The Cultural Body (Taipei, Dec 2004)

I am honored, as an American, to be invited to your beautiful country to speak on the topic of culture and the body. I feel humbled, coming from a culture that so commonly separates body from mind, to come into a culture that has an extended history of unifying all aspects of human experience. I hope that I can learn much from you while I am here.

As the world becomes more connected and more globalized, it becomes ever more important that diverse peoples understand each other and work together to alleviate the suffering of all sentient beings. As more and more human communication becomes ever more remote – many of our words to each other no longer face to face but bounced off satellites – we need to work together to preserve our physical connectedness. As many previously isolated cultures engage with each other, both dangers and opportunities magnify. Our increasing connectedness demands increasing cooperation. And that cooperation may begin by understanding each other from a bodily perspective. It is my belief that only by studying, mindfully understanding, and valuing our bodily life can we achieve humanity's goals.

My goal in this speech today is much less ambitious. I am speaking to you about culture and the body, a very large and complex topic. In doing so, I hope to articulate some of the universal dimensions we all engage with as we walk the path of physical existence.

I also wish to celebrate our diversity, both biologically and culturally, and to speak about a few ways that we can bring out the best in one another. In many cases, both individuals and cultures develop first on a primitive, defensive, and us-them level. As an individual or culture matures, it can begin to appreciate peoples different than itself, which heralds the ability to resolve conflicts and to work together cooperatively. In a mature individual and a mature culture, pluralism naturally arises.

In pluralism, our differences are preserved at the same time that they are used for the benefit of both the individual and the collective. It strikes me that this is the same kind of pluralism that geneticists speak of in biological systems. All biological systems must preserve their genetic diversity or they will not survive. And perhaps a kind of pluralistic psychotherapy can be developed, one that helps individuals and groups to find a balance between conformity and diversity, in both their inner and outer life.

As citizens of both different nations and the same planet, and as human beings that possess 2 arms and 2 feet and one heart, we all share the call to cultivate a pluralistic life. As a citizen of the USA, speaking to citizens of Taiwan, I hope that together, today, we can take a small step in this direction.

All human bodies share an overwhelming amount of DNA, as expressed through our structural and functional sameness. However, the minute genetic differences between individuals and groups can often seem huge and insurmountable. Researchers across the globe have shown that people of different racial groups have trouble distinguishing the faces of individuals of a different race. It is the “they all look alike” phenomenon. At the same time, we all possess brain mechanisms that scan others for how different someone else appears. And the more different or unfamiliar another is, the more our brain will go on alert, poised for the possibility of threat. In the absence of sufficient information that soothes our defenses, we may imagine threat where none may be. Hence, the origins of prejudice, hatred, and unnecessary conflict.

So we can see that our bodies contain mechanisms that simultaneously seek to preserve differences, while at the same time fearing them. The inherent tension this creates can provide us with many creative opportunities.

Culture also contains and expresses this creative tension between differences and similarities. Cultures need to look inward to define and propagate themselves, and they need to look outward to prevent stagnation and in-bred dogmatism. Culture has a stable dimension – it roots us to land, to family, and to ancestors. One of the hazards of globalization is that we may be losing this physical rootedness.

Culture also possesses a dynamic dimension – it now extends itself across the planet, connecting us through information and commerce to people we will never meet, but whom we influence profoundly. One of the possible benefits of globalization is that it may teach us to be more tolerant, more appreciative of differences, quieting the primitive and defensive brain and awakening our longing for diverse and creative input.

Clearly, a balance must be struck, so that neither force overwhelms the other. I believe that by studying the body and it's biological mastery of internal balancing mechanisms, we can learn to balance ourselves externally, across cultures, across this beautiful planet, living together more harmoniously, in ways that nurture all sentient beings.

Specifically, I hope to look at culture and the body through the lens of psychology and healing. Through this lens we can see posture, gesture, touch, non-verbal communication, emotion, expressive movement, and self-concept as relevant topics in our study of bodily life. It is through studying and cultivating these dimensions that we can come to understand both outer and inner balance. First, I will speak about our inner bodymind experience – sensation, biological and expressive movement, emotion, and self-concept. Then I will look at outer bodymind experience – non-verbal communication, social emotion, and social dynamics.

