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This article by Polkinghorne might be of interest in his linkage of embodiment and narrative https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/NW/article/view/23789/27568

Possibilities for Action: Narrative Understanding ...<https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/NW/article/view/23789/27568>
journals.lib.unb.ca
Possibilities for Action: Narrative Understanding. 2 This paper is a probe of the issue of how and why “there never has existed a people without narratives.” Is there an explanation for the appearance of narratives across different historical periods and cultures?





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From: Discussion list for those practising BNIM <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Barratt, Caroline <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 16 July 2018 15:42
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: BNIM: finding the best word for some sort of 'experiencing'


Hi Rakesh



My understanding and experience of this is that embodied awareness develops over time. I don’t see the value in doing one off meditations in the hope of it touching into something new. I would be concerned that asking someone to do something they had not done before prior to an potentially difficult interview could actually harm the interview process (and potentially be unethical) but clearly this is very context dependent. If you are studying people’s life stories since learning mindfulness meditation then it could be very appropriate! (or perhaps even less appropriate as they may have learnt it, decided they hated it and never to do it again!)



But I do think we perhaps have more sensitivity of our bodies that we are necessarily conscious of, we just quickly move into thought, and if directly asked about body sensations some people may be able to respond.



I have also been thinking that where people are really struggling to find words there might be value in exploring that struggle. Let’s imagine a woman trying to describe her abusive ex-husband:



Interviewee: ‘I don’t know….he, he…he was very…oh I don’t know…….. it’s difficult (3 sec)…I am not quite sure how to describe him…..’



Interviewer: ‘You said ‘you weren’t quite sure how to describe him’ can you tell me more about that feeling or sensation of not being sure?



These are all wild hypotheses! Having just read Tom’s update mid-way through writing this I love the idea of ‘joyma’ and recognising that pleasant experience also lays in own pathways through the body – and perhaps sometimes a powerful mix of the two – childbirth springs to mind here, transplant surgery etc.



Your work looks fascinating and in that context, increased awareness of and sensitivity to the body could be really important. Happy to discuss off list if that’s of interest.



Best wishes



Caroline





From: Rakesh Biswas [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 16 July 2018 15:09
To: Barratt, Caroline
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: BNIM: finding the best word for some sort of 'experiencing'



"This then brings us to how emotion and trauma and are stored in the body, perhaps we need to allow space for the body’s story as well as the mind"



Thanks Caroline for sharing this. Very interesting from a healthcare giver's perspective. Do you think those of our patients/interviewees who meditate could actually express these better or could we have a meditation session with the patient before recording her history/interview?



Here's a link to our current workflow



http://www.mdpi.com/2227-9032/6/3/78<https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mdpi.com%2F2227-9032%2F6%2F3%2F78&data=02%7C01%7Cm.volante%40MDX.AC.UK%7Cb66eda44c8d24efdf19d08d5eb2a5edd%7C38e37b88a3a148cf9f056537427fed24%7C0%7C0%7C636673489571886468&sdata=DaO1G%2FmXLBzW0qvHbmHdWOJ8TtnYWXmdhioTQOxFT9M%3D&reserved=0>



best



rakesh







On Jul 16, 2018 4:17 PM, "Barratt, Caroline" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:

Hi Tom



I do find this very interesting and it shines a light on the experiencing of ‘knowing’ that comes prior to the cognisance of what it is that we know (by which we become conscious of what it is that we ‘know’), followed by the expression of that knowing and making, as best we can, the meaning of that knowing available to another.



Within the context of a BNIM interview (as an interviewee) I think the complexity of looking back over time and dealing with our current subjectivity and then through PINs having our old subjectivities raise their heads means that here are many layers to this process. The experiencing of ‘knowing’ at the time of the event and the experiencing of ‘knowing’ at the time of, and in the context of, the interview which will inevitably shape how we make our experiencing of the knowing meaningful for another (and consider what aspects of the knowing are relevant in the context of the interview).



Of course we may also ‘know’ that we ‘don’t know’…



Through meditation practice it has been interesting to notice the arising of knowing in my experience, how it emerges as a felt sense in the body. Of course the mind is there keen to get involved and I am not suggesting there is a significant time delay between one and the other but there is a felt sense of our experience, a knowing how things are for us, separate from the mental cognition.



But of course in the context of interviewing we are trying to draw this ‘knowing’ out. I can’t quite put my finger on the importance of this discussion. Perhaps some of the questions aimed at inducing narrative could draw on this embodiedness of knowing more directly, either asking about sensations in the body at the time of the event or at the time of interview – we might ask for feelings or emotions why not physical sensations? This then brings us to how emotion and trauma and are stored in the body, perhaps we need to allow space for the body’s story as well as the mind…



Mmm anyway sorry if I have hijacked your journey Tom and taken us on a complete diversion!



