Has anyone here ever had the “location” of their sense of self change? I ask because I’ve recently read that while some people feel like “they” are located in their heads, others feel like “they” are in their chests, or even feet. Furthermore, apparently some people actually “shift around”, in that sometimes they feel like their sense of self is in one body part, and then it’s somewhere else.
I find this really interesting because I have never had such an experience myself; I’m always “in my head”, so to speak—more precisely, I feel as though “I” am located specifically at a point slightly behind my eyes. The obvious hypothesis is that my visual sense is the sense that conveys the most information (aside from touch, which isn’t pinned down to a specific location), which is why I identify with it most, but the sensation of being “in my head” persists even when I have my eyes closed, which somewhat contradicts that hypothesis. Also, the fact that some people apparently don’t perceive themselves in that place is more weak evidence against that hypothesis.
The large field of the so-called out-of-body experiences is precisely about the “location of self” moving outside of the body. I understand that specific types of meditation and mental exercises can produce this effect fairly reliably. So can some psychoactives.
the sensation of being “in my head” persists even when I have my eyes closed
Don’t forget that your ears which provide you with hearing and the sense of balance and orientation are on your head, too.
I’ve have had out of body experiences which match the description of other out of body experiences fairly well (for example, while I am half dreaming with eyes open during sleep paralysis) and I think that’s completely different.
In an out-of-body experience of the type that I have, you feel like your head and other body parts are somewhere different than where it really is.Your sense of self in relation to your body is preserved. You might still be in your head, but you imagine your head is somewhere else. (And hallucinate visual and tactile phenomenon consistent with your body being somewhere else).
It’s not much different drom a regular dream—instead of dreaming you’re in a fantasy place, you dream you are in your room but in another location of your room. (Then you feel a sort of snap back to your true body when the dream ends)
That’s different from feeling a sense of self as localized somewhere other than behind the eyes.
I’ve occasionally been able to move my sense of self downwards from my head. From what I’ve read, people didn’t put their sense of self in their heads (it was typically in the heart or abdomen) until the importance of the brain was discovered.
I find this very hard to believe, given that humans are highly visual creatures and our eyes are located in our head. What time period/people had their sense of self in their heart or abdomen?
Whenever my nerdy/schizoid/introverted side is stronger, I feel exactly this, I am behind the eyes and staring forward, as in this state my spatial location ability, the ability to be aware in 360 degrees, is bad. But whenever this side of me retreats a bit (for example any sense of success or victory beats down the inner nerd for a while) and I come out from my inner shell to bask in the world, I feel at home in space, I get 360 degrees awareness, I know where my legs and hands are and so on, then I am less aware of where I am and more in the center of the body, perhaps chest level.
Even moreso than visual, we are mental creatures. Ideas and culture can make all the difference.
To the OP: there are times and circumstances by which I can lose much connection to the location of my body at all. Usually associated with stargazing.
I also recall that the perceived location of self (soul, mind) has changed historically. Without doubt Aristotele placed it in the heart but otherwise refs are hard to find. I vaguely recall reading about it in Precht.
I’ve occasionally been able to move my sense of self downwards from my head.
Just tried it. I’m able to move the focus of my attention downward. Mostly the same way as I can consciously widen the angle of my attention.
But I can’t be sure that this implies that it is my self. I’d like to add that there are multiple self: A perceiving self (which I’m tempted to locate in the brain), a whole self which contains everything of my body that I take to be my body and then probably another self which is the space that I contain and where I do not wan’t anybody to intrude on. And some more.
I just tried imagining being in my heart looking up at my head. I can’t guarantee that I actually moved my sense of self—maybe “I” was still in my head creating an imagined self in my heart—but it was at least an interesting and rather cheering experience. I feel more alert.
I noticed that my mood subly changed in response to the moved location—presumably due to the associations these bring. This would match up with the Dalai Lama receommendations in some other comment.
