The body schema part of embodied self-awareness has the role of adjusting our movements according to the emotional evaluation of why we are doing this activity. Walking over hot coals seems like the right thing to do if one is a Yogi. Having made that choice, careful attention must be paid to a host of receptors that monitor pain and movement. Most

This is why we often need someone else to guide us in and out of this state. With practice, we become better able to maintain ourselves there, but ultimately the full exploration of new emotional territory requires help from a coregulating other.

body schema is the part of embodied self-awareness that senses that our body belongs to us and to no one else, as well as our sense of movement and balance, our ability to locate particular parts of ourselves, our sense of our body size and shape, and the awareness that our body has boundaries that separate us from objects and other bodies.

We can assume that the horror was a spontaneous and emergent emotion as Sacks connected—in the subjective emotional present of embodied self-awareness—his change in body schema to his interoceptive self-awareness. He graciously admits to us that he could not stay in that emotional present: the horror was too disturbing.

one that can “go with the flow” and shift in a dynamic and adaptive way to changing circumstances and body states.

the similarities and the differences between normal absorption (flow) and dissociation. In both cases, there is a total focus on the activity and a loss of peripheral awareness. While normal absorption is inherently pleasurable, however, dissociation is a loss of body sensation so as to avoid pain.

Asking, “Am I just lazy?” is making a judgment by claiming ownership of a category, laziness, presumed to typify the self. Categories are like traits. If I’m lazy, there is not much I can do about it. Not only that, I can start to doubt or blame myself. In the process, I’ve completely lost my embodied self-awareness. I might look to others for a

Suppression, in general, occurs when we feel the need to protect ourselves by not exposing our feelings and urges to others. Suppression, then is a response to some kind of perceived threat to our ability to be in the subjective emotional present.

As a psychologically experienced entity, awareness can feel very substantial, the very substance of our existence. Yet unlike water, the fluid of neural network activity does not have mass. It is in a sense, insubstantial as a physical entity.