BODYHOOD

Bodyhood is a term adopted by cognitive biologist Humberto Maturana, where emotions, conversations, and the body work together in a complex and seamless way to produce our biological existence. Everything we do and know involves our whole body to generate energy and information. Everything we do happens in the nervous system in our body.

This dynamic operating system that is your Way of Being involves the whole body.  We use sensations, perceptions, and learning to incorporate the world we live in through personal experience. As a result, our conversations and relationships occur from our nervous system through our bodyhood which in turn shapes future interactions.  This way we affect each other’s bodyhoods through languaging and emotioning. Relating is shaped by our cultural and historical narratives through “structural coupling”, and in turn, are embodied in our nervous system. Together they produce our Way of Being – our bodyhood – the way we are in our body, composed of mind, consciousness and thought.