On the inside of the body, where biology reins, our similarities tend to outweigh our differences. But even though we all share the same structures, the same inner processes, the same fluids and biochemistry, culture still permeates the inner workings of the body. As social mammals with big brains, we now know that early experience shapes and molds the brain and its' neurochemistry in profound ways. Scientists call the brain an experience-dependent organ. In other words, family and culture help the brain and the rest of the body to wire itself up in ways that match both the physical and social environment that that brain lives in.

This means that our environment teaches our brain what it is important to pay attention to, and what it is important to ignore, and the brain molds itself according to that input. The Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh once said that what you pay attention to grows, and by the same logic, what you ignore gets smaller. Attention from the outside environment grows and trains the brains attentional channels, some growing, and some shrinking. Though little hard data exists in this area, there is some research evidence suggesting that different cultures actually experience sensations differently, both in kind and in intensity. How we perceive and interpret the sensations of pain & pleasure, for instance, is influenced by how our brains have been molded in early childhood by our family's values, and how they continue to be molded throughout our lifetime.

The body is wired up in a feedback loop of sensation and responsive action, or movement. Scientists call it the sensorimotor loop. Here lies one of our first understandings of the body's balancing mechanisms. Movement is one of the primary ways a culture influences the brains of its members. It begins with small micro movements of the mother's face and body that communicate to her infant that he or she is understood and accepted. Developmental psychologists call these body actions attunement, and successful attunement shapes the infants brain and body so that it grows up with that same capacity to use small movements and facial expressions to signal its' bondedness to others.

As I work longer in the field of healing, some 30 years now, I have come to believe that sensorimotor processing forms the basis for health and illness, for the balance of similarities and differences, and for the unity of the body and the mind.

This has strong implications for the development of a pluralistic psychotherapy. Sensations form the basis for emotions, and emotions strongly influence thought. As psychotherapists, it may be essential that we assist patients to uncover the sensory culture that they have grown up in, and to decide if this enculturation has contributed to their suffering. If so, as therapists we can then begin to help our patients to recover a more functional and healthy sensory system by the use of psychotherapeutic attention and movement practices.

Movement strongly influences sensation. In our inner world, it works as a mechanism of self- regulation. Movement, from the tiny micro movements of cells and organs and fluids, to the gross locomotion of the body through space, also forms the basis for our feelings of self-identity, especially feelings of helplessness or powerfulness. Asian cultures have understood this fact for thousands of years, as evidenced by their development of martial arts and other movement disciplines that train the bodymind to be attentive, calm, fair, and powerful.

Culture strongly influences how we move. It especially trains its members in how much space they can take up, how much effort they can use, and how quick or slow they can move. I will speak more on this in a few minutes, but for now I want to make the point that Easterners already know - that how we move influences how we feel, and how we feel shapes how we move. And culture shapes both. In psychotherapy it may be critical to observe our patients movement behaviors, and to help them to move in ways that bring them greater levels of inner satisfaction.

Let us now look at emotion as an inner phenomenon. Emotions, as I have said before, originate as sensations that enter the mid-brain and are interpreted such that they cause certain states of arousal. Only after the arousal is occurring does the conscious mind begin to interact with that arousal and decide how to act on it. In extreme states, the arousal overwhelms the conscious mind, and drives our behavior in thoughtless ways.

Charles Darwin was the first to postulate that we possess what he called primary and secondary emotions. Primary emotions, such as anger, sadness, and fear, were, according to him, biologically based and resistant to cultural influence. Evidence that supports this comes largely from studies that have taken photos of people expressing these primary emotions through facial expressions and showing the photos to diverse cultures, where people seem to all agree that ‘This person is expressing anger, and this person is expressing sadness.' Primary emotions, then, help to regulate our inner state, so that it can harmonize with the environment.

Secondary emotions are strongly cultural, as they require us to attach cognitive labels to them in order to be identified. Though all people may report feeling jealousy, regret, happiness, or grief, how frequently they feel them, and what states of arousal that they attach that emotional label to, varies from society to society. Culture also molds our expression of emotion. In the US, for instance, it is considered important that you express your feelings to others, even if they are negative. In much of Asia, as I understand, it is considered rude to broadcast your feelings too strongly, as it may negatively influence others.

In another example, researchers have found that whether or not crying relieves a negative emotion depends largely on culture – on how common crying is in ones culture, on feelings of shame over crying, & perceptions of masculine and feminine role patterns.

