Repensando os limites da comunicação e da consciência corporal: uma análise da prática do yoga à luz da teoria do corpomídia

Abstract

In the past few years the press has published innumerable articles on the importance of Yoga, which have contributed to spreading the adoption of the practice, while at the same time engendering countless stereotypes of the oriental body. This dissertation develops a study on the presence of the process of consciousness in the human being and its implications in terms of perception and communication arising from the theory and practice of Yoga in order to elaborate a more consistent debate on the theme. The concept of bodymedia developed by Christine Greiner and Helena Katz serves as the basis for this study. According to this concept, the body and the environment relate to each other in the course of a constant interchange of information, in a co-evolutionary process that occurs in the present. The first chapter presents a study on consciousness and the body-mind continuum in contemporary cognitive science the investigations made by António Damásio are particularly relevant here and it traces a relation between these recent studies and the thousand-year old Yoga theory of consciousness. It establishes a dialogue between the concepts of Atma in the theory of Yoga and of central consciousness and self in the theory of Damásio. In the second chapter, this study investigates the practice of developing consciousness in Yoga from the perspective of psycho-physical training, using Yasuo Yuasa s theory of consciousness and Damásio s theory of emotions and feelings to do so. The objective of this study is not to orientalize contemporary science nor turn the theory of Yoga into a science, but to discuss the phenomenon of consciousness and perceive that distant universes do have points of convergence, above all because these points are pertinent approaches to one of the most intriguing human phenomena: consciousness. This implicates the very foundation of corporal communication and thus becomes a key to understanding what it means to be in the world, establishing communicative links with the environment. As a result of this study, this dissertation proposes that when Yoga is analyzed from the perspective of bodymedia, it can be subdivided into questions of a fundamentally ethical nature to create possibilities that permit the dialogue between the oriental and western cultures in the contemporary world