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Embodiment

Embodiment is a foundational concept in philosophy, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence that underscores the essential role of the physical body in cognition, emphasizing how sensory-motor interactions with the environment shape perception, thought, and intelligent behavior. Unlike traditional computational models that treat the mind as a disembodied symbol processor, embodiment views cognition as emerging from the dynamic interplay of brain, body, and world, where bodily states and actions are integral to meaning-making and problem-solving.^[1]^[2]^[3] The philosophical origins of embodiment trace back to phenomenology, particularly Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception (1945), which argued that the lived body serves as the primary medium for experiencing and constituting the world, integrating perception, habit, and intentionality in a pre-reflective unity of bodily and mental life.^[4] This perspective rejected Cartesian dualism by positing the body not merely as a physiological object but as an active, expressive schema that structures human understanding through habitual engagements with the environment.^[4] In the late 20th century, embodiment gained prominence in cognitive science through the enactive approach outlined by Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch in The Embodied Mind (1991), which integrated phenomenology, cognitive science, and Buddhist philosophy to propose that cognition arises enactively from sensorimotor loops and situated actions, rather than internal representations alone.^[5] This work marked a paradigm shift, influencing fields like neuroscience and psychology by highlighting how embodied experiences ground abstract concepts and enable adaptive behavior.^[5]^[6] Contemporary theories of embodiment encompass diverse strands, including body enactivism, which sees the body as enacting meaning through skillful, context-sensitive interactions; body functionalism, viewing the body as a computational substrate for cognitive processes; and extended cognition, which extends the cognitive system beyond the skin to include environmental scaffolds.^[2]^[1] Empirical support comes from domains such as action perception, where motor simulations activate during language comprehension, and motor skill acquisition, demonstrating how bodily practice refines cognitive capacities.^[3]^[6] In robotics and artificial intelligence, embodiment principles were advanced by Rodney Brooks in his 1991 paper "Intelligence Without Representation," which demonstrated that robust, adaptive behaviors in mobile robots emerge from layered, reactive architectures attuned to physical embodiment and real-time environmental feedback, bypassing the need for centralized world models.^[7] This approach has informed modern developments in situated AI, underscoring embodiment's practical implications for creating intelligent systems that learn through physical interaction.^[7]

Philosophical Foundations

Definition and Core Concepts

Embodiment in philosophy denotes the fundamental grounding of mental processes in the physicality of the body and its sensorimotor interactions with the environment, positioning the body as the medium through which cognition and experience arise rather than as a mere vessel for an abstract mind. This concept underscores that human understanding and perception are not disembodied computations but are deeply intertwined with bodily capacities, such as movement, touch, and sensory feedback, which shape how individuals engage with and interpret the world. Central to this idea is the notion of sensorimotor contingencies—the reliable patterns of sensory changes that occur in response to bodily actions—which form the basis of perceptual content and experiential awareness.^[8] A key phenomenological aspect of embodiment is Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concept of the "lived body" (corps vécu), which portrays the body not as an objective entity but as the active, pre-reflective site of being-in-the-world, where perception emerges from the body's existential involvement rather than intellectual representation. In this framework, the lived body integrates sensory and motor dimensions into a unified structure that precedes conscious reflection, enabling phenomena like spatial orientation and intersubjective understanding. Embodiment thus extends to meaning-making, where concepts and language are rooted in bodily experiences, such as gestures or tool use, transforming abstract thought into situated, corporeal practice.^[9] Distinguishing embodiment further are the concepts of body schema and body image, which delineate different levels of bodily awareness. The body schema operates as an unconscious, dynamic system of sensorimotor processes that coordinates posture, movement, and action without perceptual monitoring or deliberate intent, functioning as a tacit map for bodily capabilities. In contrast, the body image encompasses conscious perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs about the body's appearance and boundaries, often influenced by cultural or social factors and subject to reflective modification. Together, these concepts highlight how embodiment underpins perception and action by integrating pre-reflective motor knowledge with explicit self-representation.^[10] Philosophically, embodiment rejects Cartesian dualism, which bifurcates the mind as a non-extended thinking substance (res cogitans) separate from the extended body (res extensa), thereby isolating cognition from physical reality and rendering interaction between them problematic. Merleau-Ponty counters this by demonstrating through phenomenological analysis that the body's perceptual engagement reveals an indivisible unity of subject and object, where the world is not represented internally but encountered through embodied reversibility—such as the mutual touching of hand and object. Enactive approaches build on this by positing that cognition arises from the ongoing, structural coupling between the body and its environment, favoring situated, action-oriented processes over representationalist models that posit internal symbols detached from bodily context. This enactive perspective frames mind as enacted through organism-environment loops, emphasizing autonomy and sense-making as emergent properties of embodied life.^[9]^[11]

Historical Development

The concept of embodiment in philosophy traces its roots to ancient Greek thought, particularly Aristotle's doctrine of hylomorphism, which posits that substances are composites of matter (hyle) and form (morphe), unifying body and soul in a single entity rather than treating them as separable.^[12] This view emphasized the inseparability of form from matter, influencing later understandings of the body as integral to identity and function.^[13] Similarly, Stoic philosophers, such as Chrysippus, advanced ideas of soul-body interconnection by conceiving the soul as a corporeal pneuma—a fine, breath-like substance that permeates and animates the body, ensuring their dynamic unity without dualistic separation. In modern philosophy, Immanuel Kant contributed to embodiment through his analysis of intuition in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), where he described space and time as forms of sensible intuition rooted in the body's receptivity to sensory manifolds, thereby grounding cognition in embodied experience rather than abstract reason alone.^[14] This bodily basis of intuition highlighted how human knowledge emerges from the interaction between sensory input and mental synthesis.^[15] The 20th century saw a profound shift with phenomenology, initiated by Edmund Husserl, who in works like Ideas II (1912–1928) explored embodiment as the precondition for spatial orientation and intersubjectivity, arguing that the lived body (Leib) serves as the zero-point of perception, intertwining subjective experience with objective space.^[16] Building on Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty developed these ideas in his 1945 Phenomenology of Perception, asserting that perception is not a mental representation but an embodied engagement with the world, where the body is the primary site of meaning and reversibility between self and other.^[17] Merleau-Ponty's emphasis on the pre-reflective, motor intentionality of the body challenged Cartesian dualism, repositioning embodiment as central to consciousness.^[18] Post-World War II developments bridged phenomenology to emerging fields like cognitive science through Hubert Dreyfus's critiques of artificial intelligence in the 1970s, notably in What Computers Can't Do (1972), where he drew on Martin Heidegger's ontology from Being and Time (1927) to argue that human intelligence relies on situated, embodied coping rather than disembodied rule-following, thus exposing limitations in symbolic AI approaches.^[19] Dreyfus's Heideggerian framework underscored embodiment as essential for practical understanding in everyday contexts.^[20]