Other studies have shown that people label their arousal as positive or negative depending on whether or not they come from a culture that values independence or a culture that values interdependence. I will speak more on this in a few minutes, as it has some far-reaching implications, I believe.

Emotions exist to regulate our inner state, but at the same time they help us to regulate our relationships. They exist both as intrapsychic and social phenomenon. As psychotherapists, we often work with patients to help them attend to, control, and appropriately express emotions. In this sense, we are likely vehicles of culture, for better or for worse, helping patients to be a more included member of society. In a pluralistic psychotherapy, we may be able to draw on a more cross-cultural understanding of emotion, and help to preserve emotional diversity in our populations at the same time that we help patients to fit into their society.

Anthropologist Mary Douglas once said “The social body constrains the way the physical body is perceived. The physical experience of the body, always modified by the social categories through which it is known, sustains a particular view of society…As a result of this interaction the body itself is a highly restricted medium of expression.” I understand this to imply that culture reaches into the physical body and has a hand in shaping it.

I would like to spend a few minutes talking about the work of another anthropologist, Brigitte Jordon. She has studied different cultures' ways of knowing by looking at how people view and experience their bodies. She has coined the term ‘authoritative knowledge.' She states that in any particular subject area, several knowledge systems exist. Some carry more weight than others, either because they explain the world better or because they are associated with people in power, usually both.

Frequently one kind of knowing gains the most legitimacy, and then the others are devalued or dismissed, relegated to “alternative” status.

What constitutes authoritative knowledge is an ongoing social process & builds and reflects power relationships within a community.

Jordon believes that in the West, the body has been devalued as a source of authoritative knowledge. She notes that in the US, previously to 1910, medical care was provided by many types of practitioners - doctors, homeopaths, folk healers, or midwives, considered to have authoritative knowledge in their own areas. After 1910, physicians exerted control over the system, making it illegal in most cases, to practice healing unless one was a physician.

Doctors came to be in charge of “the facts”, of knowledge of people's bodies - of when they were sick or well, dead or alive, competent or not. Currently, machines are being given more and more authoritative knowledge in the US, so much so that when a woman in labor comes into a hospital in the US, she is hooked up to monitoring machines, and if her wishes or knowledge about her own body contradict the machine, she can be forced to submit to whatever medical procedure the machine and the doctors behind that machine may decide.

When a society invests its authority in just one way of knowing, its diversity lessens, and the society then comes to think of this view as ultimate knowledge, as a fact of nature, as truth, rather than a cultural construction of the dominant power group. This is not to say that the knowledge is wrong, only that it is the only knowledge that counts.

In other cultures, the body is seen as a powerful source of authoritative knowledge. In these cultures, the individual is respected for their ability to read their own body's signals, and to interpret them accurately. In these cultures the individual is considered an authority on their own body, though they often consult with authorities on bodies in general, such as doctors or healers.

In a culture that devalues authoritative knowledge of ones own body, any sensation that occurs may be seen as mysterious or suspect. Since we cannot interpret them ourselves, we must rely on experts to tell us how our body is doing, a fact that may be involved in the rapidly escalating and untenable costs of health care in the United States.

I suspect that this mechanism may also be involved in the oppression of individuals by a state. What better way to control a population than by robbing individuals of their authoritative knowledge of their own bodies?

It is my hope that here from Taiwan and other parts of Asia that we in the West can learn from your ancient traditions, traditions that respect the potential self-knowledge inherent in our bodies. For it is through preserving our rich experience of sensation that we can know with authority who we are and how we can move out into the world in an effective and contributive manner. In a pluralistic and bodymind centered psychotherapy, we can assist our patients in increasing their ability to know themselves through the means of knowing their bodies as well as their minds.

Let us now turn more directly to our outer expressions of bodily life . In this social domain, we can turn our attention to body movement as social communication.

Movement forms the basis for most interactions among social animals - movement is especially used to communicate emotionally laden information. It involves posture, gesture, facial movements, use of space, use of time, use of effort, tone of voice, rhythms of speech, and touch.

In humans, healthy family dynamics revolve around being able to read others non-verbal communications & to broadcast ones own effectively - especially through the face and through choosing the amount of space between individuals.

When non-verbal communication breaks down, clinical psychology often steps in. There exists a condition called dyssemia, for instance, which involves having difficulty in reading & broadcasting non-verbal messages, typically in the failure to understand spacing and facial expressions. People with dyssemia do poorly in school and in relationships. This condition is usually due to brain damage from either trauma or neglect.

