haruka Okui). The
chapters of Part  III show the activation of the living body and its emer-
gence up to the surface of consciousness in a variety of ways.
Chapter 14, by Terezinha Petrucia da Nóbrega analyses the relationships
between dance and nature, as we see in the work of Isadora Duncan and
Anna Halprin, but also in some of the choreography of Pina Bausch, such
as ‘Água’, a piece inspired in Brazil, or the project Art on the Beach, created
by the artistic Foundation Casa da Ribeira located in the city of Natal, with
funding from the Ministry of Brazilian Culture, private companies and the
collaboration of artists in the city. From the examples and stories of the
dancers in the first person, immersed in the dancing in an unusual environ-
ment, i.e. on the beach, we can see an emergence of various new feelings
and sensations, such as, for example, fear and shame, but also an emer-
gence of creativity and an exploration of one’s own body through dance.
In Chapter 15, Eric Perera and Marie Cholley-­Gomez describe the status
of a body-­builder and his immersion into a new way of life, presented as a
discipline of the ‘muscle’, corresponding to a Puritan asceticism. The new
way of life implies rapid changes in social life – first it brings about isola-
tion, followed by a gradual fitting in to the new environment of bodybuild-
ing. It also enables new sensory experiences to arise, for example new
178   B. Andrieu and J. Parry

tastes and disgusts in relation to food, but also a new apprehension of pain
that accompanies hard training.
The capacity of the awakening of new resources in emersive leisure
demands a cognitive deepening. Emersion is no longer merely a cognitive
representation that would favour an anticipation but it deepens the
intimate effects of leisure by a sensory exploration. Apnoea, analysed in
Chapter 16 by Mary Schirrer, is an example of experience that develops
this point. The activity affords opportunity for relaxation, learning about
breathing, discovery of self in the aquatic environment and a broadening –
or rather a redrawing – of the individual’s ‘map of the senses’, through the
predominance of proprioception. The depth of the body and its being can
be discovered by immersion in water and in apnoea, which promotes
the  emergence of new sensations, enabling the awareness of a new
corporeal self.
Outdoor activities have grown considerably in France since the 1980s,
and the markers of their different ways of practicing movement activities
have then been exported to the so-­called ‘traditional’ sports since around
2000. The practice of slacklining, described here by Lionel Chavaroche in
Chapter 17, is part of a counterculture that privileges immediate emotions
over future performance, adaptation in a variable environment to technical
reproduction in a coercive setting and self-­organisation to the calendar of
competitive events. Through play with the elements, the practitioners allow
the enhancement of sensations, and new motivations in the approach to
sports practice, centred around hedonism, conviviality and the search for
sensations, inducing new relationships to body and nature. Evolving in the
elements creates uncontrolled reactions, that is to say, below the threshold
of consciousness, anticipating the adaptive response of the body by an
immediate ecologisation. At the doors of our conscious perception, the
activity of the living body modifies our states of consciousness according
to its moods, its energy or its reactions.
This can also be found in the vertiginous circus arts, as described in
Chapter 18 by Bernard Andrieu and Haruka Okui in their experiments
with the performances of artists who are being recorded by a body-­
mounted GoPro camera. Here the authors wish to demonstrate how the
infra-­conscious activity of the body is triggered in immersive body prac-
tices, before a motor response is possible.
Chapter 14

Bodies in the wind
Dance and nature on Redinha Beach,
Natal, Brazil
Terezinha Petrucia da Nóbrega

The body and nature: elements for the creation

of dance
In the early twentieth century, the nature of bodily activity and energy was
explored in artistic creation as either a criticism of modern technology,
expressing a yearning for or a return to the body and natural rhythms, as
was the case for Isadora Duncan, or as a fascination with machines and
technical advances, as was the case for Rudolf Laban and Oskar Schlem-
mer (da Nóbrega 2015).
Duncan’s dance influenced many artists, including her fellow American
Anna Halprin, whose interest in the relationship between the body and
nature went well beyond the aesthetic of classical dance and its artificial
‘mechanical’ movements. This understanding of nature was a major com-
ponent of Halprin’s dance:

The wisdom of dance and the body conceals within itself the means to
ensure the survival of life on this planet (…). At the moment, I am
learning so much from nature, it is the clearest voice guiding my dance.
Physically feeling the earth brings me into contact with the deepest
part of my human nature.…
(Halprin 2009: p. xv)

This testimony reveals a very precise connection between body, dance and
nature. In the 2010 film Breath Made Visible, by Ruedi Gerber, Halprin
tells the story of her life and her deep connection with dance and nature:
‘Working in nature lets you study the nature of your own body and lets the
style of movement evolve from the creative expression you bring to it’
(Halprin 2010).
With a sensitivity to ecology, the dance troupe Capacitor Performance
of San Francisco presented ‘Biome’. In 2005, Capacitator spent some
weeks immersed in the Costa Rican rainforest and found a gestural vocab-
ulary based in this environment, as described by Clavel (2011).
180   T. Petrucia da Nóbrega

In therorising these examples of the connections between the body,

dance and nature, we refer to the notion of nature developed in Merleau-­
Ponty’s lecture notes for The Concept of Nature (1956–1960) and its rela-
tionship to the body and aesthesiology. For Merleau-­Ponty, aesthesiology
is the study of internal sensations, feelings and affects by a phenomeno-
logical method. It is a philosophy of the senses in the perception of these
effects on the mind. In this chapter, we use the concept to understand the
feelings produced in the dance, considering the perceptions of the dancers.
Doing so will help us to understand the search in dance to create a new
poetry of the real and its relation to nature, movement and performance
itself – beyond mere entertainment or simple ‘leisure’, but as a way of
bringing meaning to reality.
Merleau-­Ponty’s reflections on nature go far beyond the Cartesian
notion of the body as a substance, the dualistic opposition between mind
and body, vitalism as a belief in the internal movement of nature or the
finalism of a direct intentionality. He proposes instead both a rather ecolo-
gical notion of the body and an aesthetic possibility for dance. However,
this aesthetic is much more than the traditional judgement of beauty or
taste. It is an aesthesiology about which art can give us clues. Aesthesiol-
ogy makes us capable of feeling and recognising other organisms, other
people, a history, an ontology that seeks contact with the world of life and
goes beyond metaphysics. Aesthesiology expresses a philosophy of the
flesh, the opposite of conscious representations: a philosophy of feeling
and the dispossession of consciousness to one’s own advantage.
We should also introduce the notion of ‘intercorporeity’ – the relation-
ship with other human bodies and the penetration of the sensible either in
relation to others or in relation to nature. In this context, perceived
things are:

… the correlation of the subject as carnal relics of his movement and

feeling inserted into his internal circuit. They are made of the same
stuff [as the body, the subject as channel]: The sensible is the flesh of
the world – the meaning in the exterior. The flesh of the body makes
us understand the flesh of the world.…
(Merleau-­Ponty 1956–1960: p. 280)

Thus, our corporeality is also formed by that of another – that is, by inter-
corporeality. Within the framework of intercorporeity, the world, things
and others are understood ‘as what is lacking in my body’ (Merleau-­Ponty
1956–1960: p. 281). There is a negativity, the lack by exclusion of being
fragmented and corpuscular, since the body is also made of the corporeity
of other bodies of the world. The body is the organ of the other by
empathy, the inter-­relation between bodies. For Merleau-­Ponty, Being is
not a positivity, since it needs the other (intercorporeity). He defines the
 Bodies in the wind: dance and nature   181

Self as a gap, lack, exclusion, negativity: I do not see my back, there is a

lack, a gap, a negativity in our own body. It is a co-­perception of the world
and also the ‘libidinal dimension of the body schema’ (Merleau-­Ponty
1956–1960: p.  281). This dimension is related to the sensoriality of our
flesh and the aesthesiology of the body, which has to do with being a body,
not as a representation, idea, or perception without bodily ties, but as a
sensitive body that moves.
These analyses of nature were reiterated in a more elaborate way in the
essay Eye and Mind, in which the philosopher asks himself just what body
is being talked about. Then ‘we must find the operating and actual body,
that is not a morsel of space, a bundle of functions, but an interlacing of
vision and movement’ (Merleau-­Ponty 1961: p.  16). This body animated
by movement interested Merleau-­Ponty because it is movement that is pro-
duced by sight and its knowledge.

Everything that I see is in principle within my reach, at least within the

reach of my sight, and is marked upon the map of ‘I can’. Each of the
two maps is complete. The visible world and that of my motor projects
are total parts of the same Being.
(Merleau-­Ponty 1961: p. 17)

With this formulation Merleau-­Ponty goes beyond the dualism of sensa-

tion and perception, in conceiving movement as an operation of thought
and knowledge of the world: ‘I say of a thing that it is moved but my body,
it moves, my movement unfolds. It is not ignorant of itself, it is not blind
to itself, it radiates a self …’ (Merleau-­Ponty 1961: p. 18). But we need to
be careful:

He is a self, not by transparency, like thought, which never thinks any-

thing except by assimilating it, constituting it, transforming it into
thought – but a self by confusion, narcissism, inherence of the one who
sees in what he sees, of the one who touches in what he touches, of the
sensing in the sensed.
(Merleau-­Ponty 1961: p. 19)

The gestures of the painter, the gaze upon paintings, brought new elements
for thinking about the body and flesh, the deployment between the map of
the visible and the map of movement as being an operation of thought and
the reflexivity of the body.

Art on the Beach: the dancers’ narratives

The Arte Praia project brings contemporary art closer to the general popu-
lation by, for example, not using the usual spaces dedicated to artistic
182   T. Petrucia da Nóbrega

creation or art enjoyment. The aim is instead to provoke situations that

differ from what people expect to see in places like a concert hall, a theatre
or a museum. On the beach, people are relaxed and more likely to
approach an artistic work without preconceived ideas – and there you can
change the landscape with art. It should perhaps be noted that this is a
space for the dissemination and democratisation of art and culture, and
that is important in a country like Brazil regarding issues of access to
culture and education. In 2014, for the third edition of this project, the
Alberto Maranhão Theatre Dance Company (CDTAM), led by Wanie
Rose Medeiros, performed at Redinha Beach, on the northern coast of
the city.
This work produced new aesthetic experiences for the dancers on the
connections between dance and nature. By examining this project, we seek
to deepen our understanding of the forms of immersion and dance, to
broaden the aesthesiological, aesthetic and choreographic framework so
that our bodies vibrate with living sensations and dance and culture can be
thought of in a broader and deeper way. With regard to these living sensa-
tions and an aesthesiological and immersive experience, we present here
the narrative accounts of the dancers who participated in the Art on the
Beach project. The dancers’ stories were sent to us by email in 2015 and
they are reproduced here almost in their entirety. As there were comments
about the rehearsals in some of the narratives, we selected only those
excerpts that illustrate our thesis about the relationships between body,
dance and nature.
The dancer Bruno Borges shared with us his feelings of learning some-
thing new from the experience of Bodies in the Wind by the choreographer
Wanie Rose Medeiros:

It was the first time that I’d done something like that, so I was a bit
afraid at first, but with time feelings of shame and uncomfortable
thoughts disappeared and all that remained was the desire to move
while I watched the sea. Feeling the sun, realising that here my body
could dance freely, in the flow. I loved it and I’d do it again. My body
learned something new every day that I spent on the beach watching
people, the sea, the waves, the clouds.… The beach soothed me. It
was a moment of freedom, reflection, thinking, where my body
reacted in an unusual way in time, in space and from the way people
reacted!!!
(Bruno Borges, narrative, 2015)

He intuitively drew a poetic space for his dance while playing with ele-
ments of nature. His body registered fear, the shame of showing himself in
an unusual space for dancing; but the beach soothed him. One might say
that the immensity of the sea and the gazes of others created for him an
 Bodies in the wind: dance and nature   183

‘intimate immensity’. In his dance, Bruno Borges renewed ‘the resonances

of this contemplation of greatness, the immensity … in us’ (Bachelard
1957: p. 168). It was thus in this poetic space of intimate immensity that
Bruno’s living dance was created.
This poetic space is also a space that gives protection to the metamor-
phosis of movement, as we can read in the account of Juarez Moniz:

The space created between art and the beach, between the eyes of the
bathers and the gaze of the dancers – a gaze that moves through the
body, with multifocal movements, making gradations in time, flow
and gravity – it’s a powerful space–time continuum that gives rise to
curiosity and danced movements. Sand, sea, wind, sun, pause, body,
transitions and the dance that dances, dances.
(Juarez Moniz, narrative, 2015)

This dance that dances in us causes metamorphoses through body move-

ment and internal and external sensations. It is a kind of dialectic between
the outside and the inside, the chiasm between the body and the world, an
intercorporeality between the visible and the invisible that makes it pos-
sible to transform everyday objects into stage objects by transforming
spaces and the way we inhabit them – and it transforms us as well. Here
we recall Merleau-­Ponty’s thoughts about the flesh of the body that
unfolds in dance in an ‘open circuit of the seeing body to the seen body’
(Merleau-­Ponty 1961: p. 33).
The dancers inhabited this space-­time to create sensorial and poetic
metamorphoses in the space of the beach. They were well aware of the
challenge. The narrative of Margoth Lima offers us an opportunity to
understand this anthropology of the aesthetic imagination through its rela-
tion to music: the dancer chose classical music for her performance in an
atmosphere of rather common sounds. She became aware of her artistic
project when another aesthetic situation was proposed. Once again the
dialectic of inside and outside presented to transform the space and the art-
istic experience, as can be seen in her narrative:

Participating in shows, projects, is always a great responsibility, but

Art on the Beach was a really big challenge: first because we were
working outside of our habits. For me, it’s common to see those small
cars at the beaches of Natal that usually play popular songs like ‘funk’
and ‘forró’, etc.… It was surprising to see the faces of the people
watching me as if I were strange to dance to classical music … some
approached to ask: why this music?, others asked me to change it, and
still others liked it, saying that it fit the scene by the sea and com-
municated a wonderful peace, etc.
(Margoth Lima, narrative, 2015)
184   T. Petrucia da Nóbrega

In fact, the people on the beach participated in the artistic composition

with their gazes, their breathing and their reception. The narrative of Julia
Vasques highlights the participation in this project: ‘First there was the
strangeness and a kind of fear, but moments later these feelings turned into
curiosity. Curiosity that ultimately ended up with the need to be there to
participate, even if the participation was “only” by observing.’
These people participated ‘only’ by observing. The spectator’s gaze
affects our gestures, since we are using improvisation techniques. The
viewer’s gaze can change out position in space; one can address him for
example, changing the spatial dyad of the gesture or its rhythm, speed, etc.
Their gaze added meaning to the dance, and it also transformed the per-
ceptions and movements of the dancer, producing variations in the dance.
But their gaze was also transformed by what they saw, listened to and felt
through these dancing images. The goal affects the player, even from the
psychological point of view. I think if a player is booed by the crowd, that
this also affects their performance.
So, there is an emotional resonance related to perception, even though
we have no guarantee that others will share our expectations or prefer-
ences in the aesthetic domain. According to Livet (2015), aesthetic experi-
ence is subjective, but there is also a cultural education that makes us
sensitive to artistic expression. And, there can still be an impact on our
emotions, our affective life, like moods or situations, positions and atti-
tudes, simply by looking at an artistic work such as the one we are ana-
lysing here. In any case, this was an unforgettable experience for the
dancers as can be seen in their narratives, which emphasise the transcend-
ence of the usual aesthetic rules of classical or theatrical dance. As Gislane
Cruz tells us:

Dancing Bodies in the Wind was an incredible experience; it was like

painting a canvas in the great outdoors. Repeating the scenes every day
and transforming them into dance detached us from the ‘normal’, like
playing with balls on the beach, building sandcastles, managing a
pareo in the wind, or playing in the waves (…). The idea of getting
people to move, inviting them to join us, and having them realise that
the potentials of what they know or think is usual about the beach are
revealed as art, like in Bodies in the Wind.
(Gislane Cruz, narrative, 2015)

In her narrative, Thaise Galvão underlines the relationship between the

body and space. In the beach staging, she sought to leave their imprints
with an ephemeral dance:

It was an absolutely marvelous job because the director Wanie Rose

guided us as we explored the body and space. The beach opened up so
 Bodies in the wind: dance and nature   185

many possibilities for each dancer to choose what she wanted to do

with her body in the proposed space. I decided to make prints in the
sand not just with my feet, but with my hands, elbows, knees, back,
using all of my body.
(Thaise Galvão, narrative, 2015)

The dancer’s traces left in the sand are like an expressive figure of the slow
archaeology of the body: ‘like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea’
(Foucault 1966: p. 398). Exploring this archaeology of the body through
dance opens new horizons in performative philosophy in connection with
body ecology and the processes of creation and artistic expression.