Embodied Cognition in Cognitive Science

Key Theories and Models

One of the foundational texts in embodied cognition is The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, published in 1991, which integrates insights from cognitive science, phenomenology, and Buddhist philosophy to argue that cognition emerges from the enactive interplay between an embodied organism and its environment, incorporating concepts like autopoiesis to describe self-organizing living systems.^[5] This work posits that mind and experience are not abstract computations but arise through embodied action, challenging representationalist paradigms by emphasizing the body's role in constituting meaning.^[5] Building on this, enactivism as a theoretical framework highlights sensorimotor loops—recurrent interactions where perception and action mutually specify each other—and structural coupling, the ongoing coordination between an organism and its milieu that shapes cognitive processes without relying on internal representations.^[5] Varela, Thompson, and Rosch formalized these ideas in their 1991 book, viewing cognition as an enacted phenomenon rooted in the body's dynamic engagement with the world.^[5] A more radical variant, radical enactivism, extends this by rejecting contentful mental states altogether for basic cognition, asserting that understanding and intentionality emerge purely from sensorimotor contingencies and embodied interactions, as developed by Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin in Radicalizing Enactivism (2013).^[21] Related ideas appear in extended cognition frameworks explored by scholars like Andy Clark, who examine contentless forms in predictive and extended models. Other influential models include image schemas, proposed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in the 1980s, which describe recurring, preconceptual structures derived from bodily experiences—such as containment, path, or balance—that ground abstract thought and language in sensorimotor patterns. In Metaphors We Live By (1980), Lakoff and Johnson illustrated how these schemas map concrete physical experiences onto metaphorical reasoning, enabling cognition to be inherently embodied rather than disembodied symbol manipulation. Complementing this, dynamical systems theory applied to motor control treats cognition as emerging from nonlinear interactions within coupled body-environment systems, as articulated in Tim van Gelder's 1995 dynamical hypothesis, which reframes cognitive processes as continuous, time-evolving trajectories rather than discrete computations. A key example in motor control is the forward kinematics model, which maps joint angles to end-effector positions in embodied movement:

\vec{x} = f(\vec{q})

where \vec{x} represents the position of the end-effector (e.g., hand) in space, and \vec{q} denotes the vector of joint angles, illustrating how bodily dynamics generate perceptual and cognitive outcomes through real-time physical constraints. This approach, influential in embodied cognitive science, underscores how motor behaviors self-organize via attractors and bifurcations in phase space, prioritizing the body's embeddedness over centralized control. Recent developments in embodied cognition, as of 2025, increasingly integrate enactivist ideas with predictive processing theories, where the brain anticipates sensory inputs based on bodily states and environmental interactions, supported by large-scale neuroimaging studies confirming embodied simulations in higher cognition.^[22] These advancements address debates around representationalism, emphasizing hybrid models that combine 4E (embodied, embedded, enactive, extended) approaches without duplicating purely technological applications.

Empirical Evidence and Applications

Empirical evidence for embodied cognition has been amassed through neuroscience and behavioral studies, revealing how bodily states and actions shape cognitive processes such as perception, language comprehension, and self-representation.^[23]^[24] In neuroscience, the discovery of mirror neurons in the 1990s provided foundational support for the idea that observing actions activates similar neural circuits as performing them, suggesting a bodily simulation mechanism underlying understanding and empathy. These neurons, first identified in macaque monkeys' premotor cortex by Giacomo Rizzolatti and colleagues, fire both when the animal executes a goal-directed action and when it observes the same action performed by another, implying that cognition is grounded in motor representations. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have extended this to humans, showing that processing action-related metaphors activates corresponding somatotopic regions in the motor cortex; for instance, reading phrases like "grasp an idea" engages hand and arm areas, demonstrating how abstract concepts are embodied through sensorimotor simulations. Behavioral experiments further illustrate the malleability of body ownership and the integration of action with higher cognition. The rubber hand illusion, demonstrated by Matthew Botvinick and Jonathan Cohen in 1998, involves synchronously stroking a visible rubber hand and a participant's hidden real hand, leading participants to report ownership over the rubber hand and even mislocalize tactile sensations to it.^[24] This effect highlights how multisensory integration can rapidly alter the sense of self and body schema, supporting embodied views that perception is not purely internal but emerges from bodily interactions with the environment.^[24] Similarly, in language comprehension, Arthur Glenberg and Michael Kaschak's 2002 action-sentence compatibility effect (ACE) experiment showed that participants respond faster to sensibility judgments of sentences describing actions (e.g., "Open the drawer") when their button-press movement is compatible with the described direction, indicating that understanding language involves simulating the corresponding bodily actions.^[23] These findings have practical applications in therapy and education, leveraging bodily interventions to influence mental states and learning outcomes. Initial studies on power posing—adopting expansive, high-power body postures for two minutes—suggested reductions in cortisol levels and increases in testosterone, enhancing feelings of power and risk tolerance. However, these hormonal effects have not replicated, as confirmed by meta-analyses and the lead author's 2016 disavowal; as of 2025, evidence supports potential boosts in self-reported confidence and power without reliable physiological changes, which may still aid anxiety mitigation in therapeutic contexts.^[25]^[26] For education, gesture-based interventions promote mathematical understanding by externalizing spatial and relational concepts; for example, encouraging children to gesture while explaining math problems reveals implicit knowledge and boosts learning gains, as gestures activate embodied representations that facilitate problem-solving and retention.^[27] Such applications underscore the translational potential of embodied cognition, where manipulating bodily actions directly enhances cognitive and emotional regulation.^[27]