Also, it has been noted that schizophrenics tend to keep greater distance between themselves & others, and report events occurring in close distance as taking place on or in themselves. This lead the famous anthropologist and philosopher Gregory Baetson to say that

“The emotionally disturbed do not express gestures or facial expressions & do not assume postural positions that are part of the repertoire of the remainder of the community. Rather, they display behavior for durations, at intensities, or in situations that are inappropriate for such behavior.”

Other famous anthropologists have studied non-verbal communication across cultures. Ray Birdwhistle coined the term kinesics, defining it as the use of space as elaboration of culture.

He noted that “Humans move & belong to movement communities just as they speak & belong to speech communities.” We all possess a movement languages & dialects, learned as we develop, just as speech is learned. Birdwhistle was the first researcher to state that 85% of face to face communication is non-verbal. He spent his career, like many others, trying to sort out how much of these bodily language systems were biological and how much were cultural. He believed that there were no universal gestures, for instance, but that smiling, disgust, & crying universal were in their meaning. He was one of the first researchers to write about the strong cultural component of gestures, noting that the only universality in gesture was that the more aroused humans are the more they gesture. Gesture, in this sense, is a code that must be learned for an individual to be socially successful. He also determined that eye contact was strongly influenced by culture.

Evidence suggest that America is a “low context” culture – i.e. it stresses the verbal meaning of an emotional word used to help the listener understand the speaker. Japan, on the other hand, is a “high context” culture, which means that more emphasis is placed on non-verbal elements, like voice tone & rhythm, body language to determine emotional meaning. Is Chinese culture similar? Understanding these nuances may be critical to our understanding of each other.

Posture tends to be looked at somewhat differently. Researchers now think that posture is like an individual's signature – it is an expression of their personal attitude, mood, and self-image. In any culture, we can guess how a person is feeling, and how they feel about themselves, by how they stand.

Other researchers have found that cross-culturally, when people like each other, their gestural movements, especially nodding and eye movement, begin to harmonize. This kind of unconscious movement synchrony may be the basis of courtship. It has even been shown that people who like each other will synchronize their brain waves as they speak to one another. Also cross-culturally, newborns tend to match their body movement to the speech patterns of their caretakers. Clearly, we all enjoy dancing together, from the very beginning. Taiwan, with its' collectivist culture, understands that it does not make sense to see individuals as isolated entities. We in the US are slow to see this.

Edward Hall contributed to the non-verbal communication literature by coining the term proxemics, which means a culture's spacial behaviors. He believed that the realization of the self, as it is defined in any culture, is intimately associated with the process of making boundaries explicit. Our first boundary is where our body begins and ends, and all cultures share this border. The second level of boundary is the space around our bodies that we define as our territory. In the US, for instance, like to keep most people at a distance of about 4 feet, unless we are closely related to them. Mediterranean cultures see that amount of distance as rude, and stand much closer to each other, even as strangers.

He also filmed children on playgrounds in many different cultures, and noted that superficially all of the children seemed to be doing their own thing, but under film analysis he could see that the group moved in a unified rhythm, a beat they generate themselves. Often, one child becomes the unconscious “conductor” of the playground orchestra, running around in a way that unifies the group. His conclusion was that an unconscious undercurrent of synchronized movement tied the group together into a “shared organizational form.”

The use of space may have to do with population density as well as culture, but this is not always the case. Most researchers believe we have a biological need for space around us. Space is also an elaboration of status. In most cultures, high status individuals have larger offices, homes, and cars, for instance. So in this sense, use of space is related to territoriality, dominance and status.

Other aspects of non-verbal communication relate to power, status, dominance, and superiority, and these elements seem to exist cross-culturally. For instance, the vertical dimension – whether we are above or below someone else – tends to be an enactment of power relations and social control. If I am above you, I am your superior. The horizontal dimension tends to be about closeness, about liking and disliking, about intimacy and the expressions of emotion.

The sociologist Irving Goffman found that nonverbal cues such as eye contact, touching, and crowding into another's space, play an extremely important & complex role in the maintenance of the social order – as signs of dominance, subtle messages of threat, or gestures of submission. As therapists we may need to understand this very biological imperative, shared by virtually all the social mammals, and to be very aware of how we physically interact with our patients. We do not want to unconsciously re-enact power dynamics that have previously harmed our patients.