Emersion of the body through dance:

ecochoreography and body ecology
In this conceptual framework, which looks for the discontinuity between
the living body and the lived body, movement and the gestural repertory
create new immersive possibilities for artistic creation and existential
experience. It is again an investment in new spaces for bodily experiences
and sensations and new perspectives for artistic expression in dance,
beyond the classical aesthetic frameworks for choreography and perform-
ance and towards the process of ecologising or greening the body.
In examining the Art on the Beach project, we seek to deepen the forms
of realising the immersion of dance and to broaden the aesthesiological,
aesthetic and choreographic framework so that the living sensations of our
bodies vibrate to transform us and to transform how we look at our
environment and dance itself. For this, the idea of body ecology is highly
significant, because:

… body ecology is a microecology. It is by transforming the practices

of individuals that we can transform the ecology of the world. The
idea is to experiment with modifications of sensorial practices in situ.
To feel one’s environment differently, one must be willing to break out
of routines so that other modes of existence, of movement, of relation-
ship can emerge.
(Andrieu 2014: p. 24)

An analogic example of this body ecology and dance is found in the prac-
tice of Wutao, which awakens ‘the body’s soul’: ‘We develop our senses
and our sensoriality and we reconnect to our primordial energies’
(Charoy and Risselard 2011: p. 16). Thus, with ecochoreography, emer-
siology and body ecology, we refine how we invest new spaces for bodily
experience and sensations and other perspectives on artistic expression in
dance.
186   T. Petrucia da Nóbrega

When we dance in nature, the elements penetrate our bodies and ecolo-
gise us. With ‘body ecology the world is our body’ and thus in this process
there is a ‘new mode of balance and self-­experience’ (Andrieu 2011:
pp. 14–15). The dance of Anna Halprin, the choreographies of Pina Bausch
and the narratives of the dancers presented here move towards this ecolo-
gical path in relation to a new way of sharing dance and the beach as a
social space of culture and leisure.
The aquatic dance of Thaise Galvão arouses an imaginary of water as
an image of the feminine and a kind of ‘hydrating psyche’, according to
Bachelard (1942), or a transitory element. We see an image of the mythical
figure of Leda, whose symbolism is found in the ballet Swan Lake, in par-
ticular the version danced by Anna Pavlova in 1925, of which we have a
beautiful description:

The torso, in its abandon and final spasms, for example, becomes one
of the essential springs for this expressive work, far from the stiff bust
of the Franco-­Italian school in the tradition of Petipa. The head and
hands are almost a staging in themselves, where the movements of life
and death appear in conclusion. In the carriage of the undulating arms,
the suspensions and ascents (before) after her falls, in the last bursts of
the hands that express the vital remains. And the more the piece moves
forward, the more the head and hands become inert in abandon.
(Lot 2010: p. 78)

Anna Pavlova is a legend, and she will forever be present in our memories
as the dying swan, for which she created her own choreography. Our
young Brazilian dancer, Thaise Galvão, in her aquatic dance, revives this
mythical figure in an unconscious way, but the image makes us think and
feel the fleeting sensations that emerge from a movement of abandon by
the body, visualised in her expressive torso. We see in Picasso’s painting
Two Women Running on the Beach a woman’s head thrown back and we
feel the immense freedom in the unfolding choreography of a kind of dance
on the beach. An enlarged version of the painting was commissioned to
become the stage curtain for Serge Diaghilev’s famous ballet, with choreog-
raphy by Bronislava Nijinska, The Blue Train.
This montage of images ‘brings together the archives of yesterday, the
repertory of today and the indications of tomorrow’ (Imbert in da Nóbrega
2015: p.  36). This dance, connected to nature, to the elements of water,
earth and air at the beach, give a new dynamic to choreographic land-
scapes (and to the landscapes of the beach as well), depending on the
degrees of the ‘bodies in the wind’. In his dance in the wind, Juarez Moniz
composed a choreographic landscape that makes us think of flight as a
movement of imagination, dance and thought. According to Bachelard
(1943) in Air and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Movement,
 Bodies in the wind: dance and nature   187

this flight leaves an aesthetic trace, with a lightness and gravity that are
ever present. On the beach, the wind guides the movement of the dancer,
who remains in his meditation before the ‘intimate immensity’. This move-
ment is what animates our philosophy of dance in relation to the body and
nature.
I think that the natural elements are both a metaphor for creation and
the raw materials for dance, choreography and our philosophy, which is
enriched by dance itself and its movement. Metaphorically, it is said that
the wind is present in the movement of dance and thought, as it is in
Nietzsche’s Dionysian vision of the world. The philosopher claimed for
dance a symbolic faculty connected with the forces of nature, which are
‘deployed with the greatest physical energy by the gestures of dance. More-
over, the world as will also demands an unprecedented symbolic trans-
lation, the wild forces of harmony, dynamics and rhythm suddenly and
violently surging’ (Nietzsche 1928: p. 66).
Commengé (1988) brings Nietzsche’s Dance closer to that of Nijinski:

Nietzsche resumed his march. But his body has lost touch with the
ground.… It hovers in the air like a bird, it is transparent, with a
clearer consciousness of a multitude of tenuous shivers spreads to the
toes. It is no longer his mind that speaks, it is his body. Here he is
ready to jump, ready to dance, ready to write with his foot.
(Commengé 1988: p. 20)

In an anachronism of art history, as Didi-­Huberman suggests (2006),

where we need to think about time in art and philosophy, we can say that
Juarez Moniz actualised the ‘flight’ of Nietzsche and Nijinski in his dance,
simply by feeling the wind caress his body, pushing him to design flexible,
plastic dancing forms on the beach of Redinha under the tropical sun of
Brazil, bringing forth living images.
According to Didi-­Huberman (2006), there is no aesthetic without
‘esthésie’, without sensoriality, without the sensation of the movements
that dance reveals, repeats and reinvents endlessly. Watching the Spanish
dancer Israel Gàlvan, Didi-­Huberman (2006) brought the formula of
pathos up to date because the body of the dancer produced a pathos that
remains before us, suspended, that shocks us, transforms us, making us
feel unexpected sensations and feelings. Our research lies within this con-
ceptual framework, showing the connections between a philosophy of
body and movement, art and dance, imagination and pathos that trans-
form our gaze, our body schema, our corporeality.
In the work of the art historian Aby Warburg, we find an understanding
that helps us to support this perspective in relation to artistic work, like an
act that mobilises us and mobilises social life. Thus, it becomes necessary
to create a way to:
188   T. Petrucia da Nóbrega

… have empathy appear as an act, entrust the formula to the artist, the
physical mediator of figures where civil society acclimates its daring,
its fears and its propitiatory festivals. Although it was not easy for him
to set the premises for his last project, he followed Burckhardt closely
enough that the search for the moment when art commutes with life,
the moment when affect produces a public style.
(Imbert 2003: p. 13)

The dancing body presents this perspective on deformation, transforma-

tion and the exercise of expression as a landscape. The body schema is
connected to the body and its immersion in space, while also being an
internal arrangement and an existential opening in a process of ecologising
the body, as we saw emerging in the artistic project Bodies in the Wind
and also in the works of Pina Bausch, Anna Halprin and Isadora Duncan.
They are major components for our philosophy of the body and dance.

Conclusion
The examples we have chosen show the relationship between body, nature
and dance from various artistic viewpoints. Dancing in nature, dancing
with the elements of nature to transform the landscape through dance,
changing the nature of the body and its movement in relation to the body’s
gaze and the spectator’s gaze, transforming the sense of dance and that of
performance are some of the aspects that we refine in our analysis of the
Art on the Beach project. Even though it was an independent and time-­
limited project for the dance company, the experience brought new per-
spectives to the dancers, as we saw in their narratives, and even a broader
understanding of dance and the relationship to space and the public.
In the experience we have examined, nature is not something outside of
our humanity but is fully of the body. Watching the dancers, the people
who were on the beach at that moment found a full landscape for dance,
for which a new way of looking was required. Bathers and strollers were
confronted with a different kind of production: art and dance in a com-
pletely different and perhaps unexpected atmosphere.
The dancers who participated in the Art on the Beach project in Brazil
lived this experience of dancing with nature, in untamed nature, in the
nature even of their own bodies, sharing the space of the beach with other
people: the spectators. This ephemeral dance was powerful enough to
transform, while it lasted, the landscape of Redinha Beach and the way
people looked at dance, because it offered a new cultural horizon for
leisure by an better integration beyond simple entertainment or the con-
sumption of city spaces – and another way to live and to share.
Body ecology is integrated into this analysis as part of our aim to
provide a broader framework for aesthetic thinking and aesthesiology in
 Bodies in the wind: dance and nature   189

the world of dance, choreography and performance. Considering this rela-

tionship with the body and nature and its impact on artistic processes, the
public can also appropriate the cultural codes of the world of dance and of
culture in general.

Bibliography
Andrieu, B. (2011). En plein soleil. Vers l’énergie. Biarritz, France: Atlantica.
Andrieu, B. (2014). Les fondateurs de l’écologie corporelle: immerseurs-­naturiens-
émerseurs, in Andrieu, B., Sirost, O., eds. L’écologie Corporelle: Sociétés. Revue
des sciences humaines et sociales, n. 125, vol. 3, 23–34.
Bachelard, G. (1942). L’eau et les rêves: essai sur l’imagination de la matière. Paris,
France: Jose Corti.
Bachelard, G. (1943). L’aire et les songes: essai sur l’imagination du mouvement.
Paris, France: Corti.
Bachelard, G. (1957). La poètique de l’espace. Paris, France: PUF.
Charoy, P., Risselard, I. (2011). Wutao. Pratiquer l’écologie corporelle. Paris,
France: Courrier du Livre.
Clavel, J. (2011). Danse et écologie: étude de cas Biome de la Compagnie Capcitor
de San Francisco. Sarrebruck, Germany: Éditions Universitaires Européennes.
Commengé, B. (1988). Nietzsche et la danse. Paris, France: Gallimard.
Da Nóbrega, T. P. (2015). Sentir a dança ou quando o corpo se põe a dançar.
Natal, Brazil: Editora do IFRN.
Didi-­Huberman, G. (2006). Le danseur des solitudes. Paris, France: Minuit.
Duncan, I. (1927). Ma vie. Paris, France: Gallimard.
Foucault, M. (1966). Les mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences
humaines. Paris, France: Gallimard.
Halprin, A. (2009). Mouvements de vie. Traduit par Élise Argand et Denise
Luccioni. Bruxeles, Belgium: Contredanse.
Halprin, A. (2010). Breath Made Visible [film] by Ruedi Gerber.
Imbert, C. (2003). Warburg, de Kant à Boas, L’Homme. Revue française
d’antropologie, 165: 11–40.
Livet, P. (2015). La distance dans l’empathie, dans l’expérience esthétique, in
Gefen, A., Voilloux, B. Empathie et esthétique. Paris, France: Hermann.
Lot, C. (2010). Un nouveau mode de relation au passé. La mort du cygne – Fokine,
in Launay, I., Pagès, S., Mémoires et histoire en danse. Paris, France:
L’Harmattan.
Merleau-­Ponty, M. (1956–1960). La nature. Notes Cours au Collège de France.
Établi et annoté par Dominique Séglard. Paris, France: Éditions du Seuil.
Merleau-­Ponty, M. (1961). L’œil et l’esprit. Paris, France: Gallimard.
Nietzsche, F. (1928). La vision dionysiaque du monde. Paris, France: Allia.
Chapter 15

‘No pain, no gain’

The puritan ethic in bodybuilding
Eric Perera and Marie Cholley-­G omez

The world of bodybuilding may seem strange to an outsider, as the cham-

pions are adulated and yet regarded as ‘monsters’. We are reminded of
Duret’s conclusion that:

‘internal recognition and external rejection’ are part of the logic of the
sport. Women’s bodybuilding pushes this logic to an extreme because:
‘Being a woman bodybuilder, especially a champion, means that
outside of this milieu one is not singled out for ideal beauty but for
being a monster of ugliness.’
(2005: p. 42)

This chapter recounts the entry into a group of bodybuilders.1 Far from
wanting to seduce newcomers, the coach subjects them to a doubly infernal
trial.

Suffering as the entry ritual

Let’s see what they’re really made of!

A former international bodybuilder who had become a coach was willing
to accept me into his world so that I could ‘live the experience of body-
building.’ As he had hinted in our first meeting, I was joining his followers’
training sessions so that I could ‘feel the physical work of an athlete’ pre-
paring for competition. In my first session at a gym in the south of France,
the coach calls us together and, after brief introductions, gives instructions
by addressing one of us: ‘work the quadriceps in a descending sequence!’.
The exercise is to work the thighs according to a ‘pyramid set’2 up to
muscle failure. The coach shows the movement to perform and tells the
bodybuilders: ‘let’s see what they’re really made of!’. The immersed sociol-
ogist experiences the pyramid set as a violent ordeal:

When I get off this torture machine, I realise I can barely take two
steps my muscles are so exhausted. The other novice and I can barely
 The puritan ethic in bodybuilding   191

walk. (…) The exercise required extreme effort and yet it seemed to
satisfy the trainer.

This test is accompanied by another, more symbolic violence (Bourdieu

1994): the impossibility of lifting 10 kg. Damien, who was beginning his
initiation at the same time as the immersed researcher, tells us about this
sensation:

He (coach) gives you the exercises you have to do and it’s not you who
says when you stop, he does. It’s pretty interesting because you’re not
used to it and you don’t know your limits. We set it to thirty kilo-
grams and then you start lifting, you do it and then he still makes you
do five more. Actually, you don’t know when you’re going to stop. I
remember that in the first sessions, that really struck me. Because you
can’t go any further, you feel pain that paralyses you. So you’re not
going to be able to lift, especially for a pyramid set. (…) You come
back to ten kilos, you did ten, twenty, thirty, and you come back to
ten, and you can’t lift it.

All the beginners go through this same ritual trial and the difficulty in
walking immediately afterwards is a particularly unsettling experience. The
inability to lift 10 kg at the end really disturbs me. The initiation occurs in
front of the bodybuilders, although the rest of the time they work together
away from us. The coach manages the intensity and modifies the load as
he repeats: ‘you signed up for this’. Access to the gym is thus dependent on
the coach’s pyramid test, which requires painful physical effort in front of
the whole group.
Immediately after the first session, the coach discusses the next step of
initiation: diet.

Eat only what’s been written down!

