You know roughly where your body is at all times, but where in it is your “self”?

Your center of mass is around the solar plexus, yet that doesn’t seem to universally be where people feel the center of their self to be. Most people feel they “are” right behind their eyes, probably in the brain.

Sometimes people have out-of-body experiences, completely changing their anchor for a while.

When pointing at themselves, people tend to point a thumb at their chest or face. Do they feel differently about it, or is it just convenience?

Are you a body with a head full of thinking goop and sensors on top, or are you a head sitting on a body?

And wherever you feel you are, have you felt different at any time? Can you change it?

Personally, I can’t separate the feeling of self from my vision, so “I” am directly behind my eyeballs and I can’t change it.

  • @Markimus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6•11 months ago

    There’s a book called Impro by Keith Johnstone.

    It’s a book about improvisation, though in there there’s a very interesting part on moving your center around when it comes to character work.

    So long as the centre remains in the middle of your chest (pretend it’s a few inches deep), you will feel that you are still yourself and in full command, only more energetically and harmoniously so, with your body approaching an “ideal type”.

    As soon as you try to shift the centre to some other place within or outside your body, you will feel that your whole psychological and physical attitude will change, just as it changes when you step into an imaginary body.

    You will notice that the centre is able to draw and concentrate your whole being into one spot from which your activity emanates and radiates.

    (Johnstone, 1987, p. 179).

    • @Markimus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3•11 months ago

      You can also imagine a movable centre.

      Let it sway slowly before your forehead and circle your head from time to time, and you will sense the psychology of a bewildered person.

      Let it circle irregularly around your whole body, in varying tempos, now going up and now sinking down, and the effect will no doubt be one of intoxication.

      (Johnstone, 1987, p. 180).