Consider this scenario. Imagine you’re in a grassy field, on a sunny day. You look at a tree and recognize it with the thought, “that’s a tree.”
A culture may distinguish the “physical” aspects of this situation; the locations and states of you, the Earth and the Sun, and the tree. These four objects are called “bodies” in some cultures.
A culture may distinguish the “mental” aspects of this scenario; the ability to feel the weight on your feet and the sunshine on your face; the ability to think “that’s a tree over there.” These processes are called “mind” in some cultures. There are all sorts of related processes that are described variously as emotional or spiritual aspects of a person. All kinds of explanations are used to map these subjective, personal aspects onto the person’s living body.
A culture may distinguish the other bodies (or minds) from your body (or mind). In this scenario, Sun, Earth and the tree can all be considered non-self parts of the world, parts of the environment.
These are cultural ideas, and while they can frame scientific investigation, they can’t be easily validated by the sciences. After all, there are no demonstrable (human) minds without (human) bodies. All living things, including humans, are open systems; both matter and energy is continuously exchanged with the milieu. A living organism is more like a river, defined by its identity persisting through constant material change, than like a fancy machine.
In the context of this newsletter, we define soma to mean “the experience of body,” along the lines proposed the philosopher (and Feldenkrais Practitioner) Thomas Hanna. We emphasize this experience includes elements of the categories of body, mind, and (local) environment. That experience, and how it relates to functions or goals, is the soma we clarify as students of Somatic Education.