At the end of the first session, the coach gives us the diet to follow. He
states: ‘Stick to what’s on the sheet. Eat only what’s been written down!’
This ‘cutting’ diet consists of five meals per day with a total of nine steaks
and vegetables without sauce, to be eaten at certain times. With white meat
at the evening meal, this is no less than 1.3 kg of meat per day. The coach
explains that this diet revs up the metabolism, allowing us to ‘lose fat’.
I follow the diet and lose 7 kg in one month. Damien has the same phys-
ical results:

… physically, it’s quite difficult because, in fact, we lose fat completely.

So you lose a tremendous amount of weight. I remember I had lost six
kilos in three weeks. This is a bit hard. Especially for me who always
had trouble gaining weight, so losing it was psychologically hard.
192   E. Perera and M. Cholley-Gomez

The lack of sugar in the diet means the body is constantly drawing on its
own reserves, which amplifies the fatigue accumulated by the weight-­lifting
exercises.
Entry to the gym is thus regulated by a precise ritual: muscle exhaustion
and weight loss. Both introduce beginners to bodybuilding. Yet one might
ask: Why are these tests inflicted on newcomers, future clients who should
be encouraged to stay? Do we find this type of physical and symbolic viol-
ence in other bodybuilding gyms? At this stage, it seemed necessary to
consult the sociological work carried out in this field.

Becoming a bodybuilder: an authentic lifestyle

One becomes a bodybuilder after months of intensive work and financial,
personal and food sacrifices. Bodybuilders sacrifice everything, with Ewald
and Jiobu (1985) showing that they often forget family duties, health and
work. They are willing to sacrifice mental health and physical well-­being
for success, accepting draconian diets, overtraining, weight control and
injuries (Wasielwski 1991; Johns 1997). Daily meal planning is scrupu-
lously followed and a part of everyday life. One of the first things a new-
comer learns is the purity and impurity of food. Bodybuilders must not
only achieve ‘physical perfection in order to have the respect of this com-
munity: they must also have a lifestyle judged to be morally pure’ (Kin-
nunen 2004: p. 323). Anyone who deviates is stigmatised (Goffman 1975),
whatever the results. These sacrifices are not made to reach an externally
recognised body but, according to Kinnunen,3 to satisfy the group’s cul-
tural criteria: ‘Pure food is essential in bodybuilding to achieve physical
perfection, but it also functions to confer social distinction: it marks being
“inside” of the social sphere’ (2004: p. 319).
Kinnunen shows that an ‘authentic’ bodybuilder gives great importance
to meticulously working the different muscle groups of the body. The work
is performed with free weights, machines and the bench press, all considered
‘sacred’ equipment. A true practitioner performs the movements up to pain
in order to ‘tear’ the muscle tissue. A subculture thus defines and shares a
lifestyle, with the ‘authentic’ bodybuilders at the centre. The group estab-
lishes highly prescriptive norms by stigmatising some behaviour and valuing
others. It thus has a social role that will affect training, its intensity and so
on. In this way, the athletes learn the norms operating within the group,
which gives them a sense of belonging and affirmation (Duret 2005: p. 54).
These works show that the violence of training and diet organise the
practice of bodybuilding. The influence of the group is fundamental in
learning the norms and values of the gym. However, although the violence
seems codified, the works to date do not help us to understand why the
entry ritual is so violent. How does this ritual lead to such a strict lifestyle?
How do bodybuilders come to love pain, up to ‘tearing’ the muscles?
 The puritan ethic in bodybuilding   193

It is necessary to identify the function of this entry ritual by identifying

the internal logic of the bodybuilding world. Eric Perera’s thesis,4 which
contained field data on the initiation of two newcomers (himself and
Damien) and the logbook of a bodybuilder (Cedric) describing nine months
of daily preparation for competition, serve as a basis for the analysis. It
shows that bodybuilding is a puritan asceticism that both modifies the per-
ceptions and subjectivity of the practitioners and restructures social
relationships.

Bodybuilding: a puritan asceticism

Western culture is characterised by the importance given to seeing (Jay
1988; Candau 1998; Havelange 1998). Howes emphasised ‘the importance
of analysing other cultures through their own sensorial order, rather than
through the Western order.’ He concluded that we can only hope to ‘attach
meaning’ to other cultures by ‘developing the capacity to dilate (or con-
tract) our sensory modalities in a conscious and indefinite way and to
make new combinations (corresponding to the preferences of those we
study)’ (1990: p. 112). This theoretical position has proved fruitful in the
study of bodybuilding. Indeed, the initiation that leads to the status of
bodybuilder implies rapid changes in perceptions. In particular, we will
study the sudden changes in nocioceptions5 and food likes and dislikes.

Learning new sensations: suffering and self-­c ontrol

– no pain, no gain
At the gym, the goal is to optimise muscle work. Two groups of muscles
are worked in the following manner: Mondays: quadriceps and pectorals,
Tuesdays: back and triceps, Thursdays: hamstrings and shoulders, Fridays:
calves and biceps; Wednesdays and weekends are for recovery. This
schedule brings the group together at specific times for a pre-­set duration
in order to work on selected muscle groups. This structuring of group
work is a ritual that organises the practitioners’ week. The repetitive
schedule of sessions from one week to the next is gradually incorporated.
In an ideal position to assess the work being done, the coach pushes us
to lift higher loads until we feel the burn of working the muscle to satura-
tion. Although in the first month the exercises are difficult, leaving us
groaning in pain, we newcomers gradually learn to love this sensation.
This evolution was noted in the researcher’s journal:

Becoming a part of the group is all the more important as I progress

quickly and I can bear increasingly heavy loads. (…) I feel relatively
comfortable with all the exercises, when a month ago I was having
trouble finishing my series. The coach doesn’t hesitate to push me
194   E. Perera and M. Cholley-Gomez

beyond the ten reps with a high load (…). Without a word, I do the
movements and am pleased to show him my new abilities. (…) I’m in
full possession of my means and I almost want to compete against the
bodybuilders.

Muscle pain becomes a sought-­after pleasure and is accepted in silence.

Muscle burning is systematically experienced and Cedric has incorporated
this sensation as pleasant. Indeed, he says: ‘I feel like my T-­shirt is going to
rip.… A divine sensation!’. Muscle saturation is gradually sought and
appreciated. The aim is to act on muscle capacity by ‘tearing the muscles’
within an organised framework to optimise performance.

Nutrition
Diet is inseparable from training. The coach prescribes food prohibitions:
‘Stick to what’s on the sheet!’. This injunction imposes five meals a day
programmed down to the nearest gram, which implies a new rhythm of
life, as Damien notes:

Your diet gives you the rhythm of your life, and two, three, five meals
a day is what organises your life. With such large quantities, you can
hardly eat out. You have to go home to cook, to shop. All that takes
time, and you arrange things around it.

The quasi-­military food prescriptions are designed to optimise training.

The slightest divergence could ruin the work of weeks in the weight room.
Food is reduced to the status of a simple instrument for a specific purpose:
to lose fat during cutting periods and to gain weight during bulking
periods. The practitioner eats only to transform his body and takes no
pleasure in swallowing down the same foods in large quantities over a long
period. The notion of pleasure is elsewhere: in the sensation of controlling
one’s body by acting upon it.
As Cedric points out: ‘if you control your nutrition, you can shape your
body at will!’. Your old diet takes on a different meaning and becomes
inconceivable:

We end up not understanding nonpractitioners, who ultimately let

themselves go and don’t take care of their bodies. For example, des-
serts or the fatty foods of a conventional diet are no longer interesting.
I’m restructuring my body and I don’t envy the people around me who
don’t pay attention to what they eat.

Cedric also notes: ‘If I give [my body] fat, I risk being sickened by the fries
and my body will definitely store up all this unexpected fat, which would
 The puritan ethic in bodybuilding   195

ruin five weeks of daily work. Ridiculous!’. Food creates disgust. Eating is
no longer a pleasure, but a way to act on one’s body. Cedric speaks of
‘nutrimentation’, a combination of nutrition and the French noun for
eating ‘alimentation’. He no longer eats, he ‘nutriments’ to control his
body by acting rationally and never ‘letting go’.

Valorising a way of life

Nutrition marks a difference with nonpractitioners. Someone outside
cannot understand such a craze to ‘nutriment’. As competition approaches,
Cedric has 16 meals a day:

Inconceivable for a normal person! (…) I stopped pure caffeine (I was

taking up to six doses over twenty-­four hours!), I’m at sixteen meals
today and tomorrow, one every hour. Or 33 grams of white rice and
100 grams of fish or chicken, with vegetables.

Such regimes are indeed incomprehensible to a ‘normal’ person. What

matters is the expected effect on the body, which depends on the practition-
er’s course of action. In the weight room, all conversations inevitably begin
with a weight question: ‘How much did you lose?’ in the cutting phase or
‘How much did you put on?’ in the bulking phase. A new relationship with
the body has been established and weight becomes an obsession. The phys-
ical results are thus evaluated by the group but also monitored by the coach
at the beginning of the session. He has visual reference points and he
directly palpates the adipose layer of the abdominals. He thus evaluates the
effects of his food prescriptions on the body. The coach’s feedback
reinforces the course of action to be followed outside the gym.
When the coach is satisfied, the practitioner is displayed as a model:

The simple fact of watching us work lets him track our daily progress.
The coach has complimented me for fast progress with my weight.
Since the cutting phase, I have repeatedly been a model.

When the coach puts high value on a practitioner’s sacrifices, the others
receive a message that takes on a normative and exemplary dimension.
Thus, new benchmarks specific to bodybuilding are assimilated and
reinforced by the coach’s positive and negative sanctions. The micro-­rituals
of interaction (Goffman 1974) set up by the coach constantly recall the
importance of the effort that needs to be made.
The newcomer thus integrates new attitudes, recognised by the coach
and the group, that gradually give him full satisfaction. Suffering that was
unbearable becomes a sought-­after sensation. Optimising muscle work is
the goal and bodybuilding involves a reorganisation of the practitioners’
196   E. Perera and M. Cholley-Gomez

sensorium (Howes 2004). Thus, those who go to the end of pain and food
prescriptions reorganise their senses and become strong models of an
exemplary way of life.

Transformation of the senses and rational

self-­c ontrol
This new way of life, previously presented as a discipline of ‘muscle’, is
now seen as a puritan asceticism. The deprivations, the expected muscle
performance and the value of physical preparation all refer to Puritan prin-
ciples. Queval (2008) showed that today’s ‘management of the body’ has
borrowed ‘modes of personal application of rational self-­management
from the Puritan spirit and then from the capitalistic spirit’ (Queval 2008:
p. 247). This author refers to Weber’s work noting that Western capitalism
has appropriated one of the functional frameworks of Protestant puritan-
ism – asceticism, methodology, rationality, self-­control, time management
– to structure an economic model without the religious purpose. By forging
a rational body discipline, the principles of bodybuilding fit into this model
with three values:

• Task: with the practitioner gradually taking pleasure in lifting more

and more weight. Although suffering was once unbearable, it is now
sought after.
• Rationality: with time in the gym and following a diet being rational-
ised to maximise muscle performance. In this context, one no longer
eats, one ‘nutriments’.
• Elitism: with exemplary conduct valued by the coach and the group.
Beyond muscle development, the way of life is evaluated.

Thus, the sacrifices reorganise the senses in the service of muscle develop-
ment, and this occurs gradually in the bodybuilders’ group. The study of
these tactile perceptions indeed echoes the research programmes of
Kaufmann (2004) and Lahire (2007), who considered infraconscious
habits as indicative of cultural embodiment.
Becoming a bodybuilder in this way implies a modification in like and
dislikes. The most famous adage of bodybuilding, ‘no pain, no gain’,
reveals the process of modifying the perceptions of pain. Becoming a body-
builder implies no longer perceiving pain as a negative feeling, but on the
contrary as evidence of effective work that will produce visible bodily
results. This sensory socialisation cultivates and strengthens a puritan
ethic. The reorganisation of sensory perceptions implies a subjective and
identity transformation (Perera and Rouanet 2011). The muscle capital of
the bodybuilder is in this sense secondary, making visible the rational self-­
control, the puritan ascetic lifestyle.
 The puritan ethic in bodybuilding   197

The ritual of entry finds part of its meaning here, as the coach com-
municates that suffering is a fundamental value. Certain aspects of this
ritual nevertheless remain without explanation. For example, consuming
nine steaks per day could be replaced by powdered proteins, commonplace
in this world and less violent. Preparing the bodybuilders has two unchan-
ging phases that alternate constantly: bulking for maximal gain of muscle
volume inevitably accompanied by fat intake and cutting to conserve
muscle volume while burning fat. Why does the coach systematically start
with cutting when the initiates come to gain muscle mass?
If we focus on a process of subjectivity, puritan asceticism also implies a
massive restructuring of social relationships. Ortega considers this to be
the second indicator for identifying ascesis after subjective displacement
(2008). We will show that the ascetic imperative confers on the coach the
power to control the initiates, which can be described as a ‘dispositive for
governing’ the body. The following analysis attempts to understand the
dispositive in place and the link between the coach and the group. We will
show that the dispositive generates a social rupture for the initiate which
leads to a total disposition to the coach’s authority.

An ascetic dispositive
The practitioner’s daily life is completely timed, programmed and organ-
ised in such a way that it is difficult to live otherwise than for the body and
physical results. Thus, all the prescriptions governing bodybuilding are a
‘dispositive for governing’ the body, in the sense of Foucault in his essay
on ‘the government of men’, which showed that:

in a disciplinary society, the dispositives aim, through a series of prac-

tices and discourses, knowledge and exercises, at the creation of docile
but free bodies that assume their identity and their freedom as subjects
in the process of their subjugation.…
(Agamben 2007: p. 42)

More precisely, Agamben ‘calls a dispositive anything that in one way or

another has the ability to capture, direct, determine, intercept, shape,
control and ensure the gestures, behaviours, opinions and discourses of
living beings’ (2007: p.  31). The coach imposes a dispositive that deter-
mines the ‘orientation’ of common gestures by deciding what should be
done at the gym but also outside. The coach’s injunctions, which require
his athletes to eat only what is prescribed, fall within this framework.
He thus reorganises key moments in everyday life like eating and acting
and, in this way, indirectly influences other aspects like sleep, digestion,
shopping, meals and cooking – not to mention the emotional aspect that
concerns desire… The daily reorganisation of these gestures ‘governs’ the
198   E. Perera and M. Cholley-Gomez

practitioner’s way of life that is managed by and for bodybuilding. Ulti-

mately, the determination to build a muscular body implies a restructuring
of the actions and gestures that influence social relations. The dispositive
in place makes every effort to modify the physical appearance and inevit-
ably changes the way daily life is perceived.
This dispositive is thus a ‘set of praxes, knowledge, measures and insti-
tutions whose aim is to manage, govern, control and guide in a sense that
is useful the behaviours, gestures and thoughts of man’ (ibid.: p.  28).
Modelling one’s body imposes a reorganisation of daily life so that the dis-
positive can exercise control over the initiate’s body and way of life. How
does this dispositive become operational and how does it achieve its goal?

Social rupture and integrating the initiated into

the bodybuilding group

The initiate’s voluntary separation …

It is interesting to note the social impact of the coach’s prescriptions. They
take the initiate out of normal life and gradually lead towards isolation.
External temptations (evenings out, alcohol, etc.) are avoided. They lose
meaning. Damien confirmed this experience:

… you realise that you’re isolating yourself socially because as soon as

you start the diet, it’s hard to maintain a social life. Having a drink,
whether with friends or family, meals with friends, all these things are
important in life. These are things you can’t do or that are hard to do.
You set yourself apart. You do your job and you don’t want to be dif-
ficult, but at the same time, you have nothing to do. It’s your thing
and you don’t want to be accountable. It’s hard enough personally,
you don’t want to explain or justify yourself.

