Humanity in a time of collective initiation

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 47-53
Author(s):  
Linda Hartley
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Global Community ◽  
Birth Process

As our whole global community entered a period of much loss, both personal and collective, the realization came to me that we are facing a process of collective initiation. Initiation always involves a loss of some sort and, to some degree, a potential for something new to be born. Initiatory journeys, which have been mapped by shamans since antiquity, and in the myths and legends of various cultures, show us an archetypal pattern of loss and death, dismemberment or burning, followed by renewal and rebirth. We also each know this process, however unconsciously, in our own embodied experience of birth, where the same archetypal pattern can be discerned. In this article I will explore the connection between the birth process, mapped in Grof’s Basic Perinatal Matrix, and the collective crisis of illness, intense pressure and restriction, loss and death that we are currently facing. Having such a map to contextualize the intensity of experience we are going through is a resource that helps me to be with all that is happening and changing in our world.

Touching Blind Bodies: A Critical Inquiry into Pedagogical and Cultural Constructions of Visual Disability in the Nineteenth Century

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Tilley ◽  
Jan Eric Olsén
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Blind People ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Visual Disability ◽  
Visually Impaired People ◽  
Educational Challenges ◽  
Impaired People ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Cultural Constructions

Changing ideas on the nature of and relationship between the senses in nineteenth-century Europe constructed blindness as a disability in often complex ways. The loss or absence of sight was disabling in this period, given vision’s celebrated status, and visually impaired people faced particular social and educational challenges as well as cultural stereotyping as poor, pitiable and intellectually impaired. However, the experience of blind people also came to challenge received ideas that the visual was the privileged mode of accessing information about the world, and contributed to an increasingly complex understanding of the tactile sense. In this chapter, we consider how changing theories of the senses helped shape competing narratives of identity for visually impaired people in the nineteenth century, opening up new possibilities for the embodied experience of blind people by impressing their sensory ability, rather than lack thereof. We focus on a theme that held particular social and cultural interest in nineteenth-century accounts of blindness: travel and geography.

‘I saw a knock-out’: Fatness, (In)visibility, and Desire in Shallow Hal

Somatechnics ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jackie Wykes
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Fat Body ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Knock Out ◽  
Dominant Meaning ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Fat Bodies ◽  
Sexual Body

When the Farrelly brothers' movie Shallow Hal (2001) was released, one reviewer suggested that the film ‘might have been more honest if [it] had simply made Hal have a thing about fat women’ ( Kerr 2002 : 44). In this paper, I argue that Kerr hits the mark but misses the point. While the film's treatment of fat is undoubtedly problematic, I propose a ‘queer’ reading of the film, borrowing the idea of ‘double coding’ to show a text about desire for fat (female) bodies. I am not, however, seeking to position Shallow Hal as a fat-positive text; rather, I use it as a starting point to explore the legibility of the fat female body as a sexual body. In contemporary mainstream Western culture, fat is regarded as the antithesis of desire. This meaning is so deeply ingrained that representations of fat women as sexual are typically framed as a joke because desire for fat bodies is unimaginable; this is the logic by which Shallow Hal operates. The dominant meaning of fatness precludes recognition of the fat body as a sexual body. What is at issue is therefore not simply the lack of certain images, but a question of intelligibility: if the meaning of fat is antithetical to desire, how can the desire for – and of – fat bodies be intelligible as desire? This question goes beyond the realm of representation and into the embodied experience of fat sexuality.

Being a Christian in the Catholic Way

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 352-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Peperkamp
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Electronic Technology ◽  
Acoustic Environment ◽  
Common Practices ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Universe

This article addresses the distinctive spiritual qualities of aerial movement. Taking as a point of departure the feature lm Maria, Mãe do Filho de Deus (2003) played by famous Brazilian Padre Marcelo Rossi, it argues for an engagement with cinematic images in terms of aerial dynamic imagination. It will be shown that the “inspired breath” of Padre Marcelo organizes the universe and affects the constitution of subjects and space in the lm according to the Scriptures. The same aerial dynamic applies to his other contexts of performance such as Byzantine praying techniques and their relation to space. Subsequently, the article explores underlying analogies between electronic technology, acoustic environment, and pneumatic spirituality within common practices of embodied experience.

Toward Global Community: Sufism and World Order

2010 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul Aziz Said ◽  
Nathan C. Funk
Keyword(s):  
World Order ◽  
Global Community

Giving Back to Our Global Community

CFA Magazine ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 6-6
Author(s):  
Charles J. Yang
Keyword(s):  
Global Community

CEREBRAL PALSY:A CLINICAL OVERVIEW

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-59
Author(s):  
Nargiza Ergasheva ◽  
◽  
Sardor Anorboev ◽  
Gavkhar Kendjaeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Brain Area ◽  
Fetal Brain ◽  
Clinical History ◽  
Screening Tests ◽  
Spastic Diplegia ◽  
Team Approach ◽  
Birth Process ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Spastic Quadriplegia ◽  
Magnetic Resonance Imaging Mri

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a disorder characterized by abnormal tone, posture and movement. The incidence of CP is 2–4 per 1,000 live births in the world. Prematurityand low birth weight are important risk factors for CP; however, multiple other factors have been associated with an increased risk for CP, including maternal infections and diseases, and abnormal birth process. In most cases of CP the initial injury to the brain occurs during early fetal brain development, later a brain area that is injured cannot function properly in the future. CP is classified clinically based on the predominant motor syndrome—spastic hemiplegia, spastic diplegia, spastic quadriplegia, ataxic and dyskinetic cerebral palsies. The diagnosis of CPis based on a combination of clinical history, use of standardized neuromotor assessment and findings on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). If there is a suspicionof genetic or inborn metabolic disorders, screening tests should be provided additionally. Because CP is associated with multiple associated and secondary medical conditions, its management requires a multidisciplinary team approach

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