Worth noting, the Dalai Lama recommends before falling asleep focusing the sense of self in the middle of the chest at the level of the heart for deeper sleeping or in the throat for more vivid dreams. I have never tried it, but may be an experiment for people with sleep problems or trying to lucid dream.
I think this is learned—Aristotle considered it is in the heart and the brain is just about cooling blood. I think it is because we are taught from childhood to “use your head” etc.
Be critical of these sorts of factoids. Aristotle was a ‘wise man’ which in that pre-scientific time meant more seemingly-wise than actually-wise regarding most topics (although Aristotle was better than other contemporaries to be fair). You can take it as weak evidence that Aristotle claiming the self to be in the heart and not in the brain means that most people of the time thought it was in the brain not the heart, as with today. His view got recorded for history because it was contrarian.
Is this true that most people believed the brain was where thought came from? I know the Egyptians used to rip it out because they didn’t think it was important.
I was literally just thinking about this the other day, about how ancient people didn’t notice that people that got head injuries would change their behave or die instantly.
Is this true that most people believed the brain was where thought came from? I know the Egyptians used to rip it out because they didn’t think it was important.
I was literally just thinking about this the other day, about how ancient people didn’t notice that people that got head injuries would change their behave or die instantly.
I don’t have a single friend whose behavior I’d have noticed changing after a head injury: the only reason I know it happens is because I’ve read case reports of it happening to someone. Maybe some doctor might have noticed, but then, I’d expect ancient peoples to also have fewer head injuries that were serious enough to change behavior but also mild enough to be survivable.
You’re missing the point. There is only one part of the body that you can apply physical shock to in order to make someone lose consciousness for a time.
But you could also say that death is a more permanent form of losing consciousness. To someone who doesn’t know better, I could certainly see someone thinking “If something happens to the brain, you get seriously messed up. But if something happens to the heart you die, period. So perhaps the heart is more important than the brain since even the slightest injury or malfunction means instant death. Therefore, our life force must reside in the heart, not the brain.” This could even lead you to thinking that the brain’s purpose is in someway indirectly related to the heart, e.g. blood cooling, such that damage to the brain can cause damage to the heart, which is why some but not all damage to the brain is deadly.
I get what you are saying, but I think that connection is only obvious in hindsight.
Therefore, our life force must reside in the heart
For the purposes of this subthread we should distinguish “life force”, “soul”, and “mind”. They were commonly thought to be separate concepts and not necessarily residing in the same body part.
In ancient Greece, it was common knowledge that the liver was the thinking organ. This is obvious, because it is purple (the color of royalty) and triangular (mathematically and philosophically significant).
I always thought my sense of self was in my head because of where my eyes and ears were. I look out at myself and see my hands typing and my legs when I am walking and I am looking from my head. I.e., I am in my head, that is the center.
When I’m reaching into a space I can’t see with my hands to say, untangle something, I definitely have more of a sense of space around my hands than my head. Closing your eyes and untying/retying your shoes right now might simulate this.
I have had out-of-body experiences. Nothing too major; just the sensation of floating above my ‘actual’ body, sometimes only a few centimeters, other times a full human body length (as if I was standing on my own head). I had a burst of these out-of-body experiences around 2005-2006 (perhaps four or five in a two-year period) and have not had them since. Each episode lasted only a minute or two. Once, a friend was present, and they told me I had ‘zoned out’ for several minutes. It’s worth mentioning don’t know what caused or triggered the episodes. During the episodes my eyes were fully open and I could see what was happening in front of me. However, I wasn’t focused on sensory input but was more inward-focused on my own thoughts.
If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask.
I’m very doubtful of the significance of this because it seems unlikely that evolution would have selected for this kind of perception (there are many points of failure, not just a single one). It seems more likely that this notion only arises when you ask this very question, and that naturally, the mind is simply concerned with the position of all body parts (for safety and coordination, a.k.a. proprioception). With drugs or some dedication we appear to be able to override parts of our self-representation which are concerned with proprioception with arbitrary stories that incorporate sensations that we focus on, but it should better be something romantic (“the brain with which I think, the feet with which I feel the ground”), as people would laugh at your if you said your self is located at your anus because you defacate from it.