Moreover, weight loss (sugar-­free diet) and exercise exhaustion also create
a need for isolation to recover, and the daily sacrifices are all the more
poorly perceived as the initiate sometimes appears ill because of the weight
loss, and this raises concerns among family and friends. To avoid negative
remarks, the tendency is to isolate. Cedric sums up daily life: ‘Eating,
drinking, sleeping, endurance exercise, lifting weight – that’s the list of my
activities’. Goffman described this pervasiveness of an activity in daily life
as ‘all time in’ (1974).
The initiatory trials lead to new relationships with time and others. As
Ortega points out, ‘asceticism leads to the delimitation and restructuring
of social relationships, and thus the development of an alternative set of
social bonds and the construction of an alternative symbolic universe’
(2008: p. 23).
 The puritan ethic in bodybuilding   199

Integration and a new frame of reference

After the weight-­loss phase, a ‘carbohydrate rebound’ diet6 based on pota-
toes and proteins (white meat) restores energy and appearance. In conjunc-
tion with the sensation of ‘reviving’, the initiates feel closer to the group.
The new diet allows us to keep up the training cadence without weakening
and to build muscle, as the in situ researcher noted:

It’s now easier to finish the exercise set (…) my body seems to be used
to suffering and forcing itself to meet the coach’s expectations. My
mental and physical dispositions during this phase let me surpass
myself and do the series one after the other. My body is changing and
gaining muscle volume and I’m increasingly pleased when I look in the
mirror. A feeling of ‘omnipotence’ takes hold because of the new diet
and its effects on my body and state of mind. That’s when I draw
closer to the bodybuilders (…). My place in the group hierarchy will
take on another dimension in parallel with the change of diet.

As soon as the change of diet produces its effects, the coach makes the
initiates work with the bodybuilders. They enter into a process of imitation
and collaboration, which refers to the notion of ‘mimesis’ developed by
Gebauer and Wulf (2002). ‘The behaviours and reactions expressed by the
body are imitated and enter into the memory of the person who performs
the mimesis in the form of images, sound sequences and movement
sequences’ (Wulf 2003: p.  65). The initiates’ investment is even greater
because the coach compares them with the bodybuilders, reinforcing this
effect.
After the difficult phase of weight loss, the first pleasant moments and
the first satisfactions appear. At this moment of euphoria caused by the
new diet, chemistry makes its appearance with Pargine (arginine aspar-
tate).7 This product can be bought in any pharmacy (explains the coach)
and, as the investigation continues, increasingly powerful products (which
are prohibited) will be prescribed.
The initiate’s social rupture is accompanied by a resocialisation towards
the bodybuilding lifestyle. The products thus appear discreetly. Why do
these substances appear after the initiatory trials?

Conclusion
Thus, the time constraints caused by severe food deprivation (five meals a
day and so many grams per one hour) and the extreme fatigue of regular
and intense training profoundly changed this practitioner’s daily life and
gave him a total experience. He devoted all his time and money to body-
building and tended to isolate himself. The ascetic dispositive proposed by
200   E. Perera and M. Cholley-Gomez

the coach entailed sacrifices that the individual had not imagined when he
first entered the room.
The temptations of the outside world were avoided (outings, alcohol).
Close family and friends were also avoided because of growing misunder-
standings about the practice. The social rupture was accompanied by a
resocialisation in the service of bodybuilding.
A new lifestyle is thus essential in the daily life of the bodybuilding
initiate. The discipline of the body organises the behaviours to be followed.
The dispositive controlled by this coach led to the reorganisation of certain
key moments of life, like eating and acting. Indeed, the brusque change in
the everyday lifestyle (diet and training) modified the initiate’s senses and
pushed him closer to the norms and values of the bodybuilders.
Thus, this sensory socialisation cultivated a new way of life centred on a
puritan ascesis involving changes in the body, between weight loss and
weight gain. These new sensations, amplified by the use of chemical sub-
stances, conferred on the subject ‘a bodily experience invading all percep-
tions and insinuating itself into all activities’ (Fernandez 2010: p.  38).
Hence it may very well be that without this totalising experience, certain
individuals would find themselves totally disaffiliated. One might even
speculate that those who have a poor social life, without a real ‘hook’ into
life, are more apt to become bodybuilders and thus create new social
bonds, enough to live this experience fully.

Notes
1 The field notes used in this article were part of Eric Perera’s PhD thesis and
appear in quotation marks or indentation (Perera, E. (2010). La production du
body-­builder? Ascèse, emprise et lien sectaire, Thèse de Sociologie, Université
Montpellier 3. Dir. Jacques Gleyse et Eric de Léséleuc.).
2 The pyramid set is an emic term for a technique that pushes the muscle being
worked to failure. The intensity of the ‘loads’ progresses in a pyramidal way
until the maximum load is reached; then, without rest time, the loads are
progressively decreased, which burns fat.
3 Kinnunen conducted a participant-­observation study in Finland and Los Angeles,
from 1990 to 1999. She conducted 30 interviews (27 men) and included docu-
mentation from specialised journals.
4 He conducted an inquiry by immersion, consisting of four training sessions per
week, each lasting two hours, over nine months. He participated in the daily
activities of confirmed and beginner bodybuilders and immersed himself in the
lifestyle (Perera and Rouanet 2011).
5 Perception of painful stimuli.
6 This principle is based on the Scandinavian dissociated diet regime. One week
before competition, there are two periods of eating: for the first three days the
diet is low in carbohydrates, or even lipid-­protein, followed by a second hyper-
glucidic period that can last from two to three days. This technique increases
muscle volume quickly during the hyperglucidic period, thanks to the glycogenic
overcompensation.
 The puritan ethic in bodybuilding   201

7 Vidal (the French drug index; No authors listed. PARGINE 5 g/10 ml sol buv.

www.vidal.fr/Medicament/pargine-­12755.htm) explains that Pargine is a medi-
cation sold in the form of five-­gram ampoules that contain the following ingredi-
ents: glycerol, caramel flavour, apricot flavour, ammonium glycyrrhizinate,
sodium saccharin, drinking water, methyl p-­hydroxybenzoate, and propyl
p-­hydroxybenzoate. More specifically, Pargine combines two amino acids that
indirectly stimulate growth hormone secretion.

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Chapter 16

The emersion of blackout in

freediving
Moderation and immoderation
Mary Schirrer

Multiple modes of engagement in freediving

‘Voluntary freediving is a unique example in the physiology of autonomic
functions because it can be deliberately interrupted’ but breathing then
irresistibly resumes as soon as the changes in the respiratory gases impose
it (Corriol 1996: p. 1). It sometimes perceived as counter-­nature because it
is the deliberate suspension of a vital physiological function. Although the
disciplines of apnoea continue to proliferate (sprint, Jump Blue, 16 × 50 m),
some of the classics remain: freediving to depth (constant weight), distance
swimming (dynamic) and immersion without moving (static) (Schirrer
2015a, 2015b).
The sport of freediving is growing largely because it provides a feeling
of well-­being and relaxation, it teaches much about breathing and it aids
in the discovery of self and the aquatic environment. The analysis of prac-
titioners’ discourses reveals that it is a means of self-­exploration. Freediv-
ing broadens or even redraws the individual’s ‘map of the senses’
predominantly through proprioception. The depth of one’s body (and
being) is discovered by the immersion in water, which promotes the emer-
sion of new sensations, introspection and the potentialisation of new
resources (Raveneau 2015; Schirrer 2015b).
Recreational freediving should be distinguished from competitive and
elite freediving. Very often, beginners quickly discover that they are
‘capable’ and set off in the pursuit of progress.
Yet the logic changes somewhat in competition. Certainly, mental and
physical capacities are crucial, as is listening to one’s sensations. But there
are also considerable constraints: to cover as much distance as possible or
to stay under water as long as possible with a fixed oxygen supply in a
competitive context. Stress often disrupts the practitioners’ reference frame
and oxygen consumption in a situation that limits them to only one test.
Practitioners and coaches thus often distinguish four phases in ‘extreme’
apnoea that help to situate oneself:
204   M. Schirrer

1 Comfort: the freedivers try to cultivate a state of relaxation by limiting

mental activity.
2 Work: the first sensations of discomfort appear; conscious reasoning
helps them to control and accept these sensations.
3 Effort: the signs of discomfort become pervasive and even painful. The
freedivers here feel an intense ‘thirst for air’: ‘it burns’, ‘everything
heats up’, ‘it shoots through you’.
4 Struggle: the phase of competition. The body sends strong, painful,
even violent signals. They may try to exceed their limits. The desire to
breathe is overwhelming. This critical zone requires extreme vigilance.
Some freedivers experience a new sense of ease: ‘It becomes easier and
super-­fast!’. This phase is therefore risky because, with severe hypoxia,
lucidity declines and loss of consciousness is imminent.

In competition, practitioners enter the struggle phase, which means they

must emerge lucid out of water to validate the performance while still
pushing themselves as far as possible. They thus live a dilemma, a kind of
impossible situation.

Blackout – a form of immoderation

In freediving, blackout (also known as ‘syncope’) is a momentary loss of
consciousness occurring when oxygen reserves are too low and the brain
‘disconnects’ to protect itself. It is most visible in competition, and these
events have multiplied as competition has become institutionalised. Statis-
tical monitoring would help to assess the extent of both blackout and the
loss of motor control (LMC). A series of convulsions without loss of con-
sciousness, is called samba. Blackout is the end of a physiological process,
whereas samba is only a step. The French Federation for Underwater
Studies and Sports (FFESSM) has set strict guidelines (e.g. unauthorised
performances, disqualification, prohibited competition for up to six
months), notably because in competition, especially in pools or hyper-­safe
environments (presence of trained safety freedivers, first aid equipment
including oxygen), practitioners acknowledge ‘letting go’. At the last
Championships in France, 12.2% of the performances resulted in blackout
or LMC.
Is blackout a form of immoderation in today’s sports? How do apnoe-
ists experience it and overcome it? We present the sport of apnoea based
on our field survey of more than three years and analyse it from the per-
spective of immoderation. We then present the results of our observations
on the experience of blackout.
 The emersion of blackout in freediving   205

Modified states of consciousness

In this activity, which is far from spontaneous physiological behaviour,
practitioners use strategies to overcome unpleasant sensations (spasms,
‘thirst for air’, leg pains), manage intense and negative emotions1 and max-
imise the pleasurable sensations, especially gliding. Whatever the discip-
line, they refer to moments of ‘disconnection’ and ‘reconnection’. The
analysis of their discourses and practices reveals that they consciously or
unconsciously try to modify their states of consciousness: concentration on
breathing, visualising their performances, projecting mental images associ-
ated with positive emotions, refraining from thinking (meditation), per-
forming ‘rotations’ of consciousness, ‘letting go’, practising self-­hypnosis
and so on. ‘The term “modified state of consciousness” or MSC refers to
any state of consciousness that differs from the state of “vigilance”; that is,
the state that helps us to apprehend “the immediate” through “appropriate
and rational” operations’ (Déthiollaz and Fourrier 2011). As the authors
note, the boundaries between states of consciousness are difficult to estab-
lish and beyond the scope of this chapter. It appears, however, that freediv-
ers deliberately modify their states of consciousness when they are
immersed, and apnoea immersion helps to do this.
These voluntary MSCs are thus sought because they are assumed to save
energy and therefore oxygen and to help with relaxation, management of
negative emotions and better acceptance of unpleasant sensations. Con-
versely, involuntary MSCs are often linked to stress, high nitrogen concen-
tration in deep freedivers (rarer) and hypoxia, causing a decrease in lucidity
until anoxic blackout.
Blackout is a time when the brain is on standby, which can be fatal to the
apnoeist. Manuals and coaches are clear: you do not feel it coming, with the
perception of warning signs being rare. It has been described as a ‘short-­
circuit’, a ‘small death’ and so on. ‘Syncope is a sudden and transient loss of
consciousness, spontaneously resolving with a rapid return to a normal state
of consciousness, accompanied by a loss of postural tone’ (Dematteo 2006).

Moderation or immoderation in apnoea?

Freediver records are constantly being broken (Lemaître 2007). Through
practice, training, perseverance and relaxation, some practitioners have
exceeded their limits, even those set by doctors, to achieve outstanding
records: 11 minutes 35 seconds underwater without breathing for Stephane
Mifsud and 281 metres underwater swimming in the pool with a monofin
for Goran Colak.
The notions of moderation and immoderation help us to think about
and to analyse this practice, in the sense of evaluating the extent or
quantity of something. Apnoea is a quantified activity: duration, distance
206   M. Schirrer

or depth. As the practitioner starts with a given supply of oxygen, it is also

intrinsically an activity of measurement, as this supply will moderate com-
mitment, economy and efficiency. In this sense, the measure is qualitative.
Freedivers identify their feelings to better situate their performances, ana-
lysing the signals sent by the body. Apnoea is therefore measured in terms
of the harmonious balance between the practitioner and the environment
and between using and listening to the body.
Nevertheless, when extreme performances are achieved, the commit-
ment may seem immoderate, especially from the viewpoint of the uniniti-
ated, because in common sense this immoderation is exaggerated, gigantic,
colossal: 11 minutes 35 seconds without breathing! Yet this quantified
immoderation attests to the human capacity to adapt to the aquatic
environment and to use all available resources to do so (physiological,
mental, technical). The immoderation is thus relative. Quantified, it is most
often constructed step by step, in terms of dosage, progressivity and
modesty. Each additional metre and second is slowly won, while the prac-
titioner trains intensely, modifies resources and builds new references.
The second form of immoderation is of particular interest to us here,
the ideal type of immoderation in exploring and transcending the limits of
the human body: blackout. It is a fact, a tangible reality. When the practi-
tioner enters the struggle phase and consciousness disappears, apnoea is
closer to immoderation than to moderation. Here it has a moral sense of
excess, as well as an aesthetic sense of violence, torment and aesthetic loss
(intense, disordered movements). This runs parallel to the notions of
dosage, temperance, moderation, balance or even control. If freediving can
be considered a sport of moderation and immoderation, we focus on
immoderation: What causes blackout in apnoea? How is it experienced by
practitioners? Is it accepted or even overcome?

Theoretical and methodological framework

Blackout in freediving is real and is part of the logic of pushing the limits;
this raises ethical questions. To avoid falling into the trap of a psychologis-
ing or sensationalist discourse, we analyse the meaning of this concrete
practice of transcending oneself by documenting the experience of black-
out and attitudes towards it. Therefore, this study falls within the frame-
work of comprehensive sociology and phenomenology in the first person.
The challenge is threefold:

• describe the context of blackout;

• document the sensations (the ‘extremisation’ of the body) and emerg-
ing thoughts as the practitioners reach this limit, through first-­person
data (Petitmengin 2004);
• analyse the discourses, meanings and practices around this experience.
 The emersion of blackout in freediving   207

The studies were conducted mainly during the training sessions of a

freediving club in the east of France where I am certified and competitions
ranging from local to national. The methodology consists of participatory
observation, a field journal, semi-­structured interviews (with mixed-­level
practitioners and two coaches) and mixed interviews, including an explan-
atory part (Petitmengin 2004; Vermersch 1993) and a semi-­directive part.
When available and the freediver agrees, I use images or videos of them as
traces to facilitate verbalisations.
The observations are more participatory in the club sessions and more
peripheral (Soulé 2007) in the competitions. The aim is indeed to implement
a form of ethnopraxia in the sense of Loic Wacquant, which consists of ‘prac-
tising in real time and in situ with the natives so as to acquire, like them, by
routine, a tacit knowledge of the categories of perception that compose their
universe’ (Wacquant 1989: p.  80). In competition, it is also to facilitate
contact and agreement for an interview through my aquatic commitment.
The semi-­directive interviews follow an inductive logic: to explore
apnoea practice, its pleasures and discomforts, interests and motivations
and experienced sensations; the practitioner’s trajectory, particularly
regarding sport; and the practitioner’s relation to limits and the body, sur-
passing oneself and blackout.
Concerning the explication, I document the practitioner’s experience as
precisely as possible, accessing conscious ‘pre-­reflexive’ information. As far
as possible, I therefore conduct the interviews within an hour of a counter-­
performance (two practitioners). The questioning seeks only descriptions
of the structure of the experience (What did you begin with and then what
did you do?) or its content (While you were swimming, what were you
doing? What were you attentive to?).

Ending in blackout…
Apart from equipment failures,2 most incidents of blackout were caused by:

• Insufficiently refined self-­references that did not prompt the freediver

to identify when it was time to get out. One practitioner experienced
her first and only blackout because she had ‘gone too far’.
• Fatigue, cold, stress: situations that differed from the usual training
conditions; with a change in oxygen consumption and distorted refer-
ences, LMC or blackout can occur more quickly.
• Wanting to reach an objective at any cost (the wall, the distance set);
being ‘too greedy’ (changing the project at the last moment, trying to
beat the others). The practitioner did not feel or ignored the signals
sent by the body. He or she was no longer sufficiently committed to
measuring in terms of self-­referenced sensations, but was committing
to measuring by external benchmarks.
208   M. Schirrer

Context for blackout

In the pool, blackout management differs depending on whether it occurs
during training or in competition. Blackout can occur in training, as it did
in the club that I observed. As a competition date approached, the freediver
entered a training phase oriented towards hypoxia, refining their references
and performing one or two maximal apnoeas per session. When Thi
(25-year-­old man, regional competitor) ended a long apnoea at his ‘limit’,
the safety protocol was immediately put in place. The safety freediver who
had followed him at the surface kept him out of the water during his loss
of consciousness, removed his equipment (mask, noseclip), and removed
him from the water. A few minutes later, the coach and other practitioners
came out of the water and the event was commented on and analysed. The
mood was light, the event dedramatised as everyone listened to the
freediver, trying to identify what happened, sharing feelings, remembering
similar experiences and even laughing sometimes about the body and its
disarticulated movements. The immoderation was thus analysed and
dedramatised, with one’s peers helping to make sense of it.
In competition, management is different. As before, the safety freediver
keeps the practitioner’s airways out of the water, with mouth-­to-nose
resuscitation if needed, until the practitioner regains consciousness. The
freediver is then quickly removed from the water, remaining poolside for a
few moments under close surveillance and then breathing oxygen, some-
times still poolside, ‘watched by everyone’. This was the experience of He
(45-year-­old man), whose case we present below, and who reported a
strong sense of deviance.
In competition, blackout is highly visible. It occurs in front of the
public, safety freedivers and judges. All of the performance is fully video-­
recorded, especially the removal from the water and the following minutes.
In cases of doubt or dispute about the practitioner’s state of consciousness,
this video will help the judges to take the final decision: validated perform-
ance or disqualification. Other personal videos are sometimes put up on
the internet by the practitioners themselves, for teaching purposes or for
more ambiguous reasons: to show an extreme performance, a self-­reflexive
exercise or a rebirth.
The results are also highly visible: blackout and LMC are clearly dis-
played and labelled. They result in the end of the performance, disqualifi-
cation. There is thus a form of punishment. The freediver has ‘fouled’ by
losing control. He or she may even be prohibited from competition for one
to six months for ‘recidivism’. In short, everything seems to dramatise the
event to ensure that it does not happen again. This immoderation is
displayed and treated as a deviant practice by the institution. Has the
athlete deviated from the social norm of ‘not losing control’ or ‘respecting’
the body?
 The emersion of blackout in freediving   209

The experience of blackout

As blackout is the moment when consciousness evaporates, documenting it
is not an easy task. Also, after an incident, the practitioners do not neces-
sarily want to come back to it right away and comment. We thus present a
small number of cases from the club (n = 2) and in competition (n = 2).
The most detailed explication was given by He (45-year-­old man, six
years of competition). The video of his performance ending in blackout
was quite useful in facilitating his explication. The blackout was ‘small’,
starting with an LMC and then a very brief loss of consciousness (about
two seconds). Blackout can last much longer. This one occurred in a par-
ticular context: his children were exceptionally present at this competition
to encourage him and the previous competitors were younger and had
reached 125 metres. At the last moment, he changed his project (‘pride
surged up’) to 120 metres instead of 110 metres.
He knows himself well, he had already participated in several competi-
tions, and he had just identified his exit signal in the end of a long apnoea:

What happens to me, at the end of apnoea competition, when I’ve

really pushed it. And I felt it the day of my syncope, I felt it really
strong and that’s why I went off in a syncope. It’s really the impression
that you’re swimming, you’ve been pushing it, and bam! It falls apart,
it goes wrong, completely. I’m swimming but less and less well … and
suddenly it breaks down completely! […] It’s really, everything stops
and you have to get a grip fast!

Excerpts from He’s explanation:

Yes, from the half-­turn (100 m), I’m thinking ‘be careful’ because I
know this is not my good zone. The zone where it goes wrong, it really
goes wrong. So once I get back on track, back to zero, and I feel like
the break won’t come. And then I say: ‘now we’re really going to show
those kids’, you flip the fin a few times and you’re there. I do it one,
two, three times, I don’t know. And the trick is really, do not crack,
do not crack, do not crack … holding off as late as possible. And at
some point, the signal comes anyway, so there I can’t describe much,
the wall, until … only 16 m to go. It’s just three flips, it goes very fast,
so I’m definitely coming to a falling apart in the swimming and I think:
‘stop being a jerk’, and I really feel it’s falling apart, so: ‘get out, get
out, get out’. I grab the wall, and I’m glad to see that I’ve got it and
I’m happy. I remember. I’ve been vigilant. And I say: ‘ah, protocol!’ I
tear off my mask and … no one […]
A little movement behind you see, it’s the beginning of the samba
that I felt, and when I open my eyes, I am sitting on the edge and I see
210   M. Schirrer

my monofin in front of me. And that it’s still doing it (moving) on the
water.
And there I say: ‘damn!’ because there I understood right away.
And after no pain, but some unpleasantness, I don’t know if it’s
because I’m disappointed or if it’s physical, I don’t know, but I believe
that physically, my spine, my neck are stiff and it’s unpleasant, numb.
A real stiffness in the spine, the back, and that’s where you realise that
you’ve crossed to the other side.

What He experienced before and after the blackout seems relatively violent
and rapid: ‘the break’, ‘the crack’, ‘the breakdown’, ‘unpleasant’, ‘my
spine, my neck are stiff ’, ‘a real stiffness in the spine, the back’. Self-­talk is
important here: he did not immediately sense the exit signal and chose to
continue; he feels little by little that he’s breaking down and says to
himself: ‘stop being a jerk’ and ‘get out, get out, get out’.
For Da (48-year-­old woman, beginner), blackout was experienced as a
real disappointment, a failure. She also changed her performance project at
the last moment, based on the results of others. The day before, she had
broken her own records in two other events and wanted to continue. But
she felt tired and did not have good sensations at the warm-­up.
During her performance, self-­talk seemed to dominate, with spasms to
control from 25 metres: ‘this is ridiculous, at least go to the wall (50 m), do
it for your son!’. She continued to the wall (50 metres) and said again: ‘ah,
everything’s OK finally, I still have some margin, it was just a spasm, it’s
anxiety’. But after the push to the wall, she began to glide and lost the
notion of the wall, the pool size, the references. She didn’t know where she
was going: ‘I was completely abandoned’. She was lost.
Excerpts from Da’s explication:

Da:   I pushed, I was good, I let it glide, and I continued without saying:
you have to go further. After, I fell asleep completely, I was com-
pletely in it, I was too good, and too good is not good.
M:   And you moved, you let yourself glide? Remember that?
Da:   Um … I kept swimming, but I don’t know how.
M:   You went up by yourself?
Da:   So, yes at that moment I get out, and the side I get out, usually I
get out near the wall because we train like that, and I let bubbles
go, because I have the impression … it reassures me to let bubbles
go to prepare for breathing, so I do it. But there is no wall, and in
my head, it’s the end, so it’s the wall, so I let go of the bubbles.

Although this sounds like a rather gentle experience, the interview was not
easy, filled with negative emotions: it was difficult to return to such a
disappointing experience. We quickly leave explication to collect a first
 The emersion of blackout in freediving   211

discourse analysing her practice. The explanation of leaving the pool indi-
cates her confusion, the likely effect of the severe hypoxia associated with
exercise in a new pool.
Thi (25-year-­old man, regional competitor) explains the struggle phase,
which he has learned to recognise and manage, although sometimes black-
out still occurs. Unlike Da, who felt like she was floating off, almost falling
asleep, Thi recounted an unpleasant struggle against his own body: ‘my
body tells me to get out but I won’t listen’; ‘my head was telling me to get
out and I said no!’;

I was having super strong spasms but they weren’t painful, I felt like
blood was going to my brain with every spasm, that I was feeling
impossible pressure, it almost made a noise, like pschit in my head,
even in my eyes, every time there was this noise, my sight got blurry, it
was odd, it cleared up and then got cloudy, and this was happening
long before it began to really affect me, making flashes.…

With their own words, these freedivers all evoked the body that regains
control: it cracks, it gains control, it says to get out or it falls asleep.
Through extreme apnoea, they experience the power of a body: the loss of
control of a body that they tried to dominate in order to perform. Blackout
is ultimately a kind of ultimate decision taken by the freediver’s
living body.

Differentiated relationships to overcoming limits

There are various attitudes towards blackout and the context of blackout,
the presence and role of peers, the relationship to one’s own body, also
have an effect. With this investigation, we can already identify several cat-
egories of interpretations and postures in the experience of blackout.
Some practitioners trivialise or minimise the event: ‘welcome to the
club’, ‘it’s part of the job’. The freediver must ‘pay to play’: a sort of mini-­
ritual that gives meaning and binds the club members. The ‘syncoped’ is
not excluded, far from it: ‘Sure we lose a few neurons … but no more than
boxers, and we have millions’ (He).
Yet there are also those who hide, who are disappointed, ashamed or
afraid, or who dramatise: ‘It was a very, very bad experience, and I never
want to do it again’; ‘the shame after a very small LMC’; ‘you’re no longer
in control’; ‘the feeling of losing control’; ‘I feel disgusted’; ‘it’s like you
didn’t respect your body, yourself ’; ‘it was frightening, a blow to my
pride’; ‘I always have that inside my head, I don’t want it to happen to
me’. Blackout is experienced as a degrading, unsightly event in which the
apnoeist has lost control in a sport that values self-­control and self-­
measurement.
212   M. Schirrer

Some are left with a real mental block, as if the blackout had left bodily
traces, had gained somatic anchoring. Practitioners and coaches attest to
this. ‘In training, it scared me, I didn’t want to go back into the struggle
phase because the sensations were a direct anchor!’ (He). As Pa (40-years-­
old, former competitor, coach of national-­level apnoeists) said about an
apnoeist with blackout at 180 metres: ‘After his syncope, he got out at
100 m, he was afraid it would happen again, he remembered all the sensa-
tions. But he got out at 100 m as if the sensations were starting again’.
Some practitioners make their blackouts public. We did not meet with
any in this investigation, but Guillaume Néry wrote about it in his auto-
biography regarding the much publicised blackouts of the champion Pipin:
he ‘helped make himself into a hero. He loved to put up pictures of his
fainting spells. Each time he was like the dead who rise again’ (Néry 2014:
p. 206). Blackout might be interpreted here as a way to serve the construc-
tion of self, highlighting prowess and differentiating oneself from common
mortals. As the philosopher Catherine Clément expressed it:

I leave the world, and then I come back. I die, but I don’t die. I stand
between the two, between life and death, just in between, refusing
both. And thus I deceive, at the same time as death, the difficult exer-
cise of the end of life.
(1990: p. 398)

Finally, the practitioners accept blackout as a necessary evil. They question

it and socialise around it, exchanging with peers, documenting themselves,
analysing the errors. They look for new references so they never have to
return to it.
These categories of response are not exclusive. During a career, an
apnoeist may gradually socialise this unordinary MSC, moving from
disgust to acceptance. Exchanges with peers, work and analysis within the
club or with the coach, but also the person’s psychological evolution (rela-
tionship to failure, self-­esteem), all contribute. Yet others will remain with
the fear that the MSC will happen again.

Strategies to avoid blackout

Apnoeists who have experienced blackout and yet continue in competition
build strategies to avoid reliving the experience.
Fa (55-year-­old woman, national competitor) talks to herself, sees where
she wants to go, quickly, and then talks to herself until her performance is
over. When in static, He refrains from closing his eyes from a certain time
onward. Others try to remain anchored in the present, refusing to project
to being on the surface. Al (40-year-­old woman, local competitor) needed
to review her video several times with club members, talk about it, and
 The emersion of blackout in freediving   213

analyse the errors: ‘I was looking for an answer’. She has not competed
since.
In the club, the coach (Di, 55-year-­old male) developed a method inspired
by Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) to help his apnoeists to get past
blackout and better understand what happens during static apnoea, where
reference can quickly fail. With the coach, the apnoeists build an ‘aesthesio-
logical scale’ or a scale of feelings that allows them to position themselves
with fine detail in the performance without external time markers, particu-
larly by associating feelings to the coach’s phases of apnoea.

Conclusion
The notion of immoderation seems particularly well adapted to analysing
blackout in apnoea. We do not interpret the meaning of these practices in
today’s world. Instead we have tried to grasp, from a phenomenological
perspective, the experience of blackout in apnoea as an example of immod-
eration in bodily activities and sports. The challenge here was to describe
and understand how practitioners live this experience of athletic/bodily/
energetic immoderation.
Blackout in apnoea (without equipment failure) appears to be the
product of various factors: an individual engaged in a logic of progress and
surpassing self or others, a unique context (competition, stress, a single try,
hyper-­safety), and an activity that poses a dilemma (come out lucid but as
late as possible).
Sensations and experiences differ: the body that cracks, the body that
speaks and says to get out, the body and mind that fall asleep. ‘Syncope is
not painful. We don’t feel oppressed, we don’t see it coming. We leave
without even noticing. After, I don’t remember anything. It’s a black hole
from which you emerge without dreams or memories’ (Nery 2014).
Relationships to this liminal experience differ. Sometimes trivialised or
dramatised, it may signify failure, loss of control, shame, disgust, a ‘plunge
deep into consciousness’. The subjective experience of blackout seems to
differ according to the type and level of practitioner, as each discovers the
autonomy of their living body, but the investigation is to be continued.
Finally, there appears to be a tension between the desire to push the
limits of the physical body and the search for inner balance and self-­
knowledge; between the competitive attitude that drives us to push beyond
the laws of nature and a kind of

return to a deep nature of the self where the mind resonates with the
subtle intuitions of the flesh … respect for the natural harmony of
the body, both in its internal structure and in its communion with the
environment
(Chenault et al. 2013: p. 737)
214   M. Schirrer

between moderation/harmony and immoderation/excess. To paraphrase

Guillaume Le Blanc (2012), apnoea is an attempt-­temptation to be both
beyond oneself and in oneself.

