The Body that I am
What to Learn from Our Body Awareness
by Adrian Mühlebach
Nothing is closer to us than our body and yet we are only l ittle or not at all aware of it! Our body often plays the decisive role in our life: as the basis of our existence, in the regulation of our wellbeing as well as in our behavior control. Nevertheless, we perceive it far too seldom attentively. Our body perception is a dynamic, circular, selfchanging process, because it is only through individually and collectively created ideas that we can turn body sensations into body perceptions. In this respect, our body perception is diffcult to grasp (scientifcally), since it is barely accessible via objective observation, but exists only in our subjective consciousness. In this book, body perception is therefore examined from the perspective of various disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, physiology, and history, in order to refect on its signifcance for our lives and to demonstrate its usefulness in view of the challenges of our time.