The emerging field of body ecology offers fresh insights into how the body engages with its surrounding environment through consciousness, perception, knowledge and emotion. In this groundbreaking collection, leading scholars of sport, leisure and philosophy draw on research on topics as diverse as surfing, freediving, slacklining, parkour, bodybuilding, dance and circus arts to flesh out the concept of body ecology and its potential for helping us understand our connection with the world around us.

Touching on theories of subjectivity, embodiment, pleasure and play, this book explores different approaches to studying body ecology as a way of conceptualising the experience of being immersed in nature, in the elements and in one’s own body through the power of awareness. An experience becomes emersive when it involves the production of new emotions in the body: emersion is the activation of what is living within the body itself.

Shedding new light on the possibilities of physical cultural studies, Body Ecology and Emersive Leisure is fascinating reading for all students and scholars with an interest in sport, leisure, philosophy and the body.

Table of Contents

General Introduction

[Bernard Andrieu, Jim Parry, Alessandro Porrovecchio and Olivier Sirost]

Part I: Body Ecology: The Basic Concepts

Introduction to Part I

[Bernard Andrieu and Olivier Sirost]

1. Central Themes in Body Ecology

[Bernard Andrieu and Olivier Sirost]

2. Georges Hébert (1875-1957): A Naturalist’s Invention of Body Ecology

[Pierre Philippe Meden]

3. The Concept of ‘Body Schema’ in Merleau-Ponty’s Account of Embodied Subjectivity

[Jan Halák]

4. Body, Flow and Learning: From Feldenkrais to Csikszentmihalyi

[Adjoa Domelevo]

5. Sport, Health and Academia: A Reflexive Approach to the Disenchantment and the Re-Enchantment of the Body

[Alessandro Porrovecchio]

6. The Naturalising Process of Technique: The Antimony of Nature and Culture through the Lens of Chinese Practices

[Alexandre Legendre and Stéphane Ibrahime]

7. Health, Well-Being and Sport: Some Personal Reflections

[Andrew Bloodworth]

Part II: Emersion in the Leisure Environment and the Recosmologisation of Sport

Introduction to Part II

[Bernard Andrieu and Alessandro Porrovecchio]

8. Ecological Transition and Recreative Leisure in Nature

[Jean Corneloup, Pascal Mao and Philippe Bourdeau]

9. Naked Surfing in Tambada, Brazil: An Example of Body Ecology

[Pétrucia da Nobrega, Bernard Andrieu and Olivier Sirost]

10. Body Ecology and Urban Sports: Parkour as an Interdisciplinary Immersion in the City Environment

[Florian Lebreton and Bernard Andrieu]

11. Heidegger, Sport and Body Ecology

[Irena Martínková and Jim Parry]

12. The Recosmologisation of the World: From Monte Verita to Naturism

[Olivier Sirost]

13. Body Ecology and Academic Well-Being: What Sustainable Health Can Be Offered to Adolescents through the Practice of Body Art Activities?

[Gilles Lecocq]

PART III: Sensory Ecology and Aesthesiology

Introduction to Part III

[Bernard Andrieu and Jim Parry]

14. Bodies in the Wind: Dance and Nature on Redinha Beach, Natal, Brazil

[Terezinha Petrucia da Nóbrega]

15. ‘No pain no gain’: The Puritan Ethic in Body-Building

[Eric Perera and Marie Gomez]

16. The Emersion of Syncope in Freediving: Moderation and Immoderation

[Mary Shirrer]

17. The Emersion of Sensation in Slacklining

[Lionel Chavaroche]

18. The Emersion of Involuntary Gesture in the Vertiginous Circus Arts

[Bernard Andrieu and Haruka Okui]