Notes
1 Because emotions sometimes overwhelm practitioners: the intense ‘thirst for air’,
spasms, the surrounding volume and pressure of the water can cause fear and
even panic.
2 In the last world championships (November 2015), Guillaume Nery experienced
blackout while trying to set a world record. The organisers made a mistake
about his target depth and ‘sent’ the champion to a depth greater than he had
requested.

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Chapter 17

The emersion of sensation in

slacklining
Lionel Chavaroche

Introduction
Slacklining is a balance activity, walking across flat webbing usually
between 19 mm and 5 cm wide and suspended above the ground. A short-
line is often found in parks about 50 cm above the ground, referring to a
distance between two anchor points that is not more than 20 m. Once this
distance has been mastered, several types of practice open up, each with its
own challenges and bodily techniques. Longlines are for long distances,
usually at least 50 m, and highlines are often more than 20 m from the
ground. Psychologically, the challenge in the first case is to maintain
balance over a long distance and in the second case it is to maintain self-­
control while crossing above the void. Tricklines and jumplines are
adapted for more acrobatic stunts.
Features can be added to these typical slacklines to enrich the sensorial
experiences. Using a very loose line, rodeo-­lining recalls the traditional
‘corde molle’, blindlining is slacklining blindly and waterlining is done over
a body of water, disrupting visual cues. Like many practices, slacklining
has also undergone hybridisations that will be addressed later.
As opposed to tightrope walking, slacklining was not originally a phys-
ical spectacle but has always been more oriented towards the conviviality
of practice. The elasticity of the line, not using a pole for balance and the
natural and changing environment are other differences, all with unex-
pected consequences for balance. We therefore consider slacklining a dis-
tinct physical activity. The challenge of balance lies mainly with the feet,
and this too distinguishes it from the Tyrolean traverse, which was created
for the purpose of effective displacement.
Slacklining started in Yosemite National Park in California with a new
generation of ‘counterculture’ climbers who turned to wall climbing in the
1960s to escape a society judged too normative. The height and number of
routes in such a vast area naturally led this young crew of ‘stonemasters’
to sleep in the Park and, with the rising hippie movement in the 1970s,
campsites began to spread across Yosemite. The climbers had found a
 The emersion of sensation in slacklining   217

Table 17.1  Main slackline practices 1

Type of Specificity Milieu Challenge Sensibility: what

slackline pushes you to act

Shortline Line is wide and Indoors and Tool for: ‘prepare’,

short, low to the outdoors discovery, ‘hold on’,
ground (10 m to education, ‘make it
20 m) therapy, across’, ‘make
meditation progress’
Trickline Line is wide with Urban and Artistic: ‘go beyond’,
and jumpline low elasticity for indoors freestyle, ‘increase’,
acrobatics (static competition ‘improve’,
and dynamics ‘master’
poses, jumps)
Longline Line is narrow Nature Prolonged ‘exceed limits’,
and very long balance ‘inner peace’,
(30 m to 100 m ‘get away’,
or more) ‘recharge’,
‘know self’
Highline Line is thin and Extreme Vertiginous ‘excel’,
this sport is nature thrills ‘discover’, ‘risk’,
often practised in ‘be the first to’
mountains with
safety rigging

home and stayed on for days and even months at a time. Downtime and
days of bad weather prompted them to look for things in common.2 In this
period of good times, the Yosemite climbers began to transform their
games of balancing between two anchor points. They gathered scraps of
strapping, webbing and ropes that they fixed between two trees close to
the ground. During this time of intense comradery, very much a part of the
hippie culture, this new activity helped them to develop skills directly
related to climbing.
The sport of slacklining slowly began to take shape and in the early
1980s two climbers definitively replaced the ropes with flat webbing to
combine elasticity and comfort. Developments continued as this ‘fun chal-
lenge’ began to awaken a new sensibility. The sport became more wide-
spread in the late 2000s, with the marketing of affordable and easily
installed kits. Barely taken into account by institutional actors, natural and
urban spaces saw a proliferation of ephemeral slacklines. Forests, parks,
covered markets, buildings – all became places where slackliners could
express themselves and personalise their taste in exercise while asserting
this activity as a right.
218   L. Chavaroche

A postmodern activity?
Slacklining was a rather closed activity in the 1980s, reserved for a few
pioneers, as has been the case for the vast majority of postmodern altern-
ative sports (Loret 2004). It has remained apart from the institutionalised
sports model and is very much associated with a counterculture that puts
great value on immediate emotions instead of future performance, the
adaptation to a variable environment instead of technical reproduction in
a coercive setting, and self-­organisation instead of a schedule of com-
petitive events. Outdoor activities have grown substantially in popularity
in France since the 1980s, in great part because they let us play in natural
elements and they heighten sensations. The features of this new way of
practising even began to be exported to the ‘traditional’ sports from the
2000s onward. New motivations for sports practice around hedonism,
conviviality and strong sensations brought out new relationships between
the body and nature. This movement is reflected both in sports immersed
in varied and variable environments, from the wilderness to the heart of
the city, and in the way of engaging in physical activity.
A counterculture has grown up around it, one that

does not hold with the recent character of sports practices but
expresses a new anthropology based on hedonistic individualism that
can accommodate individual pleasures shared with others or in ‘tribes’,
with meaning found in both the continuing forms of traditional prac-
tices and those of the new ‘fun’ practices.
(Le Pogam 1997: p. 24)

Nevertheless, this ‘making sport into recreation’ (Bessy 2008) does not
replace the club model as another form of ‘creative destruction’ (Schum-
peter 1942). Instead, it is more a complement to redefining the landscape
of French leisure, and we see a mixture of modes of practice, ranging from
hedonistic involvement in traditional sports to the redefining of post-
modern activities as competitive. Moreover, these modes of practice are
part of a dynamic process of technical and material innovation revolving
around a territory of evolution, in a new sociability.

An ultramodern activity?
Although this model seems to be imposing itself today, even in traditional
sports,3 modern culture is still present in the collective representations and
even permeates the postmodern sports. Concerning activities in nature, it
was first characterised by a spirit of ‘conquest’ and then gave way to the
desire to ‘measure’ and ‘compare’, which brought to these sports a new
competitive form.
 The emersion of sensation in slacklining   219

The first media coverage of slacklining, particularly in the United States,

focused on the ‘risky’ nature of the activity, such as Dean Potter crossing
Lost Arrow Spire in 2003 without a safety lanyard. He would go on to
inspire a whole new generation of slackliners, with television and the inter-
net spreading news of the records being broken, one after the other. The
current longline record is more than 1000 m4 and the highline crossings of
today range up to more than 100 m high: in the high mountains, slacklin-
ers truly have celestial crossings. As slacklining increasingly became a spec-
tacle, equipment innovations generated new forms of practice. The
trickline is a good illustration. Andy Lewis, who garnered media coverage
of his acrobatic stunts as early as 2004, developed trickline webbing with
Gibbon Slacklines and marketed a set that ensured maximal tension for
optimal energy return. The desired effect was a gain in amplitude for the
jumps, allowing for real gymnastic acrobatics. In this sense, slacklining
entered the gym with a clear benefit to traditional federations via member-
ship renewals, and in France the Slackrobate Association and the FFG of
Lille are notable examples. Yet this ‘indoorisation’ meant limiting practice
to traditional training schemes in specific places at fixed times.
As the innovations continued, the sense of freedom around this sport
prompted hybridisations. Dean Potter, recently deceased in a Wingsuit
accident, was behind BASElining, a combination of highlining and base
jumping in which a parachute replaces the harness belt. Swinglining is
another example, which entails a pendulum jump into the middle of a
canyon, swinging on a line running through it. The creation of new chal-
lenges seems endless, as evidenced by the performances of the ‘Flying
Frenchies’, who combine slacklining with circus arts and other extreme
sports. For example, they anchor a slackline between two hot air balloons.
Also, duo slacklining has opened up a whole new artistic dimension,
favourable to the choreographed spectacle.
Although these challenges have intensified the feelings and playfulness
associated with slacklining, both features of the postmodern culture, their
immediate spread over social networks has reinforced the competitive aspect
through a desire to emulate. The democratisation of slacklining has pushed
some purists to differentiate themselves from neo-­practitioners by creating
new techniques and taking up new challenges, thus also changing the sport.
The behaviour of the very best is copied by others and gradually picked up
by all, similar to the elite techniques of sports federations. Yet although club
memberships have stagnated somewhat in recent years, the traditional sports
culture remains well anchored in France.5 The spectacularisation of slacklin-
ing has undoubtedly brought it closer to the competitive spirit of modern
sports by putting value on the comparison of challenges undertaken.
Although far from the original values of slacklining (non-­competitive, playful
and libertarian), this ultramodern aspect (Ferez 2000) is more readily
accepted, as it is based on an appreciation for free choice and a chosen
220   L. Chavaroche

subculture. The ‘consum-­actor’, for example, may decide to reproduce the

exploits of the elite and then share them with a friend and not a competitor.
The exploits are followed worldwide, instantly communicated and taken up
by the business world in which brands tout free spiritedness, experience and
group belonging, somewhat masking this ultramodernity.

Challenges beyond the historic forms of slacklining

Slacklining cannot be fully understood by classifying each practice accord-
ing to its cultural aspiration: the modes of practice are actually quite mixed
and the sport is not merely about individual interest as it is very much a
shared experience in a valued territory, thus part of a transition in the
notion of recreation.
It is true that we find rather modern codes in tricklining with its com-
petitions, like any artistic sport that is judged, and we could classify lon-
glining as postmodern by the introspection it requires. But analysis should
most importantly consider each individual’s way of practising via sensibili-
ties, and yet this classification seems outdated. We observe it in our study
because many practitioners practise many forms of slacklining beyond per-
sonal predilection. There are of course similarities in the interests of high-
liners and longliners, for example, but jumpliners tend to try out other
specialties. Yet connections are created among the types of practice and
many admit to wanting to explore slacklining in all its forms. What was
common to all our interviews was the expressed need to share and co-­live
these experiences.6 For this reason, outings with friends can take preced-
ence over the practice of predilection. Slackliners defend their sport as
open to and tolerant of all, pointing to a broad social diversity gathered in
the same territory, with women welcome and a range of motivations
drawing people. Beyond the divergences in interests, techniques and sense-­
making (Colombetti 2014), they gather around shared histories and high-­
minded values, guaranteeing a new vision of recreational leisure.

Body ecology and recreational transition

The depletion of natural resources, the ecological crisis and increasingly
disturbing predictions have given rise to a desire to live in harmony with
the environment. What was only a relatively focused trend in the 1980s is
today embodied in a growing network of practices, following a more
heart-­based logic in redefining our connections with nature. The depth of
this exchange also materialises through the body, in the sense of Merleau-­
Ponty, because it is at the forefront of this sensory revolution. Nature prac-
tices have become a way of valuing the relationship we maintain with the
environment, emphasising the desire to be incorporated into the world.
The presence of different forms of practice within the same space reveals a
 The emersion of sensation in slacklining   221

transmodern challenge of accommodating a range of motives in the same

territory in an atmosphere of goodwill and big-­heartedness. This conver-
gence is more than leisure time and is hierarchised around a superior
element: the environment. We note, moreover, that this individual activity,
which intensifies subjective feelings, is practised mostly in groups.
Behind a Marxist conception of a free sport is the notion of the empow-
erment of practice, a post-­sport responding to ecological and federating
challenges. For this reason, the spread of slacklining occurs in potential
clustering sites rather than in private gardens or isolated natural areas.
Slackliners have taken ownership of urban and peri-­urban spaces by trans-
forming them into play territories characterised by a new sociability (Le
Breton 2007/2008). Postmodern egocentrism has entered a world in the
throes of an economic crisis and growing social inequalities since the
1980s. But in today’s hypermodernity (Lipovetsky and Charles 2004), we
are witnessing initiatives increasingly shared around exchanges in a know-
ledge economy and a kind of reenchantment of the world. Slacklining festi-
vals are a good example. By bringing together practitioners of different
modes of activity around ecological awareness, they point to a transition
in recreation. Organised over several days, slacklining festivals put high
value on the territory, with ephemeral camping sites and the use of local
products, often organic, for meals.
Activities related to nature and well-­being are common today. Examples
include workshops on medicinal plants and somatic techniques. Walks are
organised to discover the local fauna and flora, as are concerts by regional
groups and the showing of films on outdoor activities. The festive spirit
around this local and traditional resurgence reflects a big step taken back
from modern and postmodern cultures and a turning to other logics: natu-
rality, body ecology and relational ecology (Ingold 2007). Beyond the
possibility of evolving on highlines, longlines, waterlines, treelines and
rodeo-­lines or participating in jumpline competitions, we especially observe
a quest for meaning that associates the many dimensions of human activity
with these sports. The crossing of these practices on the same territory has
been paralleled in the activities of daily life, again around common values
and again creating quite a cultural mix. Territorial valorisation therefore
involves a new way of occupying space connected to a temporality mod-
elled on nature. Transmodernity responds to a

combinatorial approach to overcome the oppositions between cultures

and styles of practice, to strengthen territorial identity based on the
chosen orientations, to better involve local and regional populations
around a shared heritage, and to invite those who are marginalised
(the disabled, itinerant, excluded, elderly, and very young) to join in
these activities
(Corneloup 2011)
222   L. Chavaroche

New technologies fit into this paradigm and in fact participate in this
cosmosensory immersion (Andrieu 2012), as the body is rethought in its
relation to the contemporary technospheric movement. This new tran-
scendence in human development takes advantage of new means of con-
nection and this in turn favours ‘union with others, the communion of
otherness, the integration of self with the stranger, the incorporation of
otherness to achieve a collective self ’ (Maffesoli 2005: p.  19). Slackline
locations have become social territories, structured spaces in which human
relationships are played out, based in sport but being more than sport.
Space is indeed appropriated if we consider the time spent around slacklin-
ing as opposed to the time spent in actual practice presence.7 Setting up the
equipment, relaxing, side activities, listening to music, meals, all are
exchanges and activities that help spread a transmodern culture. These
places come to life through their relational potentialities. It is in this sense
that we refer to social territories. Slackliners thus need to find spaces quite
close to living spaces to both gather together and yet remain sufficiently
discreet to avoid municipal prohibitions. In this local anchoring, peri-­
urban areas are therefore generally preferred to environments that are too
wild or busy urban parks. On this last point in particular, marginal
behaviour is neatly circumscribed with legislation protecting both users
and public green spaces.

A new challenge for cities

Slacklining, like other urban sports, has become an issue for local and
regional authorities in light of these new spatial anchorages. Faced with
intensifying practice, local prohibition as the only response is increasingly
less easily accepted by the slacklining community. City policies need to
encompass safety, sustainable development and the valorisation of a patri-
mony. But in a context of accelerated obsolescence, local authorities
remain cautious about investing in practices that are still often regarded as
a passing fad. Beyond the activity itself, new ways of practising need to be
taken into account as the many motives affect a constantly growing
number of people. Between investing in a specific practice and proscribing
it, the idea today is to channel it by forbidding certain places, like heavily
frequented urban parks, but tolerating it in other places. Some cities even
propose signing conventions with local associations. Also, based on the
mobility of this activity, one solution would be to envisage dedicated
spaces or partial arrangements requiring accountability in exchange for
free practice. Management of these practices comes out of local measures
negotiated with the city, which must share out responsibility between man-
aging public spaces and a call for territorial innovation that today seems
unavoidable. In this sense, organising slackline festivals offers an interest-
ing field for experimentation.
 The emersion of sensation in slacklining   223

Living the void, an augmented adventure

In response to the domestication of the world and the concomitant privati-
sation, the flight to nature gives the opportunity to temporarily appropriate
it, and this reaches its height in an inalienable element: the air, and slack-
lining materialises the empty air between two earth points. Most slacklines
in urban or peri-­urban areas, being fairly tight, encourage camaraderie.
For the more adventurous, however, wilder territories are sought, with
specially organised sessions and the intent to push the limits of sensory
experience. The social experience is thus heightened by a vertiginous
immersion connecting these slackliners to a more intimate space. The spot
where this occurs becomes special, its natural potential imbued with
meaning. This is a new way to inhabit the world, temporarily appropriat-
ing a free and empty space, a grandiose emptiness, thereby reflecting the
ecologisation of the lifestyle. In this sense, spacelining explodes the linear-
ity of the slackline to create a new territory to invest, with its several lines
spun out like a spider web. The centre serves to prolong and channel the
lived experience in a sort of spatiotemporal pause. Hammocks and tents
can also be set up on the lines, reflecting a ‘cohousing’ of leisure, an
ephemeral cohabitation favouring connection with the elements and
others.