A hypothesis; if you think your sense of self is connected to the location of your eyes; try spend some time blindfolded; say 1 hour in a normal/safe environment without vision and see if it moves. It might just be in your hands as you feel your way around; or your feet as you travel around.
it would seem reasonable that the focus of your interaction with the environment feels like its at one of your strongest senses but might be elsewhere for other people with different sensory wiring.
I have experienced a change in ‘location’ of my sense of self- it ‘spreads out’. It is a feeling that “I” do not reside in the particular head/body of Bageldaughter, but instead in both my head/body and the other things I happen to be keenly aware of. If I am deeply engrossed in a conversation or social activity, “I” will begin to be identified with the group of individuals as a whole. The particular intentions, thoughts or feelings that I typically associate with myself lose some of their distinguishing quality from the ones I perceive from others.
There is often an accompanying “spreading-out” of “my” location in time- the round-trip time of ideas through a group is often slower than just through my own head. I will get the sense that my “current moment” spans back to a thought that originated in my friend’s head one minute ago!
I can invoke this sensation pretty reliably. It can be fun. I get worried when people talk about experiencing this type of thing as some kind of higher truth than normal, because it seems like a sign of mental illness that may not end well.
I commented in that thread myself and what you’ve said seems a worthy addition even without a disclaimer; it adds at least as much to the discussion as this post which nobody has downvoted. (of course, it might seem easy for me to say your comment should be posted if I’m not the once risking the karma punishment for doing so, so note that I’d be willing to copy/paste what you’ve said and take any punishment/reward for myself if you’d like)
Try closing your eyes and navigating your home with a cane at the same time and see if it persists? Try checking if it persists when you’re playing video-games? Does your sense of self go into the character? What about if you watch another person really closely?
I have a shifting spatial attention that changes according to the task at hand. The only sense in which “self” is located in my “head” is that to me the world “self” partially means things like “face” and “brain” to me and so recalling the word “self” directs my spatial attention there, in the same way that “door’ directs spatial attention to the door.
But as I go through the day I don’t think there is anything mentally privileged about the space right behind my eyes unless I specifically start thinking about “self” and what it means. I suspect spatial attention and the nature of how verbal concepts direct it is most of what is going on here.
I find this really interesting because I have never had such an experience myself; I’m always “in my head”, so to speak—more precisely, I feel as though “I” am located specifically at a point slightly behind my eyes.
As a single data point, this exactly corresponds to me. I identify with the locus of my vision. I wonder how blind, or blind-deaf people identify.
Maybe the head is the most vulnerable region to injury, and the locating of the self in the head reflects the need to protect the brain and other inputs (mouth, eyes, ears).
If you practice mindfulness meditation, you’ll realize that your sense of self is an illusion. It’s probably true that most people believe that their “self” is located in their head, but if you investigate it yourself, you’ll find that there’s actually no “self” at all.
Has anyone here ever had the “location” of their sense of self change? I ask because I’ve recently read that while some people feel like “they” are located in their heads, others feel like “they” are in their chests, or even feet. Furthermore, apparently some people actually “shift around”, in that sometimes they feel like their sense of self is in one body part, and then it’s somewhere else.
I find this really interesting because I have never had such an experience myself; I’m always “in my head”, so to speak—more precisely, I feel as though “I” am located specifically at a point slightly behind my eyes. The obvious hypothesis is that my visual sense is the sense that conveys the most information (aside from touch, which isn’t pinned down to a specific location), which is why I identify with it most, but the sensation of being “in my head” persists even when I have my eyes closed, which somewhat contradicts that hypothesis. Also, the fact that some people apparently don’t perceive themselves in that place is more weak evidence against that hypothesis.
So, any thoughts/stories/anecdotes?
The large field of the so-called out-of-body experiences is precisely about the “location of self” moving outside of the body. I understand that specific types of meditation and mental exercises can produce this effect fairly reliably. So can some psychoactives.
