Embodied mind
What do mind-body therapies share?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Mehling and colleagues treat body awareness as a phenomenological, modifiable take on proprioception and interoception — the common ground of yoga, Feldenkrais, mindfulness and related practices.
How this study connects
Role on claims
Each row is a claim on a concept or method page where this paper supports, challenges, or qualifies the statement. Roles are hand-checked — not a model guess.
Attention to the lived body is a shared idea behind many mind-body therapies.
Body awareness is described as an inseparable aspect of embodied self-awareness in action, often taken for granted, which practitioners of mind-body therapies treat as a key mechanism modifiable by attention.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Attention to the lived body is a shared idea behind many mind-body therapies.
Body awareness is described as an inseparable aspect of embodied self-awareness in action, often taken for granted, which practitioners of mind-body therapies treat as a key mechanism modifiable by attention.
Scope note — Conceptual analysis plus practitioner testimony, not a trial; it does not show awareness causes clinical benefit.
Limits the claim's scope: a different population, assay, or outcome.
The body-awareness paper is a phenomenological take on therapies; the Markov-blanket paper is a formal multi-scale claim — they share anti-internalism without sharing a method.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
The distinction between the lived body and the body-as-object is the method's basic working tool. It lets de Boer argue that health becomes experientially present in the not-always-harmonious interaction between the two, and lets Mehling and colleagues define body awareness as an aspect of embodied self-awareness that is usually taken for granted on the lived body but can be modified by attention.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Whether health is experienced at all. Mehling and colleagues follow the standard phenomenological line that on the lived body awareness is often taken for granted or 'absent', which fits the view that health is the unnoticed background of illness. De Boer rejects that view, arguing that health becomes present precisely when the body is turned into an object of attention.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
How much non-philosophical material to bring in. Mehling and colleagues supplement conceptual analysis with interviews of leading practitioners; the pain, health and autonomy papers work from the philosophical tradition alone. The interview-backed paper still cannot show that enhancing awareness causes clinical benefit, so the extra material widens the description without turning it into a test.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
In practice the empirical base is often small and borrowed, and is used to illustrate rather than to prove. The narrative-devices paper draws on a DBS interview literature in which two of six participants reported a changing sense of self; Snoek's empirical remarks come from a prior ARC study; Mehling and colleagues interview leading practitioners rather than running a trial.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
What counts as the empirical component. Mehling and colleagues collect their own practitioner interviews; the narrative-devices paper reuses a small interview literature produced by others; the Dynamic Consent paper proposes a solution to an empirical problem without new data at all. The label 'empirical' covers very different amounts of first-hand evidence.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Open questions
Tensions this paper is part of
From concept pages' “where studies disagree.” Disagreement means the same question; scope means different assays, populations, or outcomes.
The body-awareness paper is a phenomenological take on therapies; the Markov-blanket paper is a formal multi-scale claim — they share anti-internalism without sharing a method.
- Supports · Nested Markov blankets beyond internalism
Whether health is experienced at all. Mehling and colleagues follow the standard phenomenological line that on the lived body awareness is often taken for granted or 'absent', which fits the view that health is the unnoticed background of illness. De Boer rejects that view, arguing that health becomes present precisely when the body is turned into an object of attention.
- Supports · Can you experience health, not only illness?
How much non-philosophical material to bring in. Mehling and colleagues supplement conceptual analysis with interviews of leading practitioners; the pain, health and autonomy papers work from the philosophical tradition alone. The interview-backed paper still cannot show that enhancing awareness causes clinical benefit, so the extra material widens the description without turning it into a test.
- Supports · Why isn’t chronic pain just tissue damage?
- Supports · Is autonomy only a cognitive capacity test?
What counts as the empirical component. Mehling and colleagues collect their own practitioner interviews; the narrative-devices paper reuses a small interview literature produced by others; the Dynamic Consent paper proposes a solution to an empirical problem without new data at all. The label 'empirical' covers very different amounts of first-hand evidence.
- Supports · Can brain data help us tell who we are?
- Supports · Can consent stay alive after enrolment?
History
When this study was placed
Dated entries from the concept change log — when this paper was added or removed as support, challenge, or qualifier on a claim.
Placed as supporting evidence on Embodied mind
Body awareness is described as an inseparable aspect of embodied self-awareness in action, often taken for granted, which practitioners of mind-body therapies treat as a key mechanism modifiable by attention.
Placed as a scope qualifier on Embodied mind
Body awareness is described as an inseparable aspect of embodied self-awareness in action, often taken for granted, which practitioners of mind-body therapies treat as a key mechanism modifiable by attention.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Qualitative / archival — Phenomenological review plus interviews with leading mind–body practitioners on body awareness
- N
- Practitioner interviews and literature synthesis; exact interview N not primary in stored text
- Population
- Mind–body therapy traditions (yoga, Feldenkrais, mindfulness) and practitioner accounts
- Outcome
- Shared phenomenological understanding of body awareness as modifiable embodied self-awareness
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
Inspect source passages
What do mind-body therapies share?
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
What approaches?
therapeutic approaches often categorized as mind-body approaches claim to enhance body awareness[] including yoga[,], TaiChi, Body-Oriented Psychotherapy[]
Is awareness always the main aim?
Enhancing body awareness may not be the main objective for all of these approaches, but it has been described as a key element or a mechanism of action by
Key findings
Body awareness is an inseparable aspect of embodied self-awareness in action. On the lived body it is often taken for granted or ‘absent’. Practitioners treat it as a key mechanism of benefit, modifiable by attention.
Methodology
They review mind-body approaches that claim to enhance body awareness, distinguish the lived body from the objective body, and interview leading practitioners about a shared understanding of the term.
Limitations
This is conceptual phenomenology plus practitioner testimony, not an RCT of yoga. It does not prove that enhancing awareness causes the clinical benefits.
Related papers in this topic
Same topic cluster — not a recommendation engine.