Josh's response to "Felt Sense"

[joshua]

#730

It has often occurred to me on an intuitive level that there is a false binary between body and mind, but so much of Western civilization is built upon this false binary, and many of the imbalances and blind spots of our culture rest upon an emphasis of this mistaken split. I am very interested in exploring how using felt sense guidelines in the writing classroom might work out. While I am excited to investigate these techniques in my teaching (whenever I have time to return to teaching!), for some reason it seems daunting to me to participate in a felt sense exercise, as I am imminently about to do.
I am frightened of the “letting go” aspect of the exercise, I suppose. Letting go of control, even if it is control that is for the most part illusory, can be difficult to achieve. Perhaps this connects back to the false binaries that go back at least as far as Plato and Aristotle, who stressed the importance, in the (erroneous) Mind/Body dichotomy or hierarchy, of the Mind being master over the Body. Cartesians since Descartes too have viewed the mind as being wholly separate from the corporeal body. Which doesn’t make sense, either common or any other kind. Sensation and the perception of reality are in this view thought to be the source of untruth and illusions, with the only reliable truths to be had in the existence of an abstracted metaphysical mind. Such a mind can perhaps interact with a physical body, but it does not exist in the body, nor even in the same physical plane as the body. Again, intuitive felt sense, if we listen to it (and let go), will belie this false duality.

[Sondra Perl]

#731

How do we take something and convert it to words? How much of what we mean is really an extension of what we feel?
Last year I saw a play Not by Bread Alone, Nalaga’at Theater Deaf-Blind Acting Ensemble (Israel). https://arktype.org/nalagaat-theater/

This play was amazingly performed by deaf, mute and blind performers, and if you can imagine translated from Hebrew to English. The actors relied solely on the physical sensation to touch to convey everything and how they contribute to society. They intrinsically rely on felt sense, in both the physical sense and the emotional sense.

Needless to say, translation was had; I left the theater completely moved to tears both joyful and sad.

Society at large, has not tapped into the innate abilities our bodies and minds do without “our” participation.

[joshua]

#732

Lindsey,

That is amazing. I want to see that play, performed by that ensemble!
The example of Not Bread Alone performed by the Nalaga’at Theater Deaf-Blind Acting Ensemble distills felt sense to a kind of essence, doesn’t it? A translation from Hebrew to English adds a liminal dimension as well, and this “threshold” space is really what felt sense attempts to allude to, right? As ever, Lindsey, thanks for sharing your wonderful ideas and experiences.

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