Don’t forget that your ears which provide you with hearing and the sense of balance and orientation are on your head, too.
I’ve have had out of body experiences which match the description of other out of body experiences fairly well (for example, while I am half dreaming with eyes open during sleep paralysis) and I think that’s completely different.
In an out-of-body experience of the type that I have, you feel like your head and other body parts are somewhere different than where it really is.Your sense of self in relation to your body is preserved. You might still be in your head, but you imagine your head is somewhere else. (And hallucinate visual and tactile phenomenon consistent with your body being somewhere else).
It’s not much different drom a regular dream—instead of dreaming you’re in a fantasy place, you dream you are in your room but in another location of your room. (Then you feel a sort of snap back to your true body when the dream ends)
That’s different from feeling a sense of self as localized somewhere other than behind the eyes.
I’ve occasionally been able to move my sense of self downwards from my head. From what I’ve read, people didn’t put their sense of self in their heads (it was typically in the heart or abdomen) until the importance of the brain was discovered.
I find this very hard to believe, given that humans are highly visual creatures and our eyes are located in our head. What time period/people had their sense of self in their heart or abdomen?
Whenever my nerdy/schizoid/introverted side is stronger, I feel exactly this, I am behind the eyes and staring forward, as in this state my spatial location ability, the ability to be aware in 360 degrees, is bad. But whenever this side of me retreats a bit (for example any sense of success or victory beats down the inner nerd for a while) and I come out from my inner shell to bask in the world, I feel at home in space, I get 360 degrees awareness, I know where my legs and hands are and so on, then I am less aware of where I am and more in the center of the body, perhaps chest level.
Not everyone is that visually focused.
I’d say I’m more focused on auditory and kinesthetic senses. I’m focused in my head, but more between the ears than behind the eyes.
Even moreso than visual, we are mental creatures. Ideas and culture can make all the difference.
To the OP: there are times and circumstances by which I can lose much connection to the location of my body at all. Usually associated with stargazing.
I also recall that the perceived location of self (soul, mind) has changed historically. Without doubt Aristotele placed it in the heart but otherwise refs are hard to find. I vaguely recall reading about it in Precht.
Just tried it. I’m able to move the focus of my attention downward. Mostly the same way as I can consciously widen the angle of my attention.
But I can’t be sure that this implies that it is my self. I’d like to add that there are multiple self: A perceiving self (which I’m tempted to locate in the brain), a whole self which contains everything of my body that I take to be my body and then probably another self which is the space that I contain and where I do not wan’t anybody to intrude on. And some more.
ADDED: The widening of the angle of perception seems to be this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconcentration_of_attention
I just tried imagining being in my heart looking up at my head. I can’t guarantee that I actually moved my sense of self—maybe “I” was still in my head creating an imagined self in my heart—but it was at least an interesting and rather cheering experience. I feel more alert.
Can confirm that.
I noticed that my mood subly changed in response to the moved location—presumably due to the associations these bring. This would match up with the Dalai Lama receommendations in some other comment.
For me, there was a large postural change. Oddly, moving my sense of self down meant that my head came up.
Another thing I noticed: The effect feels like when directing attention toward something outside of the focus area (direction of gaze).
Worth noting, the Dalai Lama recommends before falling asleep focusing the sense of self in the middle of the chest at the level of the heart for deeper sleeping or in the throat for more vivid dreams. I have never tried it, but may be an experiment for people with sleep problems or trying to lucid dream.
I think this is learned—Aristotle considered it is in the heart and the brain is just about cooling blood. I think it is because we are taught from childhood to “use your head” etc.
Be critical of these sorts of factoids. Aristotle was a ‘wise man’ which in that pre-scientific time meant more seemingly-wise than actually-wise regarding most topics (although Aristotle was better than other contemporaries to be fair). You can take it as weak evidence that Aristotle claiming the self to be in the heart and not in the brain means that most people of the time thought it was in the brain not the heart, as with today. His view got recorded for history because it was contrarian.
