Laboratory | Matha Projeto

I experience a knowing beneath the not knowing, beneath the dying of my old form, that I am a participant in transition from one world to another, embodying a new passageway towards new life.

Janet Adler

Laboratory

We carry out research projects and experimentation activities about the study of experience, presence and body awareness. With these activities we also seek to expand our vision of the possible forms, processes and formats of knowledge generation, integrating the body, subjectivity and our sensitive nature as basic tools in the construction of realities.

proyetctos

Projects

MAP - Multidimensional approach to presence

MAP is an action research procedure that places the state of presence as a central element for the study of experience from an enactive/embodied perspective. Its objective is twofold; on the one hand, allow the characterization and better understanding of a given experience, capturing the subjective and intersubjective elements that compose it, and on the other, promote a space for observation, familiarization and awareness of one's own experience.

The proposed procedure articulates different tools that work on the state of presence – somatic exercises, micro-phenomenological interviews and expressive techniques – and different descriptive levels – verbal, gestural and plastic – in a group work where the participants are, at the same time, the researchers of their own experience.

Social-emotional learning and compassionate living for adolescents: a micro-phenomenological analysis of the FO-CO program

Socioemotional learning (SEL) promotes mental health and prevents risky behaviors that begin in adolescence. The FO-CO (For Compassionate Living) is a scientific-based SEL program that combines contemplative practices and culture of peace, developed by NEPSIS/UNIFESP. Next stage consists of evaluating outcomes and using innovative methodologies to capture the experience in first-person. Objectives: Understand the FO-CO learning processes among adolescents from a micro-phenomenological approach. Methods: This is a qualitative analysis in the micro-phenomenological paradigm as a part of a mixed methods pilot of evaluation of the FO-CO program. Four FO-CO Adolescent groups will be applied with participants from public schools that subscribe to the workshops, aimed to reach 80 participants. A subsample of 15 adolescents will be submitted to a micro-phenomenological interview after workshops to assess the learning process of themes such as connection, empathy, self-regulation, and compassion. As a way to support the research project, this proposal also includes a working plan of events, collaboration and lectures that the candidate will contribute to promote international partnership and knowledge dissemination.

This project will last ten months and is part of a postdoctoral stay at the NEPSIS research center of the UNIFESP university, financed by the UNIFESP postgraduate and research department. Starting date January 2024.

Experimentaciones

Experiments

Presence and the landscapes of experience

This workshop seeks to introduce an action-research approach that places the state of presence as a central element for the study of experience from an enactive/embodied perspective. Through an exercise of bodily awareness, we seek to generate an experience of presence and to investigate this experience through different descriptive levels that, in turn, renew and deepen the presence to the experience itself. For this, we work with the exercise "Matching" as described by Elizabeth Behnke and then we work on the description of the experience using elements of the micro-phenomenological interview, which uses verbal description; and somatic mapping, which works with the expression of sensations through drawing. Finally, the experiences worked on are shared in a group discussion.

Presence and the landscapes of experience

This workshop seeks to explore an action research procedure that places the state of presence as a central element for the study of experience from an enactive/embodied perspective. The work is organized in three stages: in the first stage, it is proposed to generate a shared experience using the somatic Matching technique as described by Elizabeth Behnke (Behnke 1995); In the second stage, it is proposed to work, in groups of three, on the description of the experience using the micro-phenomenological interview and body mapping. Here, one of the group participants will have the role of “observer” paying attention to the gestures made by the interviewee when describing their experience. In the third stage, a collective composition will be made from the verbal, gestural and pictorial descriptions, combining the identification of invariants of the micro-phenomenological analysis and the work of “witness” as described by Janet Adler (1999).

Conscious movement and the study of experience

This workshop explores a research procedure that articulates the realization and observation of conscious movement with a research methodology called micro-phenomenological interview, to investigate the experience of "presence". First, a shared experience of conscious movement inspired by exercises in the theatrical form of Butoh dance is proposed. Next, micro-phenomenological interviewing is used to elicit verbal descriptions of the experience from individuals, as well as the gestures used by the individual to describe it. Finally, the verbal descriptions and gestures are collectively analyzed to identify invariants between them and to outline a possible structure of the experience studied. This paper seeks to raise questions about the distinction between "object of study" and "instrument for study" in the context of art-based research and the extent to which the arts, as a means of generating knowledge, can rethink the principles of the scientific method.