Philosophically, I am working on describing the state of consciousness, I call bodily reflection. It’s the state you enter when you’re in an activity that captures you so much that you get completely immersed. When you’re in this state, it is as if everything changes: your focus, your interaction and communication with other people, your experience of yourself, of time, and of the space you’re in.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi gave us the psychological theory of flow. Bodily reflection has a lot in common with flow. When I speak of flow, everyone knows what I mean, so I often use that term.
What I’m aiming for through my doctorate, though, is philosophical, academic acknowledgment of this high-order bodily and affective state of consciousness as a state in its own right.
My philosophical work is based on traditional and current phenomenological literature, theories of embodied cognition, current debates on expertise and skillful activity, and other inspiring material. Beside written sources of knowledge, I also draw on my own first-person experience as a performer, and on qualitative research interviews and cooperations with dancers and other artists.
In the dance world, and amongst other artists as well as athletes, the possibility and practice of “thinking” through one’s movements and emotions is commonly known. But somehow academia has not yet understood, or paid much attention to, this mode of non-conceptual yet reflective sense-making.
I want to raise awareness of bodily reflection - a much ignored, yet common human resource, to which I believe we all have access.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi gave us the psychological theory of flow. Bodily reflection has a lot in common with flow. When I speak of flow, everyone knows what I mean, so I often use that term.
What I’m aiming for through my doctorate, though, is philosophical, academic acknowledgment of this high-order bodily and affective state of consciousness as a state in its own right.
My philosophical work is based on traditional and current phenomenological literature, theories of embodied cognition, current debates on expertise and skillful activity, and other inspiring material. Beside written sources of knowledge, I also draw on my own first-person experience as a performer, and on qualitative research interviews and cooperations with dancers and other artists.
In the dance world, and amongst other artists as well as athletes, the possibility and practice of “thinking” through one’s movements and emotions is commonly known. But somehow academia has not yet understood, or paid much attention to, this mode of non-conceptual yet reflective sense-making.
I want to raise awareness of bodily reflection - a much ignored, yet common human resource, to which I believe we all have access.
I did my BA and MA in philosophy at the University of Copenhagen. I owe a lot to the Center For Subjectivity Research at UCPH, where I did most of my MA courses and still feel very much "at home".
On these academic sites you can download my publications and read more about my conference activities:
On these academic sites you can download my publications and read more about my conference activities:
Talks on my theory on bodily reflection have been peer-reviewed and presented here:
I've been invited to give talks and lectures on bodily reflection here: