Nowadays we associate the word technology with the so-called computational and digital technologies, a field that includes the development of digital devices, virtual objects and spaces, information technologies, internet and artificial intelligence that have quickly permeated different domains of our life. However, the word "technology" has a broader meaning. Considering the origin of the word –from the Greek téchnē, which means "art, technique or skill" and from the Indo-European teks, which means “to build”– technology can be understood as the set of knowledges, tools and practices that allow us to develop processes or build artifacts that modify the relationship we have with our environment, with others and with ourselves.

Taking this latter definition, we would like to use the word technology to refer to the set of practices that operate on the basis of the knowledge of the functioning of our body-mind in our attentional habits and that allow us to deepen our presence to our own bodily experience. More specifically, in this seminar, the notion of technologies of presence includes, but is not limited to, ancestral ways of relating to our environment and to our bodies; forms of psychophysical training linked to artistic practices and somatic approaches; practices of meditation and meditation in movement, therapeutic practices that promote sensoperception and also research methodologies that involve phenomenological approaches.

This heterogeneous group of practices shares the development of the ability to become aware of unnoticed aspects of our daily experience, especially with regard to our relationship with our bodies and our environment. In this way a sensory and sensual experience is revealed and we pass to inhabit it, to become familiar with it, to be present at it.

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The appropriation of this experiential "space" has important consequences for the organization and reorganization of sensory-psychomotor patterns that participate in regulatory processes of our organism influencing our daily responses and behaviors. To name a few, conscious breathing influences the regulation of our heart rate and the modulation of the autonomic nervous system, thus bringing our body to a state of rest; greater awareness of our body's internal sensations participates in the processes of emotional self-regulation, expanding the resources available to respond to challenging situations. Most importantly, through body awareness we can overcome what Thomas Hanna calls "sensorimotor amnesia", which in the context of this seminar we could also call sensorimotor "absence". This expression refers to a state of conditioning resulting from continuous stressful situations. The "absent" regions cannot be felt or controlled, so we lose part of the repertoire of possible responses to a given situation. By being present to these "absent" regions, we can gradually regain skills, making it possible to expand our range of response.

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Paraphrasing the words of Elizabeth Behnke, becoming present to one's own experience is a way of taking responsibility for it. 

This seems particularly relevant in current times. As societies, we face a series of global challenges: an unprecedented climate and environmental crisis, wars, humanitarian crises, energy crisis, among other global crises, that generate a stressful and intimidating context that threatens the most basic aspects of life. Besides, our way of life, increasingly mediated by computational and digital technologies, often generates a state of absence and disconnection, impacting our affective, motor, emotional, regulatory and cognitive abilities.

Recognizing the multiple benefits that these technological developments can have and how attractive it can be to create virtual worlds through artificial intelligence, it seems of great importance to balance these advances by encouraging practices and knowledge that connect us with our bodily experience, so that we allow our "natural intelligence" to become present and manifest as well.