Interestingly, many nonverbal behaviors have the dual function of expressing either dominance or intimacy, according to whether they are used symmetrically or asymmetrically by partners in a relationship.

I would like to speak for a moment about physical touch, and how it is used and interpreted in various cultures. As any society knows, touch is a crucial gesture of affection and nurturance. Without it, infants will often die, or grow up so twisted that they can never lead normal lives. Touch bonds us, keeps us together, heals us, and defines us. Yet it can also have a dark side.

Touch can also be used to maintain social hierarchy, especially gender and status roles.

Researchers have found that in most cultures that have been studied that males touch females more frequently, older people touch younger more frequently, and that high status individuals touch low status individuals more frequently. Touching is often an attempt at dominance – it is done when giving orders, giving advice, granting favors, or giving information.

Interestingly, it can be a symbol of class. Studies have also shown that the higher the class, the less touch is used, regardless of the culture.

However, we can see different societies as existing on a continuum of high to low use of touch. Americans are an extremely low touch culture.

When pairs of people in conversation in coffee shops were filmed for 1 hour, in Puerto Rico they touched 180 times. In France, 110, and in the USA, only 2. I'm afraid that I don't know any statistics on Taiwan as a high or low touch culture. Perhaps you can educate me in this matter.

In a pluralistic psychotherapy, we need to be aware of the power of touch, and to use it wisely. Many of our patients may be both touch deprived and touch violated, causing them much confusion and pain. Helping them to recover a healthy relationship to touch may be one of the most important elements of treatment.

There are many more fascinating areas of research that could be articulated here, But time grows short, and I do not want to overstay my welcome. I would like to bring this speech towards its conclusion by bringing forth the work of Professor Yuasa Yasuo, a Japanese scholar. He wrote a fascinating book titled The Body: Towards an Eastern MindBody Theory. His work has taught me what little I know of the Eastern view of the body. He wrote that Asian traditions typically do not sharply separate the mind from the body.

Eastern philosophies, to his thinking, generally treat mind-body unity as an achievement, rather than an essential relation – wisdom must be physically as well as intellectually developed. Truth is not only a way of thinking about the world; it is a mode of being in the world, part of which includes ones own bodily existence. Thus meditation & thinking are not to be separated.

Cultivation is a method of developing mindbody unity – especially as it is expressed in the arts. He notes that to the Chinese this develops moral character alongside physical development, and that the training of the body cannot occur without the training of the mind.

In Asia, he says, true knowledge cannot be obtained simply by theoretical thinking, but only through “bodily recognition or realization”. And if the unity of body-mind is achieved, insights can be tested by deeds. Knowledge of the truth is a psychophysical awareness beyond mere intellection.

The West, according to Professor Yasuo, can't unify the bodymind because it assumes unity must be constant (not achieved) and universal (not variable among different people). In the East, it is achieved by exemplary people, such as religious or artistic masters, through physical and spiritual cultivation.

Yasuo states: “The main thrust of Western intellectual history has avoided the discussion of the perfected human being. The focus has been rather on the universal, not the exceptional.” The only exceptional people Westerners seem willing to discuss is the negative – the abnormal or diseased.

In the West, a mind-body theory is primarily concerned with the empirically observable correlations between mental & somatic phenomenon. In Japanese tradition, the mindbody theories focus on how a disciplined practice allows one to attain mindbody unity.

In Eastern traditions, mindbody unity is expressed through actions, these actions being highly aesthetic, whether it be pouring a cup of tea or arranging flowers or painting.

In a brilliant analysis, Yasuo concludes that mindbody unity can be defined as the minimal distance between the movement of the mind and the movement of the body. This, I believe, may help us to frame our pluralistic psychotherapy, one that balances inner and outer experiences, one that balances biological imperatives with cultural ones, and one that deeply appreciates the efforts we can make toward unity in our lives. As the body itself shows us, balancing similarities and differences may form the basis of the cultivation of this minimal distance that Yasuo speaks so eloquently of.

I close this morning with a bow of deep respect to your culture and to your wisdom. I hope that my time here will help me to understand you better, and will allow me to learn from your actions and your ideas. I hope in turn that you will find my actions and ideas of use. I look forward to our meeting, and to an exchange of body and culture. Thank you.