Read in English<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many people spend most of their day looking at a smartphone screen. The usual explanation is that it is entertaining, or that it helps kill time. But another way of seeing it occurred to me. Perhaps we are taking in the stimuli of the outside world only with our heads<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seeing, hearing, smelling, touching. We use our five senses to feel the world with our bodies less and less. And even when we do feel something, our ability to register it as “fun,” “new,” or “Huh?” has grown weaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is not that we lack stimulation. It is that the entry point for stimulation has moved from the body to the head. On a smartphone, the scent of the wind, the presence of another person, the steam rising from a dish, all become things received through the eyes and fingertips alone. What reaches us through the glass in our palm, we do not feel<\/em>; we process<\/em>. Yet knowing the world was always meant to be a matter of touching it with the whole body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Has the body, then, declined? No. Even while staring at a phone, people manage to climb and descend stairs, get on and off trains, and walk through crowds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They gauge the height of each step, cross the gap between train and platform, and sidestep oncoming people. The body is working perfectly well. But all of it runs on autopilot. The body moves, yet the person does not feel it moving. It has not declined; body and mind have simply been cut off from each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Put simply, our bodies today are divided into three layers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is more, daily life goes on just fine without that middle layer. Stations, stairs, and sidewalks are designed so that we can move through them safely without paying attention. We don’t need it, so we don’t use it. We don’t use it, so we don’t think we need it. Accidents involving people walking while looking at their phones happen when something out of the ordinary occurs. In other words, at exactly the moment when one ought to feel that “Huh?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n What, concretely, is this missing middle body? Our own bearing, our sense of distance from others, the give-and-take of making way. These everyday, unremarkable senses are what it consists of. And the three of them gradually extend outward, from our own bodies toward other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, our own bearing. Even with our eyes closed, we know where our hands and feet are and what posture we are in. That is because we carry a “map” of ourselves inside the body. A person with graceful bearing is someone whose map is finely detailed, and who is also aware of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Next, distance from our surroundings. The brain treats the space just outside the body as an extension of the body itself. Neuroscience calls this region “peripersonal space.” It is thanks to this sense that we can feel someone standing behind us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then, making way for one another. This cannot be done by one person’s senses alone. We read how the other person will move and adjust to them without a word. It is close to what the martial arts call maai<\/em>, the interval between opponents. Body and body are communicating in silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A person walking while looking at their phone still has their own body map running on autopilot. But their sense of the people around them, of the interval between themselves and others, is thin. So they can walk, but they cannot make way. When two people are about to collide on the street, the one who steps aside is always the one not looking at a screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Curiosity is not a sense in itself. It is a movement of the mind that arises from the senses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our bodies are always moving while unconsciously predicting “this is what should happen next.” When that prediction is slightly off, we feel a “Huh?” An unfamiliar flower blooming along a familiar road. A different smell drifting from a familiar shop. That small discrepancy gives rise to the wish to check it out; in other words, to curiosity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A smartphone can make our hearts race, and it can stir our emotions. But that is merely reacting<\/em> to stimuli, which is different from feeling<\/em> the world. The endless stream of videos and topics is designed from the start to defy our expectations. Once being surprised becomes the norm, we stop being surprised at all. A body accustomed to strong stimuli can no longer notice the small changes of everyday life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so, though surrounded by the world, we find nothing in it new. So we return to the screen in search of novelty. Beneath what looks like “killing time,” perhaps, lies this very cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The clues to recovering this missing body lie close at hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take the kata<\/em>, the set forms, of the martial arts and the tea ceremony. Holding a tea bowl, opening a sliding door, taking a single step forward. Movements we would normally leave to autopilot are performed one by one, confirmed through the body. Repeating the same movement again and again, we come to sense the slight differences within it. Practicing kata<\/em> is also training in bringing the body back into awareness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Surfing is the same. On a board, you cannot stay standing on autopilot. No wave ever comes the same way twice, so the body is constantly picking up “Huh?” moments. Even while waiting for waves out at sea, you are always checking the movement of the water and your own position. Are you drifting left or right? Are you being pushed out to sea? Not only with your eyes, but with your feet, your shoulders, your skin, you keep feeling it all the time. As you ride, the board becomes an extension of your feet, and your body map spreads out to the tip of the board. And without exchanging a word, you take turns with the other surfers, making way for one another. If kata<\/em> is training in sensing difference within the same movement, surfing is training in fitting the body to a nature that is different every time. They point in opposite directions, but both are ways of receiving the world through the body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The surfboard I ride is a NO BRAND board, shaped by the legendary surfer Michio Degawa. Mr. Degawa is a person who seems to be made entirely of bodily sensation. Now past seventy, he is still an active surfer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is striking is the video he posts to Instagram every morning. A south wind, the direction of the wind, the flow of the air. What you find there is not weather-forecast data but the language of the body, which includes the humidity and temperature felt on the skin, and even how the wind is working on the waves. Even on the same smartphone screen, words born from the body invite the viewer back toward the body: “Tomorrow morning, I want to go and feel that wind for myself.” The problem is not the smartphone itself. It is whether what flows through it comes from the head or from the body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Zen master D\u014dgen taught shinjin ichinyo<\/em>: body and mind are one. It is not that we first understand with the head and then move the body. Touching something with the body is, in itself, understanding it. Seen this way, a life steeped in smartphones is a state in which mind and body have come apart. The mind is inside the screen; the body is on autopilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is also connected to a familiar complaint: “I can’t make good habits stick.” We understand with our heads, but it never settles into the body, so the habit doesn’t last. We don’t receive the world with our bodies, so it never feels new. Both grow from the same root.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not a call to give up your smartphone. The problem lies not in the tool but in a way of living in which receiving the world with the head alone has become the norm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The body has not declined. It still walks, and it still steps aside. It is simply resting from feeling. So recovering it requires nothing special. Feel the step beneath the soles of your feet. Feel the presence of the person passing by. Feel the wind at the turn of the season on your skin. It begins with picking up those small “Huh?” moments once again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The world has not become boring. The body that feels the world is only a little asleep right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read in English Introduction Many people spend most of their day looking at a smartphone screen. The usual exp […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=768"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":770,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768\/revisions\/770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Body That Works, the Body That Does Not Feel<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Senses That Reach from Self to Others<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
When the “Huh?” Disappears<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Bringing the Body Back into Awareness<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n