Somaesthetics and Education

This paper explains the discipline I call somaesthetics, which is devoted to studying the experience and use of one's body as a site of sensory appreciation and creative self-fashioning. It is a critical, meliorative discipline that aims to improve the experience and use of oneself and thus also improve the larger communities or environments in which the self is actively situated. After noting some underlying philosophical goals and roots of somaesthetics, I outline its main branches: analytic, pragmatic, and practical somaesthetics, and I distinguish between its representational, experiential, and performative modes. I then defend the somaesthetic approach against philosophical arguments that challenge the value of reflective body consciousness, and I elaborate the special contributions that somaesthetics can make to education. After offering a brief example of an exercise of somaesthetic reflection, the paper concludes by considering the practical problems of introducing somaesthetic education into the standard frameworks of current educational institutions.