Cultural and Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Cultural conceptions of embodiment profoundly shape how individuals perceive and interact with their bodies across societies, influencing spatial boundaries, tactile norms, and self-other distinctions. Anthropologist Edward T. Hall introduced the framework of high-context and low-context cultures in his 1976 work Beyond Culture, where high-context cultures, such as those in Japan and many Arab societies, rely heavily on implicit nonverbal cues and shared understandings, leading to more fluid interpersonal spaces and greater tolerance for physical proximity and touch during communication.^[28] In contrast, low-context cultures, prevalent in Western Europe and North America, emphasize explicit verbal information, resulting in stricter personal space zones and more reserved attitudes toward touch, as Hall detailed in his proxemics theory.^[29] These differences manifest in embodiment through variations in proxemics—the culturally learned use of space—which Hall argued in The Hidden Dimension (1966) affects bodily comfort and relational dynamics, with contact-oriented cultures permitting closer distances and incidental touch compared to non-contact ones.^[30] Collectivist cultures often conceptualize the body as more permeable and interconnected with social groups, blurring individual boundaries, whereas individualist cultures prioritize bodily autonomy and separation from others. In Japan, the concept of amae—a culturally endorsed form of dependent love and relational interdependence—fosters an embodied sense of self that extends beyond personal limits to include harmonious reliance on others, contrasting with Western emphases on self-reliance and bodily independence.^[31] This dichotomy aligns with broader cross-cultural research on personhood, where individualist societies like the United States view the self as a bounded entity focused on personal agency, while collectivist ones, such as those in East Asia, perceive it as relational and contextually embedded, influencing embodied practices like gesture and posture.^[31] Early anthropological studies highlighted embodiment as a product of cultural learning rather than innate biology. Marcel Mauss's seminal 1934 essay "Techniques of the Body" described how everyday actions—such as walking, swimming, and gesturing—are acquired through social imitation and vary systematically across cultures, serving as "techniques" that embody societal norms and hierarchies.^[32] Building on this, Mark Zborowski's 1952 study of pain responses in a New York hospital revealed cross-cultural differences in embodied expression: Jewish and Italian patients vocalized pain more openly due to future-oriented anxiety or present-focused emotional release, while "Old American" (Anglo-Saxon Protestant) patients adopted a stoic, internalized demeanor reflective of cultural stoicism.^[33] These findings underscored how cultural scripts govern the body's signaling of distress, with implications for health and social solidarity.^[34] In the context of globalization, modern ethnographic research post-2000 examines how embodiment adapts amid migration, reshaping diaspora identities through bodily negotiations of belonging. Among Gujarati elders in Canada, for instance, everyday practices like dress, diet, and movement rituals maintain cultural continuity while adapting to new environments, embodying hybrid identities that bridge homeland ties and host society integration.^[35] Similarly, studies of adult migrants in Norway reveal embodied belonging emerging from mobile practices—such as walking familiar routes or adapting postures in social spaces—that foster attachment despite displacement, illustrating how global mobility reconfigures bodily schemas in diaspora formations.^[36] Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's habitus concept, anthropological analyses of migrant bodies highlight how embodied dispositions, like gait or gesture, carry cultural capital that either facilitates or hinders adaptation in transnational contexts, contributing to evolving senses of self amid globalization.^[37] Embodied communication plays a central role in social interactions, where nonverbal cues such as gestures and posture convey meaning beyond verbal language. Gestures, in particular, are integral to conversation, revealing underlying thought processes and enhancing mutual understanding; David McNeill's seminal work identifies key types including iconic gestures, which depict concrete actions or objects; metaphoric gestures, which represent abstract ideas; deictic or pointing gestures, which indicate location or reference; and beat gestures, which emphasize rhythm or discourse structure without semantic content.^[38]^[39] Posture and body orientation similarly signal interpersonal dynamics, such as approachability or dominance, facilitating the flow of dialogue in face-to-face exchanges.^[40] Synchronization in joint actions further underscores embodiment's role in social coordination, where individuals unconsciously align their movements, a phenomenon linked to interpersonal motor resonance. This resonance involves neural mechanisms that couple one's own motor system with observed actions of others, promoting efficient collaboration in tasks like dancing or cooperative manipulation.^[41] Studies demonstrate that such synchronization enhances group cohesion and reduces cognitive load during shared activities, as seen in experiments where participants' motor patterns adapt in real-time to partners' rhythms.^[42] Social theories highlight the performative aspect of the body in interactions, with Erving Goffman's dramaturgical analysis portraying everyday life as a stage where individuals present embodied selves to manage impressions. In this framework, the body serves as a prop in social performances, with gestures, facial expressions, and attire enacting roles to influence audience perceptions and sustain interactional order.^[43] Complementing this, embodiment underpins empathy through simulation theory, where mirror neuron systems enable individuals to internally replicate others' actions and emotions, fostering shared understanding; Vittorio Gallese's research posits that this embodied simulation forms the neural basis for intersubjectivity, allowing empathetic resonance without explicit verbal cues.^[44] Contemporary issues reveal how digital embodiment alters social identity, particularly through avatars in virtual reality (VR) social spaces, where users project customized bodily representations that influence self-perception and interactions. Post-2010 studies show that avatar embodiment can extend physical cues into digital realms, affecting identity formation by blending real and virtual bodily experiences, though it risks distorting authentic nonverbal communication compared to in-person encounters.^[45]^[46] For instance, research on VR platforms indicates that users' behavioral adjustments to avatar appearances—such as adopting more confident postures—parallel physical embodiment effects, yet raise concerns about privacy and identity fragmentation in mediated social media contexts.^[47]

Embodiment in Arts and Performance

Music and Sonic Embodiment

Embodiment in music manifests through sensorimotor engagement, where physical movements synchronize with auditory rhythms to shape perception and production. Rhythm entrainment occurs when bodily motion aligns with musical beats, influencing how listeners and performers interpret rhythmic structures. For instance, adults who bounce to every second or third beat of an ambiguous rhythm pattern subsequently perceive the strong beats as aligning with their movement, demonstrating how sensorimotor experience encodes auditory rhythm.^[48] This process extends to infants, where passive movement on specific beats alters their preference for matching rhythmic accents in music, highlighting embodiment's role from early development. Bodily groove further exemplifies this, as synchronized swaying or tapping to music enhances emotional and perceptual immersion, linking physicality to the felt pulse of rhythm. Vocal embodiment in singing integrates the body as both instrument and expressive medium, where physiological actions like breath control and resonance produce sound while reinforcing self-perception. Singers experience their voice as an extension of the body, with vocal production involving embodied sensorimotor loops that connect laryngeal movements to auditory feedback, fostering a unified sense of agency in performance.^[49] This embodiment is evident in how singers' postural adjustments and gestures during performance amplify emotional expression, transforming singing into an interpersonal bodily dialogue.^[50] Theoretical frameworks underscore music's embodied dimensions, emphasizing listening and perception as physically grounded processes. Suzanne Cusick's concept of embodied listening, developed in the 1990s, critiques disembodied music theory by arguing that musical understanding arises from the body's erotic and sensory engagement with sound, integrating mind and flesh in interpretive acts.^[51] Cross-modal embodiment extends this, where music triggers tactile or visual bodily sensations, such as perceiving bass frequencies as vibrations on the skin or melodies evoking kinesthetic imagery.^[52] These interactions reveal how auditory stimuli recruit multisensory neural pathways, allowing music to simulate physical touch or motion without direct input.^[53] Historical examples illustrate embodied integration in musical traditions. In African polyrhythms, multiple interlocking rhythms demand bodily coordination, where dancers embody complex temporal layers through polycentric movements that mirror the music's structure, fostering communal synchronization.^[54] This integration, rooted in West African practices, treats rhythm as a holistic sensorimotor dialogue between sound and motion, essential for cultural expression.^[55] In modern electronic music, haptic feedback in performance amplifies embodiment, with wearable devices delivering vibrations that align with basslines or beats, enabling performers to feel rhythms somatically during live sets.^[56] Such technologies extend sonic embodiment by merging digital sound with tangible bodily sensation, enhancing immersion in genres like techno and dubstep.^[57]