The conquest of self

In response to the spatial and temporal conquests of modern society, a
more intimate relationship to space and a more qualitative relationship to
time is emerging. As a kind of eco-­responsibility, it is becoming more
important to discover oneself and cultivate within a deeper respect for a
shared nature. We are in this sense witnessing a new consecration of
spaces, where the inner environment, the centre of emotions, yearns for
osmosis with the surrounding environment. Territories are being poetised
and ‘to dream deeply, we must dream with matter’ (Bachelard 1942).
Through this dreamlike confrontation with emptiness, a re-­creative imagi-
nation allows the slackliner to become a part of nature while embodying
his living totality. This sensation is all the greater with the challenges of
longlining and highlining. Evolving in the air, above the void, creates
uncontrolled reactions below the threshold of consciousness, anticipating
the adaptive response of the body by an immediate ecologisation.
The emersiology model shows that these automated and voluntary ges-
tures are not enough to meet the immediacy of this immersion (Andrieu
2013). A more immanent time nurtures direct perception by providing sen-
sations to the body in its relation to the world, ranging from vertigo to
osmosis. It is finally emptiness that immerses us in a more authentic and
more intimate space (Petit 1997). For the world as we know it, with its
224   L. Chavaroche

usual potentialities for action, slips away from us in vertiginous situations.

The deprivation of mere material references thus emerses the authenticity
of the living body. This loss of control is a deepening of sensory experience
in which we learn to truly recognise ourselves. Indeed, some practitioners
have said that they were unable to find ways to push their limits in an
aseptic society or even to simply discover themselves. Slacklining thus pro-
vided a way, fairly quickly and without undue risks. For others, however,
slacklining is a means of personal challenge where they can assert them-
selves in a sport increasingly judged by competitive results.8

Slacklining: an activity or a tool?

The mobility of slacklining is appreciated in a world where the itinerant
lifestyle is increasingly shared. Setting up a line redesigns spaces and is a
way to invest new spaces and immerse oneself in the heart of a beloved
nature with friends. Slackline kits are well-­designed and easy to install, and
thus accessible to all. The slackline goes anywhere, in parks, wildest nature
and even indoors. Studies have shown the positive effects of slacklining on
balance, attention and muscle strengthening, and it is now used in func-
tional rehabilitation centres and the physical preparation programmes of
high-­level athletes. It requires staying in the present moment and it has
thus also attracted followers of yoga and other similar practices, where it
becomes a meditative tool. It can meet different needs but in doing so the
risk is that the practice itself is effaced to the benefit of a single object.
Moreover, the dynamism of some of the local associations has not
helped in creating a national organisation to the regret of certain practi-
tioners who would like to resolve such issues as agreements on highline
sites, the training for monitors, dealing with municipal bans, and setting
up official jumpline competitions. Attempts to separate the practices have
been made, with jumpliners approaching gymnastics federations and high-
liners, various climbing clubs. We suspect that a lack of transparency and
coherence, as reflected by the separation into different practices or the
transformation into a single tool, will cause a decline in the coming years.
Unlike some of the outdoor sports that have experienced strong artificiali-
sation like skiing, rock climbing or kayaking, slacklining has kept its spon-
taneous character in the natural environment. This will be fundamental for
its future because it responds to a global eco-­recreational logic. History has
shown that, although codifying and standardising these sports helped to
institutionalise them, they also restricted their expressive potential and
prompted the development of other practices showing a substantive shift
in content more than form with regard to the original activity, as was the
case with urban board sports, for example. The motivational stakes in
slacklining are connected to a repoetising of the territories, which cannot
be ignored.
 The emersion of sensation in slacklining   225

Conclusion
Slacklining is part of a transmodern model of physical activities that
promote public and wild spaces as opposed to private property, cultural
cohabitation as opposed to the hierarchisation of a single model and flex-
ible encounters as opposed to fixed training. On this last point, social
media and other communication technologies make it easy to immediately
organise get-­togethers based on whim, the weather, sites and interactions.
Learning to rock the line and being syntonic with the environment reso-
nates in a society for which a ‘fall’ is a powerful symbol. Slacklining is just
one example of the vertiginous practices that have emerged in recent years to
attract people by the awakening of emotions that they offer (Andrieu 2014).
Other examples are wingsuits, portaledges for altitude climbing, glass walk-
ways or exploits like rooftopping. Behind these practices there is no doubt a
deep-­seated and often unconscious cosmic resonance. Many slackliners
acknowledge this paradox of wanting to walk into the void and objectifying
the filiation between the real and the imaginary. They often express a disso-
ciation between a body ‘that must go forward’ and the awareness of the
‘abnormality’ of the situation, requiring ongoing ‘self-­management’.9
This sensitivity in part guides their practice, a sort of Bachelardian
reverie that connects them to nature. The slackline resonates in the lives of
many, a metaphor for the balance they seek within themselves, with others
and with the world. A slacklife. The thinking of Bachelard seems particu-
larly apropos, because in a society characterised by vertiginous uncertainty,
a poetic knowledge of the world is perhaps the best expression of reasoned
knowledge.

Notes
1 Classification based on questionnaire responses collected as part of investigation
conducted as part of doctoral research in 2015, with 108 experienced slackliners
practising at least once a week in the summer.
2 This atmosphere is captures in the documentary film Valley Uprising by Peter
Mortimer in 2014.
3 Statistical information 2015. Results of an investigation conducted in 2010 by
the Ministry of Sports and the National Institute of Sports, Expertise and
Performance (Dujol, J.-B., ed. (2015). La pratique des activités physiques et
sportives en France. www.sports.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/la_pratique_des_activites_­
physiques_et_sportives_en_france.pdf.).
4 Pablo Signoret, Nathan Paulin and Lucas Milliard crossed a 1662 m slackline on 9
June 2017 in Cirque de Navacelles, France. It is the world record of the moment.
5 Statistical information 2015 (as referenced in note 3).
6 Investigation conducted as part of doctoral research in 2015 (as referenced in
note 1).
7 Investigation conducted in 2015 (ibid.).
8 Investigation conducted in 2015 (ibid.).
9 Investigation conducted in 2015 (ibid.).
226   L. Chavaroche

Bibliography
Andrieu, B. (2012). L’autosanté. Vers une médecine réflexive. Paris, France:
Armand Colin.
Andrieu, B. (ed.) (2013). L’écologie pré-motrice, Sciences et Motricité, Special
issue.
Andrieu, B. (2014). Donner le vertige – Les arts immersifs. Montréal, Canada:
Liber.
Bachelard, G. (1942). L’Eau et les Rêves. Essai sur l’imagination de la matière.
Paris, France: José Corti.
Bessy, O. (2008). Sport, loisir, tourisme et développement durable des territoires.
Grenoble, France: PUS.
Colombettio, G. (2014). The Feeling Body: Affective Science Meets the Enactive
Mind. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Corneloup, J. (2011). Les sentiers de l’imaginaire, au seuil de la transmodernité,
ERE, Education Relative à l’Environnement, 10: 139–159.
Ferez, S. (2000). De la lutte des générations à la lutte des sexes en éducation
physique et sportive, Corps et culture [online], 5, http://corpsetculture.revues.
org/1022.
Ingold, T. (2007). Une brève histoire des lignes. Paris, France: Zones Sensibles.
Le Breton, F. (2007/2008). Le territoire ludo-­sportif urbain: entre tensions territori-
ales et violences symboliques, Esporte e sociedad, 3, www.uff.br/esportesociedade/
pdf/es705.pdf.
Le Pogam, Y. (1997). Corporéisme et individualisme hédoniste, Corps et Culture,
2: 151–169.
Lipovetsky, G., Charles, S. (2004). Les temps hypermodernes. Paris, France:
Grasset.
Loret, A. (2004). Concevoir le sport pour un nouveau siècle. Voiron, France: PUS.
Mafessoli, M. (2005). Participation, Sociétés, 88: 15–24.
Petit, P. (1997). Traité du funambulisme. Arles, France: Actes Sud.
Schumpeter, J. (1990). Capitalisme, socialisme et démocratie. Paris, France: Payot.
Chapter 18

The emersion of involuntary

gesture in the vertiginous
circus arts
Bernard Andrieu and Haruka Okui

Body practice, so singular to each individual, defines lived physical activity

but as an experience after the fact: the experience of body practice is con-
stituted without being reflected upon. In the circus arts, each performer has
to catch her breath or lower her core body temperature to get back to a
normal state after the sensory changes brought about by the intense
physical activity. This kind of temporality requires a progressive reappro-
priation of the sensory experience through attention to oneself: during the
practice, the feeling of living a bodily experience presupposes a split
between physical activity and the subject who puts his body into the
practice.
This accompaniment of consciousness during the practice is part of the
body techniques of self-­reflexivity, such as those inspired by Dewey and
Alexander and developed by Richard Shusterman in his book Body Con-
sciousness. After the practice, the somaesthetic ‘return to oneself ’ in the
moment of recovery is a slow descent into one’s inner self in order to recal-
ibrate the different aesthesiological layers of information about the state of
our bodies, in the phenomenological sense: stretching, relaxation and other
techniques of energy release participate in this new self-­knowledge.

Levels of awareness at the National Centre for

Circus Arts (CNAC)
Our work at the National Centre for Circus Arts (CNAC) combines a
theoretical course defining the levels of awareness, self-­reflexive films and
self-­interviews, which together provide an approach to the premotor
ecology of the living body, the subconscious habituation of body tech-
niques and a representational consciousness. One objective of this research
programme has been to produce an educational film of this type analysis
that can be transferred to other disciplines.
The work consists of a multi-­level reading in order to achieve a dynamic
and embodied understanding of the conscious and unconscious situation
of motor skills. Seeing what our living bodies can do without us and before
228   B. Andrieu and H. Okui

us reveals less about parasitic gestures that need to be eliminated and far
more about a premotor ecology of the living body that precedes the con-
sciousness of our lived body by about 450 milliseconds.
Body techniques are the result of mechanisms of interaction between the
body and the world of environmental information that has been collected,
the selection of a motor programme, the adjustment of this response and
the launch of the motor execution (Durand et al. 2015: p.  33). An ideal
laboratory for examining the relationships between the living body and the
lived body is the circus artist who is learning new body techniques. With a
body-­mounted GoPro camera, we certainly do not feel the living percep-
tions of the artist, but we do gain a first-­person view of his or her position
as the body struggles to accomplish a new figure. These films provide
access to bodily action through empathy while promoting greater reflexiv-
ity: the distinction between the voluntary and conscious act and the
unintentional and unconscious act is immediately visible, whereas a third-­
person view does not provide the whole-­body movement with the same
depth.
The self-­confrontation that occurs as performers watch themselves
filmed in the third person prompts an explication from them, as if a look-­
alike were giving instructions on the figure being performed so that it
could be reproduced by a novice. A subjective perspective now draws cog-
nitive attention to the traces of bodily activity: confronted with the sub-
jective perception of a video image, the subjects are in a situation of
cognitive re-­situ and can verbalise what they did by describing and com-
menting on the course of their action using their own words. The first-­
person body-­mounted GoPro camera provides additional information
because it produces images that were not voluntarily filmed. Like in free
style, a body-­mounted camera can show unique and thrilling images,
unexplored environments and certain postures at the very heart of the
action.

The production of skilled movement

Without sufficient attention to this acquisition, accidents and injury
become more likely. As we do at the CNAC, it is important to provide
tools for analysing the differences between the living body, the acquired
techniques of the body and the awareness of one’s body image and body
schema: the difficulty is in believing that the artist’s body is only turned
towards the spectacle, whereas the sensations of pleasure, effort and pain
contribute to a singular and personal memory of the body of each and
every artist. Sex differences are also important, depending on the style of
the show, as well as the physical capacities that the artists can call on.
These physical capacities are the adaptive potentials that circus performers
must activate and actualise according to their body techniques.
 Involuntary gesture in circus arts   229

Feeling one’s living body requires attention to oneself in the course of

performance but also through self-­reflexive processes shared with the
coach and partners. We have discovered how important analysing the
living body can be for those interested in the economic side of circus per-
formance: the artists’ health depends on the habits acquired as soon as the
bodies begin to be trained but also on their methodical analysis of their
self-­health, which teaches them to know themselves better in (injury) pre-
vention and in action.
This work combines a theoretical course defining the levels of conscious-
ness, self-­reflexive GoPro films and self-­confrontation interviews around
the films, which together provide an approach to the premotor ecology of
the living body, the subconscious habituation of body techniques and rep-
resentational consciousness. To feel one’s body in the first person presup-
poses distinguishing these three levels of activity that are situated in the
corporeal history of each individual. This is difficult because our attention
is often focused on only the representational consciousness that produces
mental images of our produced and reproduced gestures.

Analysing the typology of movements in the first

person
By mounting the camera on a piece of equipment (surfboard, skis, skate-
board, circus trapeze, rings, etc.), we see the body with its skills and action
postures, but when the camera is mounted on the body (chest, forehead),
we see a typology of different movements:

• The unconscious movements of the body schema that are activated to

restore balance through an ‘offset’ (the reflex movement of counteract-
ing) react to change, catching one’s breath or avoiding an obstacle.
Ledoux (1998) was able to show how primary emotions between 80
and 180 milliseconds produce a motor response faster than those that
are corticalised. Uncontrolled movements, reflexes, urgent moves and
emotional expressions like fear are visible in the images.
• Automatic but habitual movements so well incorporated by the body
techniques during training and the repetition of exercises that they
seem to be related to body intentionality; the body seems to carry them
out without realising it. The incorporated movements have become
automatic: for example, Juan Ignacio Tula automated the motor
impulses needed to work on the wheel quite some time ago, now
paying attention only to placing his hands as they pass over ground.
The movements of his hips are automatic, and video recordings are
needed to show him his actions and the adjustments he makes.
• The voluntary and conscious movements that are based on mental
preparation and a cognitive representation even before the action: the
230   B. Andrieu and H. Okui

movement made conscious. Chloe Mazet, in her work with the rope,
helped us to explore the sensation of weight as an element of well-­
being with rope techniques: this high focus of attention allows her to
act on the decision to change posture and wrap herself in the rope to
avoid falling or to create a new movement.

