Reflections from the World Teachers' Conference in Dornach - Part 5 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)
By Judi Remigio, Parent and Child Teacher
On the second day, our morning lecture at the World Teachers' Conference in Dornach, introduced the theme, that would be on-going, of the relationship between the enlivened body and the physical body, and the development of the self-awareness between the two.
"I am my body" and "I have this body", with the "I" as pure, can think itself, we are "body-beings with awareness". The "pure living body", beginning in the second year of life, has the capacity for self-awareness.
We have the everyday experience polarity between the "living body" (physical processes, 'subjective body', latent, less of an experience unless there is deprivation, i.e. hunger, cold, heat, or unless we are taken over by emotion, i.e. laughter, crying, ...); the body is like a tool, enables my existence, but "I can also perish".
The "living, subjective body" can become objective when it is seen, the conscious use of the body. A visible, objective body, with evoking feelings, i.e. prudence, "being found out", "burning shame", pride and vanity, we want to be seen, social media, body has to be made beautiful and presentable.
The bodily being oscillates between being invisible (tool used by us) and conscious, determined body. Have body means having become; i.e. having a body versus being a body.
In life, the foetus/neonate, have self-experience because they feel pain, hunger, movement; primary self-experience. Babies are able to imitate facial expressions at 6-8 weeks, i.e. they can make their tongues imitate ours, hence, the eventual development of language!! We can call these imitations 'proto-conversations'.
Children acquire interactive schemes, implicit relationships or 'knowing', i.e. certain feelings get attention, also so very important in the development of the human being, 'does the world respond to me?'.
"Affective resonance" - infants get to know another through the effective mirroring of the other, the development of the 'social self'. Their own body appears in this relationship.
Dear friends, there is more to this lovely and somewhat complicated thread, so please bear with me, carry on, in our next wonderful, weekly newsletter