Visual and Performing Arts

In the visual arts, embodiment manifests through the body as both subject and medium, particularly in performance art where artists push the limits of physical presence and endurance. Marina Abramović's pioneering works from the 1970s, such as the Rhythm series, exemplify this by transforming the artist's body into a site of interaction and vulnerability, inviting audiences to confront the raw materiality of human limits through prolonged physical trials like self-inflicted pain or immobility.^[58] These performances underscore embodiment as an experiential process, where the body's endurance becomes a conduit for exploring presence and relational dynamics between performer and viewer.^[59] Embodiment also informs traditional visual forms like sculpture and painting via haptic perception, which engages the tactile imagination to evoke a kinesthetic response beyond mere optical viewing. In sculpture, artists craft forms that simulate touch, allowing viewers to mentally "feel" textures and contours, thereby integrating bodily sensation into aesthetic appreciation; for instance, the undulating surfaces in Henry Moore's works from the mid-20th century invite a proprioceptive empathy that aligns with embodied cognition theories.^[60] Similarly, in painting, haptic cues—such as the implied weight or friction in brushstrokes—activate embodied memory, as seen in the visceral surfaces of Willem de Kooning's abstract expressionist canvases, where visual density evokes a physical encounter with the painted form.^[61] This haptic dimension reinforces the body's role in interpreting visual art as an extension of sensory experience.^[62] Shifting to the performing arts, embodiment is central to dance theory, notably through Rudolf Laban's movement analysis developed in the 1920s, which dissects human motion into components like effort, shape, and space to reveal the body's expressive potential. Laban's framework treats the dancer's body as an embodied instrument, where gestures encode inner states and environmental interactions, influencing modern choreography by prioritizing kinesthetic awareness over abstract form.^[63] In theater, Konstantin Stanislavski's acting system, refined in the early 20th century, emphasizes physical memory and actions to achieve authentic embodiment, training performers to draw on bodily sensations for emotional truth rather than superficial mimicry. This psychophysical approach posits that physical impulses ground psychological realism, as actors inhabit characters through repeated, embodied exercises that link gesture to inner motivation.^[64]^[65] Contemporary developments in visual and performing arts extend embodiment into digital realms through interactive installations that employ body tracking to merge physical presence with virtual feedback. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Pulse Room (2006), for example, uses biometric sensors to capture participants' heartbeats, projecting light pulses that visualize bodily rhythms in a shared space, thereby embodying the viewer's physiology as a dynamic artistic element.^[66] Such works, proliferating since the early 2000s, leverage motion-capture technologies to create responsive environments where the body's movements generate real-time visual narratives, blurring boundaries between performer, spectator, and medium while highlighting embodiment in a technologized context.^[67]

Embodiment in Religion and Spirituality

Theological Concepts of Incarnation

In Christian theology, the doctrine of the Incarnation asserts that the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, assumed human nature and became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, thereby uniting divine and human natures without confusion or separation. This concept is rooted in the New Testament, particularly in the Gospel of John, where it states, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).^[68] The doctrine was formally articulated and defended against various heresies at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE, which defined the hypostatic union as the single person of Christ subsisting in two natures—divine and human—each retaining its distinct properties while being inseparably united.^[69] This theological framework emphasizes embodiment as the divine entry into the material world, enabling salvation through God's direct participation in human existence.^[70] In Hinduism, the concept of avatars represents divine embodiment through the descents of Vishnu, the preserver deity, into physical forms to restore cosmic order (dharma) amid chaos. Vishnu's ten principal incarnations, known as the Dashavatara, include Matsya (fish), Kurma (tortoise), and notably Rama, the seventh avatar, depicted as an ideal king and warrior in the epic Ramayana. Rama's life exemplifies embodied divinity acting within human society to uphold righteousness, as he incarnates as a mortal prince to defeat the demon king Ravana and reaffirm moral law.^[71] These avatars illustrate a recurring pattern of the transcendent divine manifesting in tangible, historical, or legendary bodies to intervene in worldly affairs, blending the eternal with the temporal.^[72] Buddhist traditions, particularly in Mahayana, conceptualize embodiment through the dharmakaya, or "truth body," which signifies the ultimate, formless reality of enlightenment that the Buddha embodies as the essence of all dharmas (truths or phenomena). Unlike a physical form, dharmakaya represents the Buddha's realization of emptiness and the unconditioned truth, serving as the foundational body from which the sambhogakaya (enjoyment body) and nirmanakaya (emanation body) arise to teach and manifest in the world.^[73] This trikaya (three bodies) doctrine portrays dharmakaya as the embodied truth transcending yet underlying all manifestations, emphasizing enlightenment as an intrinsic, non-dual unity of wisdom and reality.^[74] Philosophical theology, as synthesized by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, integrates embodiment into Christian thought by affirming the substantial unity of body and soul in human nature, which informs understandings of divine incarnation. In the Summa Theologica, Aquinas argues that the soul is the form of the body, rendering the human person a single composite substance rather than a dualistic aggregation, thereby underscoring the integrity of embodied existence as essential to personhood and capable of participating in divine life.^[75] This hylomorphic (matter-form) view supports the Incarnation by positing that Christ's human body and soul are perfectly united to the divine person, allowing for the redemption of material creation through an embodied divine presence.^[76] Aquinas's framework thus bridges Aristotelian philosophy with theology, portraying embodiment not as a limitation but as a perfected mode of divine-human communion.^[77]

Ritual and Embodied Practices

Religious rituals often engage the body as a primary medium for spiritual transformation, distinguishing embodied practices from abstract doctrinal beliefs. In Catholicism, pilgrimage serves as a profound example of embodied devotion, where physical exertion through long-distance travel to sacred sites fosters a sensory connection to the divine. Pilgrims experience embodiment through the tactile demands of walking, enduring weather, and navigating landscapes, which heighten awareness of the body's vulnerability and resilience as a vessel for faith.^[78] Similarly, bodily mortification, such as self-flagellation during Holy Week processions in the Philippines, enacts penance by inflicting physical pain to mirror Christ's suffering, thereby internalizing spiritual purification through corporeal discipline. These acts of self-harm, performed publicly or privately, emphasize the body's role in atoning for sins and achieving communal solidarity.^[79]^[80] In Hinduism, yoga and tantric practices cultivate embodiment as a pathway to spiritual union, integrating physical postures, breath control, and ritual gestures to awaken latent divine energy within the body. Hatha yoga, for instance, employs asanas and pranayama to harmonize the subtle body (sukshma sharira), facilitating the union of individual consciousness (jiva) with the universal divine (Paramatman). Tantric traditions extend this through ritualized embodiment, such as maithuna (symbolic or actual union), where the body becomes a microcosm of cosmic energies, enabling practitioners to transcend duality and realize non-separation from the absolute. These methods, rooted in medieval texts like the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, prioritize the body's transformative potential over mere intellectual contemplation.^[81]^[82] Anthropological perspectives, particularly Victor Turner's analysis of rites of passage, highlight how shared bodily experiences in rituals generate communitas—a sense of undifferentiated community that dissolves social hierarchies. In Turner's framework, the liminal phase of rituals, marked by physical trials like fasting or processions, strips participants of everyday identities, fostering egalitarian bonds through collective embodiment. This anti-structural quality, observed in Ndembu initiation rites, underscores rituals' capacity to renew social cohesion via corporeal immersion.^[83] Modern adaptations of these traditions appear in Western mindfulness movements, influenced by 20th-century interpretations of Buddhism, where embodied meditation emphasizes body scans and somatic awareness to cultivate presence. Practices like Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), developed in the late 1970s, draw from vipassana traditions to integrate bodily sensations into meditative focus, promoting psychological well-being through grounded embodiment rather than esoteric goals. This shift reflects a secularized evolution of Buddhist embodied practices, making them accessible for stress reduction and self-regulation in contemporary contexts.^[84]^[85]

Embodiment in Technology and AI

Robotics and Physical Agents

In robotics, embodied artificial intelligence (AI) extends cognitive theories to physical agents by emphasizing the role of the body in shaping intelligent behavior through direct environmental interaction. A pioneering framework is Rodney Brooks's subsumption architecture, introduced in the late 1980s and refined through the 1990s, which structures robot control as layered, reactive behaviors that operate without explicit internal representations. This approach enables situated robots, such as early mobile explorers like Genghis, to generate adaptive actions by subsuming lower-level reflexes under higher ones, demonstrating that intelligence arises from the dynamic interplay between the agent's morphology, sensors, and surroundings rather than centralized planning.^[7] Complementing this, the principle of morphological computation posits that a robot's physical form can inherently perform information processing, reducing the computational burden on onboard controllers. Articulated by Rolf Pfeifer and Josh Bongard in their 2006 work, this concept illustrates how body morphology—through properties like material compliance and geometry—acts as a computational substrate, enabling efficient adaptation in complex environments, as seen in simulations where passive dynamics simplify locomotion control. Such ideas draw briefly from enactivist perspectives on cognition as enacted through sensorimotor engagement. Prominent examples of embodied designs include the iCub humanoid robot, an open-source platform approximately 104 cm tall, engineered for developmental robotics to mimic infant learning via autonomous sensorimotor exploration. Through its 53 degrees of freedom and integrated sensors, iCub facilitates experiments in acquiring motor skills and perceptual grounding, fostering emergent cognitive capabilities akin to human development. Similarly, soft robotics leverages compliant, deformable bodies to enhance adaptability; as detailed in Rus and Tolley's 2015 review, these systems use elastomeric materials for bio-inspired actuation, allowing robots to navigate irregular terrains or grasp delicate objects with minimal explicit control, thereby embodying intelligence in the material properties themselves.^[86] Recent developments in embodied AI have accelerated the deployment of humanoid robots for practical tasks. For instance, Agility Robotics plans to scale production of its Digit humanoid from 1,200 units in 2025 to 7,500 by 2027, using AI-driven learning to enable adaptive manipulation in warehouses. Tesla's Optimus robot similarly integrates multimodal AI for embodied actions like folding laundry or sorting objects, demonstrating how physical interaction grounds abstract intelligence in real-world environments.^[87] Despite these advances, embodied robotics faces significant challenges, including the sensorimotor grounding problem, which requires anchoring abstract concepts and symbols in concrete physical interactions to avoid the pitfalls of disembodied AI. Models in epigenetic robotics, such as those using evolutionary algorithms on simulated agents, highlight how iterative sensorimotor experiences can transfer grounded representations across tasks, yet scaling this to real hardware remains computationally intensive. Energy efficiency poses another hurdle, as physical embodiment demands optimized power use for actuators and sensors to enable prolonged autonomy; research on embodied energy designs, for instance, explores bio-inspired metabolic systems to extend operational endurance in untethered robots.^[88]