Thus, these images captured by the GoPro show us micro-­movements, hes-

itations, changes of direction, motor adjustments or adaptations to novelty
before we even realise it in cognitive experience. Premotor ecology
(Andrieu 2013) and its instruments of measure and reflexive visualisation
thus become visible: the living body to which our consciousness no longer
pays attention.
Emersiology is a new method for exploring the emergence of the invis-
ible living data of the body into an individual’s awareness. These implicit
activities of the living body (heart rate, involuntary gestures, stress,
reflexes, emotional regulation, interaction expression) emerge into the con-
scious lived body without the control of will. This body language is uncon-
scious and proves the activation and ecologisation by living data.
The concept of emersiology, which describes three body levels, is highly
innovative (Andrieu and Burel 2014). Body descriptions are mediated by
our own representations, which allow us to interpret or analyse a given
situation. This refers to what the individual is able to say about his or her
body. The lived body is the feeling of this represented body, mediated by
our emotions. Last, the living body, the deepest level, interacts even before
we know it in our lived body.

Living corporality and awareness in circus arts

students from CNAC
Between bodies, communication does not imply simultaneity and transpar-
ency for consciousness, because the information produced by the living
body during its ecological movement in the world is not fully available in
the consciousness of the body experienced. This delayed consciousness of
the body lived on the activity of its living body is about 450 microseconds
in advance of the level of consciousness. As part of our body course, circus
scientists were asked to analyse the perceived infracorporality of the body
by writing and sketching a specific sequence of their learning in a narrative
in three levels: the unconscious level of activity of the living body, the tech-
niques of the body that produce habitus in the sense of Marcel Mauss and
finally an activity of consciousness. The topic was set on 18 May 2016:
‘From your body experience (workshops, gestures, learning, exercises …),
using the three levels (unconscious body, body technique, consciousness),
write an essay …’.
 Involuntary gesture in circus arts   231

Memory of injury
For one young apprentice in the circus arts, Ramos Hernandez Angel Paul,
an injury to his calf was the occasion for him to reflect on the activity of
his living body. In an interview he recounts his injury and the role of his
memory in changing his state of consciousness at the time of resuming
training:

Our bodies do not lie. They exhibit our troubles, our conflicts, our suf-
ferings. When we live an emotion in the present, there is always a
resonance with a past emotion. The experience can be totally different
but the emotion felt will be the same. There is always a trace, a
memory that allows the recognition of the emotion. The mind always
acts in this way, it will initiate a process of recognition through
memory and comparison. Our body will find in its core a similar
experience (or not) and the emotion linked to it to reactivate it.

Thus, the injury is an interruption in the process of incorporating tech-

niques by breaking the course of learning. But to the physical injury is
added the moral suffering of the feeling of failure which seems to remain
permanently in the body memory: this remanence of the injury, even after
the physical healing, explains the psychological difficulties during the
resumption of training – which follows along the same path that led to the
injury. Angel established a logical sequence that might again lead to
the  accident: Habits + Acquired = Automatism = Accident = Injury. The
exercise overload of the living body involves both physical and psycho-
logical trauma. But the psychological part takes precedence, with fear,
blockage and loss of self-­confidence, leading to inhibition. The psychic
dimension is also noted in the lived description of his body – with strong
words like obsession, frustration and exhaustion.

The incorporation of gesture

In distinguishing the three levels of the body, emersiology proposes to
young artists to evaluate the relationship between the living body, the lived
body and the body automated by the techniques of the body. Inbal Ben
Haim, a rope artist, describes here the three levels of bodily experience,
which she calls ‘incorporality’ by explaining the new ways of using her
body that were adopted after sustaining a traumatic shoulder injury during
a rope exercise.

Physical and mental overload is the first identified cause but as the
result of a sum of three factors, in a psycho-­somatic reading of a living
body (physical fatigue during the repetition of movements without
232   B. Andrieu and H. Okui

sufficient physical preparation, sickness during the week of creation

and work on the rope without sufficient warm-­up).

Despite the information from her living body that made her foresee that
she would not succeed, she thinks overload and physical instability com-
plete the production conditions of the injury. A strange noise of tearing
and a strange feeling in the shoulder, ‘does not allow me to immediately
understand that I hurt myself ’.
In the second stage, she is able to describe the adaptation to the new
contradiction imposed by her injury – a torn shoulder muscle – in order to
reorganise her body pattern after ‘surgical intervention in my body’: during
nine months of ceasing all physical activity, the injury prevents her from
practicing on the rope but promotes a new consciousness in the use of her
body. The technique of the body must therefore be adapted by, she says, a
‘reflexive learning of another way of working with my body’ using the legs,
the toes, the pelvis or the left shoulder in a different way. The use of
somatic practice, sophrology and Body Mind Centring in dance, ‘allowed
me an immersion in sensations and awareness of my physical and mental
state’. Recovering the fun of ‘playing’ with the rope will have been essen-
tial in this moment. After the surgical operation, despite the confrontation
with a ‘total weakness’, the degree of consciousness increases by ‘a great
attention paid to the body – nutrition, physical exercise, sleep’. A recom-
position of the internal body pattern is achieved by new ‘habits and
reflexes to protect the area in trauma’ accentuating the body-­mind dissoci-
ation of the experience of great pain.
Recovering after seven months of rehabilitation, increased consciousness
now becomes necessary for the final stages and ‘decisions of voluntary
actions that are strange to my body after such a long pause’, during the
progressive tests. The mental preparation is increased but the internal
representation is ‘distorted from the body, I feel that my shoulder is not
connected to the body … representation of the weak and incapable body’.
There is a discontinuity between the living body and the lived body: ‘There
is a gap between the representation of the body’ before the injury ‘and the
memory of the exercises I could make and of the body’ after the injury.
Work continues today to recreate a link between the body, the mental
image of the body and the internal sensations.

Minimising the effect of reflexes

If the living body acts in us in spite of ourselves, how can we then reduce
the reflex activity to consent to realise gestures and techniques that increase
the motor capacities of our usual pattern? Reflex activity manifests the
vitality of the living body which seems to take decisions below the thresh-
old of consciousness of the subject.
 Involuntary gesture in circus arts   233

The difficulty for Sève Bernard on the trampoline is the trigger reflex,
especially at the first time of trying some new move:

The first time, there is the uneasiness of the unknown, deeply

anchored, that I must overcome and therefore first listen. I know that
it can manifest itself in an innate reflex that could be dangerous to me,
for example ‘refusal’ in the middle of execution – that famous ‘no’ –
which frequently happens the first times, where the body just stops, in
refusal. This gives the protective indication that it should give – a sen-
sation of cut-­off, in which one ‘loses oneself ’.

Here the description relates to the body’s protective movement response,

triggered by its brain, at a level of activation that must be distinguished
from concentration. Sève distinguishes here the attention of concentration
because it is exercised in a ‘more specific and precise space’. This attention
can create ‘new forms of apprehension’ especially when failures have been
both positive and negative.
Another young artist, Antonin Bailles, analyses the role of the uncon-
scious, which can be both positive and negative in forbidding change:

The unconscious is predominant in this phase, with body techniques

(which are also themselves often unconscious). If consciousness was
too present, fear would change the rotation in a harmful way. The loss
of visual cues often leads to innate protective reflexes that cut off the
desired movement. From there, a regular practice of acrobatics on the
ground or on the trampoline is necessary to keep an inner ear primed
and to minimise the effect of unconscious reflexes of protection.

As the reflex activity is unconscious of the subject, the artist must listen
more carefully to the emersive signs of his living body. The unconscious
activity of the body is twofold: on the one hand, the uncontrollable reflexes
that the artist must be able to recognise so as not to be afraid, and on the
other hand the techniques of the body incorporated during the learning
process and produced automatically. Thus, the minimising of reflexes is
also based on the acceptance and understanding of the logic of the living
body, beyond representations:

Conclusion
The communication of the living body is effected by a sensitivity that
becomes perceptive. This insensitive immersiveness occurs in the living body
without the perception of the lived body feeling the sensory intensity. The
living body resists being reduced to cognitive signs of the unconscious activa-
tion of brain areas. Thus, any premotor organisation of its communication
234   B. Andrieu and H. Okui

starts from its very formation to interact with the corporeal world (Andrieu
2011). These interactions, without providing content for consciousness,
produce pre-­representational activity. The otherness of the living body
comes to us from its previous activity in the consciousness of the lived
body: the living body is active in brain networks, which anticipate and
organise awareness as the condition for cognition.
This has been confirmed and is visible by in vivo neuroimaging. A com-
munication delay of 450 microseconds, demonstrated by Libet et al. (1979)
and Libet (2004), occurs before any direct information of the living body
is able to enter our consciousness. By its immediate ecologisation, the
living body informs the sensorimotor systems before the subject has the
feeling of taking a cognitive decision.
Since the 1990s, with the advances in video measures of body move-
ments, a neurobiological phenomenology of action, introduced by the neu-
rophenomenologist Francisco Varela (1996), has been able to demonstrate
that perception feeds back to neurocognitive networks and that action
commits perception in neuro-­motor-making and deliberation systems. Bio-­
subjectivity studies have shown how body experience feeds back to the
living body and how the alive body not only changes its body image but
also its body schema; the living brain is connected to the sensorimotor
system.

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Index

aesthesiology 4, 121, 177, 180–1, 188 Da Nóbrega, P. x, 2, 4–5, 112, 177,

Andrieu, B. i, viii, 9, 13, 61, 65, 102, 179, 186, 188
106, 112, 125–8, 131, 136, 171, dance i, 18, 25, 28, 30, 125, 151–6,
185–6 159–60, 177, 179–89, 232
apnoea x, 3, 5, 177–8, 203–14; see also Dasein 4, 136–48
blackout Domelevo, A ix, 2–3, 10
art 17, 101–6, 112–14, 150–2, 179–89, Duncan, I. 28–9, 151, 154–5, 159–60
219–20
ecologisation 2, 4, 13, 15–16, 19, 22,
Bausch, P. 177, 186, 188 74, 98, 127, 132, 178, 223, 230, 234
blackout 203–14; see also apnoea ecology 164, 171, 179, 185–8, 221;
Bloodworth, A. viii, 2–3, 11 premotor ecology 227–30
body ecology i, 1–5, 13–18, 22, 25, embodiment i, 4, 38, 43, 64, 116, 196
30, 62, 97–100, 105–8, 112, 116, emersiology i, 5, 32, 77, 177, 185, 223,
121, 124–32, 136, 164, 185–6, 230–1
220–1 emersion i, 1–2, 4–5, 9–11, 13–14, 22,
body schema 3, 10, 22, 39, 41–8, 131, 102, 106, 177–8, 185, 203–15,
181, 187–8, 228–9, 234 216–26, 227–35
body sensation 9, 166 emersive leisure 1–5, 10–11, 13, 15,
bodybuilding i, 2, 5, 177, 190–200 21–3, 97, 177–8
Bourdeau, P. viii, 2, 4, 97, 106, 109, enchantment 3, 9, 59, 61–3, 66, 153,
116, 130 221
environment i, 1–4, 6, 9, 13–22, 27,
Cassell, E.J. 89, 91 29–30, 33, 39–40, 42, 52, 66, 76–7,
Chavaroche, L. viii, 2, 5, 178 85, 87, 97–8, 100, 102–7, 112–16,
circus arts i, 2, 177–8, 219, 227–34 119–20, 124–33, 136, 138, 140, 143,
consciousness i, 1–5, 9, 11, 13, 16, 20, 146–8, 150, 152, 156–7, 166, 171,
22, 38, 40–1, 44–5, 53, 73, 76–9, 177–8, 185, 203–4, 206, 213, 216,
166, 177–8, 180, 187, 204–9, 213, 218, 220–5, 228
223, 227–34 ethics i, 77, 98, 107, 117–18, 120, 171
Corneloup, J. ix, 2, 4, 97, 103, 105–6,
108–9 Feldenkrais 3, 10, 51–6
corporeality 16, 20, 97, 121, 125, 166, flow 3, 9–11, 51, 53, 55–7, 182–3
180, 183, 187 freediving i, 2, 203–13
cosmologisation 2, 4, 97, 113, 150–61
cosmology 15 Gomez, M. viii, 117
cosmosis 3
Csikszentmihalyi 3, 10, 57 Halák, J. ix, 2–3, 10, 48
 Index   237

health 9, 11–12, 13, 28, 54, 83–92, 99, naturalism 9, 28, 30

104–5, 120, 132, 145, 153–4, 157, nudism 113, 119, 151, 156
166, 192, 229
Hébert G. 3, 9–10, 25–34, 70, 98, 125, Okui, H. x, 2, 5, 177–8
132–48 ontology 4, 112, 136, 140, 180
Heidegger, M. 4, 16, 136 outdoor 9, 15, 18, 33, 98, 114, 121,
Hofmann, I. 153–4, 157–9 126–7, 146, 156, 178, 184, 217–18,
221, 224
Ibrahime, S. vi, ix, 2–3
immersion 1, 3–5, 9, 13–14, 19–20, pain 13, 83, 89, 91, 147, 178, 191–6,
97–8, 106, 108–9, 113–16, 121, 200, 204–5, 210–11, 213, 228, 232
124–8, 132, 136, 146, 151, 164, 166, parkour i, 3, 34, 98, 124–33
177–9, 182, 185, 188, 200, 203, 205, Parry, J. i, x, 2, 4, 97, 143, 147
222–3, 232 Perera, E. x, 2, 177, 193, 196, 200
immersive 4–5, 9, 11, 13, 18–19, 22, Philippe-Meden, P x, 2, 9, 25, 27,
61, 102, 106, 116, 125, 133, 178, 29–31, 34
182, 185, 233 play i, 1, 21, 98, 102, 107, 109, 115,
instrumentality 140–5 128–31, 178, 182, 184, 211, 218–19,
221, 232
journey 27, 114, 164–71 Porrovecchio, S i, x, 2–3, 10, 60, 63–4
puritan ethic 190–200
Lebreton, F. ix, 2–3, 34, 97, 101,
128–9, 132 Schirrer, M x, 2, 5, 177–8, 203
Lecocq, G. ix, 2, 4, 97–8, 166–71 scientism 25, 28, 33
Legendre, A. ix, 2–3, 11 self-discovery 98, 164
leisure i, 1–5, 9–11, 14–16, 21–3, Shusterman R 79, 130–1, 227
97–101, 106, 112, 115, 121, 126, slacklining i, 2, 5, 178, 215–25
128–9, 177–8, 180, 186, 188, sport i, 1–5, 11–16, 21, 25, 27, 32–4,
218–23 60–6, 83–92, 97–109, 112–16, 121,
124–32, 136, 138, 140, 142–8, 178,
Mao, P. ix, 2, 4, 97 190, 203–7, 211, 217–24
martial arts 60–5, 71 Sirost, O. i, xi, 2, 4, 9–10, 13, 18, 97–8,
Martínková, I. ix, 2, 4, 97, 137, 143, 125–6, 132
147 subjectivity i, 21, 37–48, 169, 193, 197,
Merleau-Ponty, M. 3, 10, 37–48, 112, 234
180–1, 183, 220 surfing i, 4, 15, 97–121
Monte Verità 14, 98, 132, 150–61
tai chi 4, 11, 63
Natural Method 3, 9–10, 25–34, 70, technique (s) 1, 3–4, 9, 11, 13, 15, 20,
98, 125, 132 22, 26, 29–30, 64, 69–78, 100,
nature i, 1–4, 9–12, 13–21, 30, 37, 64, 113–14, 125–6, 132, 143, 150, 184,
66, 69–78, 87, 97, 99, 103–7, 200, 216, 219–21, 27–3
112–16, 120, 125–33, 150–61, transhumanism 97, 99, 103–4, 106–8
177–8, 179–89, 217–25 Toombs, K. 89–92
naturism 3, 15, 17–18, 21, 97, 113,
117–22, 132, 150, 154–5 urban sports 124–33