{"id":478,"date":"2019-07-28T12:12:59","date_gmt":"2019-07-28T12:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bodytheology.co.za\/?p=478"},"modified":"2019-07-28T12:13:03","modified_gmt":"2019-07-28T12:13:03","slug":"staying-true-to-the-truths-of-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bodystory.co.za\/2019\/07\/28\/staying-true-to-the-truths-of-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Staying true to the truths of experience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Maxine\nSheets-Johnstone is an astounding thinker and writer \u2013 in short, a most remarkable\nwoman. Her field of study is the philosophy of Biology\/Anthropology and the philosophy\nof Mind\/Body, which basically studies the nature and relationship of the mind\nto the body. Her insights are influential\nin dance therapy, as she explores the dynamics of movement, language and\nmeaning-making \u2013 insights that also deeply influenced my ideas on the body and\nhow we make meaning. There exist a profound challenge in \u201clanguaging\u201d dynamic\nexperience (see my previous blog ~ https:\/\/bodytheology.co.za\/2019\/07\/11\/the-lost-language-of-bodies\/<\/a>\n) and in meeting that challenge, we should \u201cbe\ntrue to the truths of the experience<\/em>\u201d. In theology we often tend to\ndevaluate the experiences we live, to subvert it to the authority of the\nchurch, its dogmas and then use Scripture to humiliate people and ridicule their\n \u201cdynamic experiences\u201d \u2013 forgetting that all the words in Scripture\nare a struggling effort to put into language of what was experienced dynamically\n\u2013 and that this is a process that is still ongoing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These\ndynamic experiences refer to the \u201ccomplex diversity of feelings and thoughts\nthat exceed the bounds of everyday language because they are experienced\ndynamically\u201d. Maxine encourages us to find ways that \u201cdemands our drawing back\nfrom an easy, ready-made everyday language and our turning first of all to\nexperience itself\u201d. To be able to do this, we have to \u201cbracket\u201d our natural\nattitude towards the world and \u201cthereby\nmeet an experience as if for the first time<\/em>\u201d. The notion of bracketing as a process where\neveryday judgements, beliefs and reactions are put aside, as well as \u201ceveryday\nhabits of languaging experience\u201d; in doing this, experience itself is moved to\nthe foreground and we can listen to its interior dynamics. We must be slow in\nputting words to what we experience. And first listen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maxine\nemphasises the need to first experience the dynamics before trying to describe\nor name them. She continues that \u201cnames are indeed lacking not only because\neveryday language is basically deficient with respect to dynamics, but because\nnames cannot do justice to dynamics\u201d. Emotions have a double dynamic in the\nsense that they \u201cmove through us in distinctive ways and move us to move in\ndistinctive ways\u201d. We experience cognitive emotions in feeling fear, sadness\nand delight, where a \u201cfelt dynamic moves through our bodies and moves us to\nmove \u2014 or not to move \u2014 in an affectively unique manner\u201d. The body is the foundation of experience and this\ntestifies \u201cto the rich and complex dimensions of bodily being\u201d. That is why it\nremains crucial to explore \u201cthe living\nrealities of corporeal life and of understanding in the deepest sense in each\ninstance what it means to be the bodies we are\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"