Virtual and Extended Embodiment

In virtual reality (VR), embodiment manifests through the illusion of ownership over digital avatars, where users experience a virtual body as their own, enhancing the sense of presence. Seminal experiments by Mel Slater and colleagues demonstrated that synchronous visuomotor correlations—such as seeing a virtual body move in congruence with one's physical actions—can induce strong body ownership illusions, leading participants to respond physiologically to virtual threats as if they were real.^[89] This effect relies on multisensory integration, where visual and proprioceptive feedback align to override the brain's default body representation, fostering immersion that rivals physical embodiment.^[89] Full-body illusions in VR further extend this by enabling out-of-body experiences, decoupling self-location from bodily ownership. In studies using first-person perspectives, participants viewing a virtual body from an external viewpoint, synchronized with their movements via head-mounted displays, reported feeling detached from their physical form while owning the virtual one, evoking sensations of body transfer.^[90] Such illusions highlight VR's capacity to manipulate bodily self-consciousness, with applications in psychological therapy for conditions like body dysmorphia, where altered embodiment reduces distress.^[90] The extended mind thesis posits that cognition and embodiment extend beyond the biological body to incorporate external tools and environments as integral parts of the self. Proposed by Andy Clark and David Chalmers, this view argues that devices like notebooks or calculators function as "mind tools," offloading cognitive processes and blurring the boundary between internal and external resources.^[91] Contemporary examples include smartphones, which serve as embodied extensions by augmenting memory, navigation, and social interaction, effectively expanding the user's cognitive architecture in seamless, habitual ways.^[91] Emerging brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) advance prosthetic embodiment by enabling direct neural control and sensory feedback, integrating artificial limbs into the body's schema. Post-2020 developments, such as Neuralink's implantable devices, which as of September 2025 have been implanted in at least 12 paralyzed individuals, enable them to manipulate cursors or robotic arms via thought alone, with trials demonstrating cursor control speeds approaching those of manual input (around 8-10 bits per second).^[92]^[93] Recent advances include brain-to-voice neuroprostheses that restore naturalistic speech by decoding neural signals and EEG-based BCIs for real-time control of robotic hands, further enhancing sensory-motor integration and ownership of prosthetics.^[94]^[95]^[96] In the metaverse, such technologies imply profound shifts in identity, as avatars controlled by BCIs could represent hybrid selves, challenging traditional notions of bodily boundaries and self-perception in persistent virtual worlds.^[97]

