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Drawing on G. H. Mead and Merleau-Ponty, this paper aims to extend our understanding of self-reflexivity beyond the notion of a discursive, abstract, and symbolic process. It offers a framework for embodied self-reflexivity, which anchors the self in the reflexive capacity of bodily sensations. The data consist of two years of ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews of vipassana meditation practitioners in Israel and the United States. The findings illustrate how bodily sensations are used as indexes to psychological states, emotions, and past experiences, while constant awareness of embodied responses is used as a tool for self-monitoring. The paper follows the interaction between discursive and embodied modes of reflexivity and the attempt to shift from one mode to the other. I suggest that currently popular practices of embodied awareness, from meditation to yoga, are based on embodied self-reflexivity and are part of the postindustrial culture of self-awareness.
"You see, now, while I am talking to you, I can feel the ends of my toes. Isn't that an amazing thing?" (Interview with Gabriel,1 August 2006)
When I first heard the above statement from a practitioner of vipassana meditation, I did not quite understand the significance of the experience he described. What is so exciting about feeling your toes? As I continued to follow and speak with other meditators, I came to understand that this hyperawareness of the body is at the base of meditation, and for meditators, it is a source of healing and self-transformative experiences. In fact, this awareness of the body is the anchor for an important form of self-reflexivity.
When examining the sociological literature for discussions of the body as an anchor for self-reflexivity, one discovers that previous studies of selfhood and self-reflexivity are focused on language and communication. Self-reflexivity is frequently referred to as "internal conversation" (Wiley 1994; Archer 2003), and language is assumed to be the main channel through which individuals can relate to themselves (Mead 1934; Vygotsky 1962; Ricoeur 1981). Studies of the self have focused on conversations, confessions, and diaries - all discursive tools that serve as anchors for self-reflexivity (Foucault 1978; Davies and Harré 1990; Butt and Langdridge 2003). Yet this focus on words has neglected other, more hidden forms of reflection, which are more difficult to track.