Best wishes



Caroline



From: Discussion list for those practising BNIM [mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>] On Behalf Of Tom Wengraf
Sent: 16 July 2018 10:11
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: BNIM: finding the best word for some sort of 'experiencing'



Seasonal greetings ( which one depends on which hemisphere you're in)!



I've just come across a note I made last year relating to the way in which both ourselves (trying to make sense of the interviewee';s experience) and our BNIM interviewees (trying to make sense of their own or somebody else's experience) sometimes need quite a lot of work to find a 'sufficiently-not-too-wrong'  word/phrase to  convey what we are trying to get at.



The work of Eugene Gendlin Focusing is very relevant as well.



Best wishes



Tom







 OLD NOTE FOLLOWS (may be of interest to some):



Siri Hustvedt discussing and citing Petitmengin, and me citing Kundera



In her paper “towards the source of thoughts: the gestural and trans modal dimension of lived experience”,  the cognitive scientist Claire  Petitmengin addresses the question of this rightness. She calls it a “pre-reflective dimension of subjective experience,” an internal zone which is both gestural and rhythmic, the terrain of “felt meaning.” The question is, when I’m working, how do I know that a turn in the story or a conversation between characters is right? Why do I choose one word over another? Petitmengin sites the simple example of searching for a word. “.. A few minutes ago,” she writes, “I was looking for the word ‘to distil.’ I had an  interior, global sense of it, very difficult to describe,. And at the same time, very precise, because when a word with a close meaning came to my mind (‘to ferment”), I instantly rejected it”.

This recognition that we have come upon the right thing takes place every day in our conversations, when we write, draw, paint, do research, but it is rarely discussed or studied. Something appears. It is not yet a thought or a word or a created image. It is their belief what may later be articulated as a word, formula, or a stroke of a brush.

As Petitmengin points out, the vocabulary used to describe the strata of experience comes from a number of sensorial registers: (i) visual (shape, shadow, fuzzy, et cetera), (ii) the kinesic and (iii) the tactile (vibration, pulsation, pressure, density, weight, texture, temperature, et cetera), (Iv) the auditory (Echo, resonance, rhythm et cetera) and even (v) the olfactory or the (vi) gustative”.

These are metaphorical ways of grasping internal gestures, often not yet differentiated, categorise, or me distinct but felt nevertheless….. corporeal memory which struggles towards a representation that feels right (Hustvedt 2012: 286-7, paragraphing etc.  added))



This does not pick up as well as I would wish on Kundera’s ‘moment-analysis’ with simultaneous and successive emotions as well as simultaneous and successive thoughts.

The coexistence of many contradictory emotions in a very limited space makes for a semantics which is brand new (what astonishes and fascinates is the unexpected juxtapositions of emotions). The coexistence of emotions is horizontal (they follow one another) but also (even more unusual) vertical (they sound simultaneously as a polyphony of emotions)…… For example: at the same time we hear a nostalgic memory, beneath it a furious ostinato motif, and above it another melody, which sounds like cries. If the researcher does not understand that all these [many] lines have equal semantic importance and that therefore none of them should be made into mere accompaniment, he is missing the structure…. The permanent coexistence of contradictory emotions [and thoughts, and impulses TW]…evokes a stage set on which many different characters are simultaneously present, speaking, confronting each other….(Kundera 1995)[1]



However, Hustvedt does however get what we might better be call the pre-conceptual and insufficiently-distinguished  (rather than the pre-reflective) component of lived or felt experience.

It is curious and sobering how difficult it is to say everything simultaneously in language, and find quotations that actually carry all the dimensions I want to get born in mind at the same time.



Tom 18 November 2017






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•        [1] (Kundera 1995: 185-6: the word ‘researcher’ in the paragraph is, in the original ‘performer’, since Kundera was discussing the music of the Czech composer Janacek).  Material in square brackets added.







--

If interested in BNIM,the Biographical-Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM) approach to qualitative research interviewing, the following is relevant.......



The last (45th) BNIM 5-day intensive course ran n London from Thursday April 19 to Wednesday April 25, 2018.



A lot of material about BNIM is available from my page at RESEARCHGATE.

This now includes the Quick Outline Sketch, the Short Guide, and the Detailed Manuals, and the BNIM Bibliography.

Also several articles and papers.

Do feel free to consult and use the RESEARCHGATE facility.



Quite separately, I would be very pleased to receive and respond to  any comments or questions that you may have about those materials or  more generally about BNIM.

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