References

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Embodied Cognition is Not What you Think it is - Frontiers
The most common definitions involve the straight-forward claim that “states of the body modify states of the mind.” However, the implications of embodiment are ...
[2]
The Meaning of Embodiment - 2012 - Topics in Cognitive Science
Aug 14, 2012 · Embodiment is thus understood in terms of the role the body plays in supporting the computational circuits that realize cognition.
[3]
Embodied cognition: dimensions, domains and applications
May 4, 2020 · cognition is embodied when it is deeply dependent upon features of the physical body of an agent, that is, when aspects of the agent's body ...1. Introduction · 2. Varieties Of Approaches... · 3. Empirical Domains For...
[4]
Habit and embodiment in Merleau-Ponty - PMC - NIH
In this article I propose to explain the role that habit plays in the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and the use that Gallagher and Zahavi make of his theory ...
[5]
The Embodied Mind
### Book Description
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The Story So Far: How Embodied Cognition Advances Our ...
Jul 30, 2017 · According to embodied theories of cognition, representations are modal in that they are grounded in sensorimotor areas of the brain. As such, ...
[7]
[PDF] Intelligence without representation* - People | MIT CSAIL
Intelligence without representation*. Rodney A. Brooks. MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, 545 Technology Square, Rm. 836, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
[8]
[PDF] A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness
O'Regan & Noë: A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness. 940. BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2001) 24:5. Page 3. There is an analogy to be ...
[9]
[PDF] Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Phenomenology of Perception
The criticism of the constancy hypothesis and more generally the reduction of the idea of 'the world' opened up a phenomenal field which now has to be more ...
[10]
(PDF) Gallagher, S. 1986. Body Image and Body Schema
Aug 9, 2025 · In this paper the author argues that body image and body schema are two distinct concepts and ought to be kept conceptually distinct.
[11]
(PDF) The enactive approach - ResearchGate
These radical embodiment proposals are based on the “enactive” view that cognition depends constitutively on the living body, understood as an autonomous ...
[12]
[PDF] Aristotle's Hylomorphism and the Mind-Body Problem - PhilArchive
I believe that both mind and the brain cannot be without one another, but mind should not be reduced to only brain and vice versa. One of the papers that I will ...
[13]
The History of Hylomorphism - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Aug 1, 2024 · The hylomorphic notion that natural objects are best conceived as composites of matter and form, where form explains what makes a particular ...
[14]
[PDF] Kant on Embodiment: Lessons from the Critique of Pure Reason and ...
Human embodied activity has a hitherto unrecognized central role in Kant's ... bodily reception of the manifold of intuition, but also in organizing that manifold.
[15]
[PDF] 5 Embodied Cognition in Berkeley and Kant: The Body's Own Space
Apr 23, 2019 · Though sensations excite this act of the mind, they do not become part of the intuition. Nothing is here connate save the law of the mind, ...Missing: bodily | Show results with:bodily
[16]
[PDF] Husserl's Phenomenology of the Body
Every spatial orientation and every experience of objects in space thus refers to the indexical "here" connected with our embodiment (4/159, 9/392). Husserl ...
[17]
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception - PhilPapers
First published in 1945, Maurice Merleau-Ponty's monumental _Phénoménologie de la perception _signalled the arrival of a major new philosophical and ...
[18]
[PDF] Phenomenology of Perception
First published in 1945, Maurice Merleau-Ponty's monumental Phénoménologie de la perception signaled the arrival of a major new philosophical and intellectual ...
[19]
[PDF] what computers can't do - Monoskop
D.C 20036. WHAT COMPUTERS CAN'T DO: A CRITIQUE OF ARTIFICIAL REASON. Copyright. 7972 by. Hubert L. Dreyfus ...
[20]
(PDF) Hubert L. Dreyfus's Critique of Classical AI and its Rationalist ...
Aug 10, 2025 · This paper deals with the rationalist assumptions behind researches of artificial intelligence (AI) on the basis of Hubert Dreyfus's critique.
[21]
Grounding language in action | Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
We report a new phenomenon associated with language comprehension: theaction—sentence compatibility effect (ACE). Participants judged whether sentenc.Missing: paper | Show results with:paper
[22]
Rubber hands 'feel' touch that eyes see - Nature
Feb 19, 1998 · We report here an illusion in which tactile sensations are referred to an alien limb. The effect reveals a three-way interaction between vision, touch and ...
[23]
Embodiment in Mathematics Teaching and Learning: Evidence ...
In this article, we present evidence drawn from teachers' and learners' gestures to make the case that mathematical knowledge is embodied. We argue that ...
[25]
Edward T. Hall, Proxemic Theory, 1966. CSISS Classics
Hall's concept of proxemics considers human uses of space within the context of culture. Implications relate to cross-cultural communication processes.
[26]
(PDF) The Hidden Dimension - Edward Hall - Academia.edu
Cultural differences which are out of awareness are, as a consequence, usually chalked up to inept- ness, boorishness, or lack of interest on the part of ...
[27]
A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Personhood - jstor
Both implicitly and explicitly, it is a social and an interactive conception of the human players. In the American view, the individual person is seen as ...<|separator|>
[28]
[PDF] Marcel Mauss - Techniques of the Body - Monoskop
This study of mechanical movements has got off to a good start. It is the formation of mechanical 'pairs of elements' with the body. You will recall [Franz] ...
[29]
Cultural Components in Response to Pain - ResearchGate
Aug 10, 2025 · Zborowski (1952) studied reactions to pain among different ethnic groups in a New York City hospital and concluded that Italians are more ...
[30]
Cultural Factors and the Response to Pain: A Review - jstor
ZBOROWSKI, M. 1952 Cultural components in responses to pain. Journal of Social Issues 8:16-30.Missing: expression cross-
[31]
[PDF] Embodied Aging: Everyday Body Practices and Later Life Identities ...
This study explores how South Asian Indian Gujarati older adults in Canada (Greater Vancouver area) strive to maintain personal continuity, citizenship, ...
[32]
Belonging on the Move: A Multi-Method Exploration of Embodied ...
May 21, 2025 · The study investigates how adult migrants to Norway develop a sense of belonging through both attachment and mobility.
[33]
Bourdieu and the 'migrant-body': embodiment in the migratory context
Abstract: This article sets out to analyse a number of works by Pierre Bourdieu, focusing specifically on his contribution to the development of a research ...Missing: globalization diaspora
[34]
Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought, McNeill
David McNeill shows that gestures do not simply form a part of what is said and meant but have an impact on thought itself.Missing: types | Show results with:types
[35]
[PDF] Guide to Gesture Classification, - Transcription, and Distribution
In our approach we classify gesture movements into four major categories: iconic, metaphoric, deictic (pointing), and beat gestures; def- initions are provided ...<|separator|>
[36]
Hand and mind: What gestures reveal about thought. - APA PsycNet
In "Hand and Mind," David McNeill presents a bold theory of the essential unity of speech and the gestures that accompany it. This long-awaited, provocative ...Missing: types | Show results with:types
[37]
Moving together: toward understanding the mechanisms of joint action
May 15, 2011 · Results showed that children exhibited greater motor activity when they observed actions of their joint action partner. ... motor resonance and ...
[38]
Motor simulation and the coordination of self and other in real-time ...
Motor simulation provides a functional resource for the temporal coordination of one's own behaviour with others in dynamic social contexts.Motor Simulation And The... · Effect Of Dtms On Tempo... · Specificity Of Dtms Effect
[39]
The presentation of self in everyday life. - APA PsycNET
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Doubleday. Abstract. A classic analysis of the processes by which persons manage their appearance ...
[40]
Mirror Neurons, Embodied Simulation, and the Neural Basis of ...
Oct 15, 2009 · A common underlying functional mechanism—embodied simulation—mediates our capacity to share the meaning of actions, intentions, feelings, and ...
[41]
Digital body, identity and privacy in social virtual reality: A systematic ...
This article provides a systematic review on the protection of users' identity and privacy in social VR, with a specific focus on digital bodies.
[42]
(PDF) Digital identities – overcoming visual bias through virtual ...
This study sheds new light on the role of identity in virtual environments when virtual representation of self is in support of disabled individuals.
[43]
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1959-15044-000
[44]
Hearing what the body feels: Auditory encoding of rhythmic movement
Here we show that the way adults move their bodies to music influences their auditory perception of the rhythm structure.
[45]
Expression in popular music singing as embodied and interpersonal
May 29, 2023 · These movements aim to embody the expressive character perceived in the musical and textual features of a musical work.Abstract · Singing as an expression of... · Embodied expression as and...
[46]
Musical Interaction Reveals Music as Embodied Language - PMC
