Where are you? Can you move?

You know roughly where your body is at all times, but where in it is your “self”?

Your center of mass is around the solar plexus, yet that doesn’t seem to universally be where people feel the center of their self to be. Most people feel they “are” right behind their eyes, probably in the brain.

Sometimes people have out-of-body experiences, completely changing their anchor for a while.

When pointing at themselves, people tend to point a thumb at their chest or face. Do they feel differently about it, or is it just convenience?

Are you a body with a head full of thinking goop and sensors on top, or are you a head sitting on a body?

And wherever you feel you are, have you felt different at any time? Can you change it?

Personally, I can’t separate the feeling of self from my vision, so “I” am directly behind my eyeballs and I can’t change it.

TheKarion,

Nice try federal agent I’m not giving my position away

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

You have a brain in your head and a “second brain” in your gut, so thinking of yourself behind the eyes and pointing at yourself in the center of mass when you are referring to yourself both have arguably valid reasons behind them.

Hexagon,

And then there are the split-brain patients, suggesting that the brain is actually two brains that usually act together, until they don’t

subignition,
subignition avatar

If this turns out to be even loosely analogous to ECC RAM it's going to be incredible.

RIP_Cheems,
@RIP_Cheems@lemmy.world avatar

My location is irrelavent. All you need to know it that I am 1 mile from your location and approaching rapidly.

Kjatten,

I don’t even know that, I don’t particularly feel like I am either my body, head, or brain. I’ve never felt that I am a part of this body.

cholesterol,

It would be interesting to know whether the location of your ‘self’ is tied to your dominant sense. So people blind from birth could be ‘between their ears’? Which isn’t that different, but would still produce slightly different answers. And how about people missing both hearing and vision? Could a person be ‘in their hands’? ‘Up their nose’? I’d better stop.

Machinist,
@Machinist@lemmy.world avatar

I’m probably, mostly, behind my eyes, inside my head.

In moments of adrenaline and action, I’m in my chest or gut. Sometime hands, especially when doing delicate or involved work. Sometimes legs or arms when laboring.

In times of pain, I’m often at the focus of the pain until I work and ignore the physical and go somewhere deep inside that doesn’t hurt so much. Usually, a good memory or fantasy.

slinkyninja,

You are more than just a point in space. You see others perform actions and you attempt to replicate them.

HardlightCereal,

Spacetime is a lie.

LouNeko,

This is a question the greatest minds haven’t been able to answer in millennia. Don’t expect an answer in a random lemmy thread. The closest answer to the truth I could give is “we don’t know”.

Deestan,

Not true. Many people have an answer to this. They are different, and I want to know what they are. :)

LouNeko,

Thats fair. I guess because there is no definitive answer, everybody can have their own interpretation.

AnalogyAddict,

I’ve never felt particularly connected to my body.

Meho_Nohome,

Have you ever felt someone else connect to your body?

AnalogyAddict,

No. It’s just more a feeling like my body is a tool I’m using. It’s not me, and has little to do with me personally any more than a hammer I use is personal.

superkret,

I am a hive mind of gut bacteria steering a flesh puppet to make it shove food inside my environment.

Tangent5280,

Accurate. We’re bone mech, wearing flesh armour, driven by gut bacteria in our gut cabins.

Markimus,

There’s a book called Impro by Keith Johnstone.

It’s a book about improvisation, though in there there’s a very interesting part on moving your center around when it comes to character work.

So long as the centre remains in the middle of your chest (pretend it’s a few inches deep), you will feel that you are still yourself and in full command, only more energetically and harmoniously so, with your body approaching an “ideal type”.

As soon as you try to shift the centre to some other place within or outside your body, you will feel that your whole psychological and physical attitude will change, just as it changes when you step into an imaginary body.

You will notice that the centre is able to draw and concentrate your whole being into one spot from which your activity emanates and radiates.

(Johnstone, 1987, p. 179).

Markimus,

You can also imagine a movable centre.

Let it sway slowly before your forehead and circle your head from time to time, and you will sense the psychology of a bewildered person.

Let it circle irregularly around your whole body, in varying tempos, now going up and now sinking down, and the effect will no doubt be one of intoxication.

(Johnstone, 1987, p. 180).

OceanSoap,

Hub. Interesting. My sense of self tends to be around my shoulder/back of head/neck area. I don’t get the feeling that I’m right behind my eyeballs, my sense of self is A bit lower and further back than that. Like, if I were centered between my ears, I’d have to move a bit lower and a bit more back.

Such a strange thing to have to focus on.

fred,

In Japan, people point to their face to indicate themselves

n0m4n,

I vary.

My oddest self is working. I operate a lot of automated machinery that are interactive, and many levels of recirculating materials. I have to zone in and become my machinery, feeling the vibrations, heat, smelling, and hearing the manufacturing processes and guiding the settings to keep as optimum as conditions allow. My day can turn very bad in minutes, it is that unforgiving of specs. I don’t like being too public in what I do on the internet, but there are only a few handfuls of who operate at my scale throughout the world/ per my employer.

I can only compare it to a race car driver, or aerialist flyer in the mind/machine joining of sense of space.

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