Proprioceptive Feedback

Close your eyes and touch your nose. How did you find it? You have a GPS inside your muscles and joints that tells you where your body parts are. This is called proprioception. It is like having an invisible map of yourself. When you use tools, your GPS gets even bigger, and your brain starts to think the tool is part of your own body.

Your brain starts to think the tool is part of your own body. The carpenter does not feel the hammer in his hand. He feels the nail through the hammer. The boundary of self expanded. The tool disappeared. When you drive a car, you feel the road through the tires. Your body grew. Proprioception is proof that the self is not fixed. The self is as big as the tools it learns to use.

Proprioception: sense of relative position of body parts and effort in movement, mediated by mechanosensory neurons in muscles, tendons, and joints. In craftsmanship, allows extension of self into the material — the tool becomes a transparent interface. The artisan experiences the world through the point of a chisel or tip of a brush. The self ends where? At the skin? At the fingertip? At the tip of the tool? The answer: wherever attention goes, the self follows.

SOUND: The sound of your own chewing inside your head: the body's internal microphone.

SMELL: The smell of your own skin: the most familiar scent you never notice.

TASTE: Feeling the shape of your tongue in your mouth: tasting your own map.

TOUCH: Your feet pressing against the floor: the ground confirming your coordinates.

SIGHT: Looking in the mirror and knowing that is me: sight meeting proprioception.

BODY: Reaching for a glass without looking and grabbing it perfectly: the invisible map in action.

Music: Both Sides Now by Judy Collins

Part of Craft & The Hand — ART — Education Revelation