Jul 14, 2021 · Embodied music cognition, on the contrary, takes advantage of the above-mentioned sensorimotor loops as a crucial feature of brain functioning ...
[47]
Feminist Theory, Music Theory, and the Mind/Body Problem - jstor
An embodied music theory, then, would include in its notion of musi- cal meaning things which could not be heard by even the most attentive cocomposing listener ...
[48]
Embodied Songs: Insights Into the Nature of Cross-Modal Meaning ...
Oct 21, 2021 · Embodied song practices involve the transformation of songs from the acoustic modality into an embodied-visual form, to increase meaningful ...
[49]
Music to my eyes: Cross-modal interactions in the perception of ...
We investigate non-verbal communication through expressive body movement and musical sound, to reveal higher cognitive processes involved in the integration ...
[50]
(PDF) West African Polyrhythm: culture, theory, and representation
In this paper I explicate polyrhythm in the context of traditional West African music, framing it within a more general theory of polyrhythm and polymeter.<|separator|>
[51]
[PDF] Embodying Rhythm: - Sites@BC
Castaldi posits that the polyrhythmic Africanist aesthetic lends itself to the improvisational nature of African dance and music styles. According to Castaldi, ...
[52]
Development of embodied listening studies with multimodal and ...
Jan 9, 2024 · Results: Results show that multimodal haptic feedback enhanced the participants' listening experience while on-skin vibrations provided more ...
[53]
Approaches for Working with the Body in the Design of Electronic ...
Dec 4, 2023 · In this article I discuss a movement-led design methodology for movement-based interactive performance systems in electronic music.
[54]
Marina Abramović - The Art Story
Jul 1, 2010 · Abramović, who has referred to herself as "the grandmother of Performance Art," was part of the earliest experiments in performance art.
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Introduction - Performing Endurance
Oct 10, 2018 · ... Abramović “reperformed” in the mode of endurance the documentation of performance art pieces from the 1960s and 1970s. By including ...
[56]
From Touch to Mental Imagery: The Embodied Aesthetic Experience ...
Haptic perception shapes mental imagery in relation with the embodiment ... artwork, while haptic perception emphasizes the sensory and experiential value.
[57]
[PDF] the roles of haptic perception - IDEALS
Feminist artists similarly sought out women's lived, embodied experiences as the source of their art. These feminist artists often used haptic elements in their ...
[58]
[PDF] Affect and Embodiment in Contemporary Art - VCU Scholars Compass
Embodiment involves a positioned thinking subject inseparable from sensory perception. ... ” Marks describes haptic perception “as the combination of tactile ...
[59]
The Embodied Conservatism of Rudolf Laban, 1919–1926
Aug 14, 2019 · This article examines Rudolf Laban's theory of dance as it developed in his written and stage works from 1919 to 1926.
[60]
Stanislavsky's system as an enactive guide to embodied cognition?
This paper presents a model of the structure of subjective experience derived from the work of Konstantin Stanislavsky, and demonstrates its usefulness
[61]
The Stanislavski System: A Psychophysical Acting Training ...
Jul 4, 2024 · Stanislavski emphasised on the significance of establishing a strong link between psychology and physicality in actor training and performance.Missing: embodied | Show results with:embodied<|separator|>
[62]
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer new media artist - DAM MUSEUM
Feb 17, 2021 · He is known for his large scale interactive installations in public spaces, as well as other artworks in which the public becomes the piece.
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The role of the body in the experience of installation art: a case study ...
Unlocking the body's role may be important for understanding the impact and value of art. Especially in times of increasing digital presence, installation art ...Missing: post- | Show results with:post-
[64]
Jesus' Preexistence and Incarnation - St Andrews Encyclopaedia of ...
Jun 20, 2024 · This article defines the doctrinal concepts of 'preexistence' and 'incarnation' as they are applied to Jesus Christ.
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[PDF] Without Separation? Christ's Tomb and the Hypostatic Union
” The Council of Chalcedon (451 C.E.) elaborated, formulating the incarnation as the hypostatic union, a joining of divine and human natures in one person ...
[66]
The Incarnation under Fire - jstor
doctrine of divine incarnation, developed in its essential lines from the. First Council of Nicea in 325 to the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Believ ing Jesus ...
[67]
Rama: Seventh Avatar of Vishnu - World History Encyclopedia
Sep 13, 2015 · Rama (or Ramacandra) is the seventh avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu. His adventures include the slaying of the demon king Ravana.
[68]
[PDF] Hindu Avatar and Christian Incarnation
Dec 1, 2017 · In this myth Rama represents and upholds morality and law (dharma) and Ravana represents the forces of evil and wickedness (adharma). (Bassuk, ...
[69]
on dharmakaya as ultimate reality prolegomenon for a buddhist ...
Thus, the real Buddha is to be con- ceived as the embodiment of the truth (dharmakaya) characterized as emptiness, as distinct from the bodily form (ripa ...Missing: scholarly | Show results with:scholarly
[70]
[PDF] THE NOTION OF DHARMAKAYA: - DVK Journals
The gist of this theory in its early form consists in this distinction between that body which represents the essence of Truth tdharmatay, identified with ...
[71]
Thomas Aquinas - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Dec 7, 2022 · Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–1274). The greatest figure of thirteenth-century Europe in the two preeminent sciences of the era, philosophy and theology.
[72]
[PDF] Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysical Nature of the Soul and its ...
In Summa Theologiae I.76.1 Aquinas devotes a lengthy article to the nature of the soul's union with the body. In the first part of the respondeo, he offers ...
[73]
The body and ethics in Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae
Jan 1, 2024 · This article explores the role of the body in Thomas Aquinas' ethical thought, focusing on the Summa Theologiae. Drawing on Thomas' account ...
[74]
SACRED LANDSCAPES, SPIRITUAL TRAVEL: EMBODIED ...
Nov 2, 2018 · This paper examines long-distance journeys to shrines, rather than sacred sites themselves, to explore how landscapes travelled were perceived, ...
[75]
(PDF) Exotifying Bodies: Self-Flagellation, Abjection, and Social ...
... Locals typically perform the ritual as a spiritual gesture to repent for sins, to commemorate and appreciate the sacrifice of Christ, and to fulfil a vow or ...
[76]
https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1707&context=etd
[77]
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-blackfriars/article/abs/body-and-ethics-in-thomas-aquinas-summa-theologiae/E436C99CF0E1F650ACFF4DD671B5C5FA
[78]
Yoga : Introduction to Tantra Shastra by Sir Johnwoodroffe
... union of the jīva or embodied spirit, with the Paramātmā, or Supreme Spirit,1 and the practices by which this union may be attained. There is a natural yoga ...
[79]
The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure - Google Books
Author, Victor Turner ; Contributor, Roger D. Abrahams ; Edition, illustrated, reprint, revised ; Publisher, Transaction Publishers, 1995 ; ISBN, 0202011909, ...
[80]
[PDF] Embodied Mindfulness - McGill University
Mar 27, 2017 · Embodied mindfulness is a concept that links different mindfulness approaches through the theory of embodiment, grounding it in bodily ...
[81]
[PDF] Buddhism and Western Psychology
Jun 6, 2024 · Varela introduced the concept of embodied, enactive cognition which has been influential in cognitive psychology. Kabat Zinn developed ...
[82]
Design, fabrication and control of soft robots - Nature
May 27, 2015 · Rus, D., Tolley, M. Design, fabrication and control of soft robots. Nature 521, 467–475 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14543. Download ...
[83]
[PDF] 1 Towards Enduring Autonomous Robots via Embodied Energy ...
Creating efficient robots that effectively embody energy can be accomplished by optimizing for endurance and operating time while overcoming key design ...
[84]
Inducing illusory ownership of a virtual body - Frontiers
We discuss three experiments that investigate how virtual limbs and bodies can come to feel like real limbs and bodies.Abstract · The Virtual Hand Illusion · The Virtual Body · Discussion
[85]
First Person Experience of Body Transfer in Virtual Reality | PLOS One
A first person perspective of a life-sized virtual human female body that appears to substitute the male subjects' own bodies was sufficient to generate a body ...
[86]
[PDF] The Extended Mind
Apr 5, 2014 · The Extended Mind. Author(s): Andy Clark and David Chalmers. Source: Analysis, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Jan., 1998), pp. 7-19. Published by: Oxford ...
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Neuralink — Pioneering Brain Computer Interfaces
Creating a generalized brain interface to restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs today and unlock human potential tomorrow.Careers · Technology · Clinical Trials · UpdatesMissing: embodiment post- 2020
[88]
Prosthetic embodiment or what makes a limb part of your body
May 16, 2024 · Prosthetic embodiment, or the incorporation of a prosthesis into one's sensory and functional body schema, may be achieved by engineering bionic limbs.
[89]
Popularity of the metaverse: Embodied social presence theory ...
Sep 28, 2022 · This study develops a model based on embodied social presence theory. We surveyed 292 metaverse users, and analyzed the obtained data using partial least ...Introduction · Research model and... · Results · Discussion and implications