Is this true that most people believed the brain was where thought came from? I know the Egyptians used to rip it out because they didn’t think it was important.
I was literally just thinking about this the other day, about how ancient people didn’t notice that people that got head injuries would change their behave or die instantly.
That is good evidence, on the other hand.
I don’t have a single friend whose behavior I’d have noticed changing after a head injury: the only reason I know it happens is because I’ve read case reports of it happening to someone. Maybe some doctor might have noticed, but then, I’d expect ancient peoples to also have fewer head injuries that were serious enough to change behavior but also mild enough to be survivable.
People that got heart injuries tend to die instantly, too :-/
A better clue would be that you can knock someone out by hitting him on the head, but not on any other part of the body.
If you hit someone hard in the region of the heart, they die.
You’re missing the point. There is only one part of the body that you can apply physical shock to in order to make someone lose consciousness for a time.
But you could also say that death is a more permanent form of losing consciousness. To someone who doesn’t know better, I could certainly see someone thinking “If something happens to the brain, you get seriously messed up. But if something happens to the heart you die, period. So perhaps the heart is more important than the brain since even the slightest injury or malfunction means instant death. Therefore, our life force must reside in the heart, not the brain.” This could even lead you to thinking that the brain’s purpose is in someway indirectly related to the heart, e.g. blood cooling, such that damage to the brain can cause damage to the heart, which is why some but not all damage to the brain is deadly.
I get what you are saying, but I think that connection is only obvious in hindsight.
For the purposes of this subthread we should distinguish “life force”, “soul”, and “mind”. They were commonly thought to be separate concepts and not necessarily residing in the same body part.
Depends on the culture.
You can pass out from serious injuries, even if they’re not in the head.
In ancient Greece, it was common knowledge that the liver was the thinking organ. This is obvious, because it is purple (the color of royalty) and triangular (mathematically and philosophically significant).
I always thought my sense of self was in my head because of where my eyes and ears were. I look out at myself and see my hands typing and my legs when I am walking and I am looking from my head. I.e., I am in my head, that is the center.
http://www.yale.edu/minddevlab/papers/starmans%26bloom.pdf?hc_location=ufi
I’m not sure this is definitive, but it’s at least interesting.
When I’m reaching into a space I can’t see with my hands to say, untangle something, I definitely have more of a sense of space around my hands than my head. Closing your eyes and untying/retying your shoes right now might simulate this.
I have had out-of-body experiences. Nothing too major; just the sensation of floating above my ‘actual’ body, sometimes only a few centimeters, other times a full human body length (as if I was standing on my own head). I had a burst of these out-of-body experiences around 2005-2006 (perhaps four or five in a two-year period) and have not had them since. Each episode lasted only a minute or two. Once, a friend was present, and they told me I had ‘zoned out’ for several minutes. It’s worth mentioning don’t know what caused or triggered the episodes. During the episodes my eyes were fully open and I could see what was happening in front of me. However, I wasn’t focused on sensory input but was more inward-focused on my own thoughts.
If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask.
I’m very doubtful of the significance of this because it seems unlikely that evolution would have selected for this kind of perception (there are many points of failure, not just a single one). It seems more likely that this notion only arises when you ask this very question, and that naturally, the mind is simply concerned with the position of all body parts (for safety and coordination, a.k.a. proprioception). With drugs or some dedication we appear to be able to override parts of our self-representation which are concerned with proprioception with arbitrary stories that incorporate sensations that we focus on, but it should better be something romantic (“the brain with which I think, the feet with which I feel the ground”), as people would laugh at your if you said your self is located at your anus because you defacate from it.
I haven’t had this experience myself, but apparently it’s not difficult to induce: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/25/134059271/creating-the-illusion-of-a-different-body
A hypothesis; if you think your sense of self is connected to the location of your eyes; try spend some time blindfolded; say 1 hour in a normal/safe environment without vision and see if it moves. It might just be in your hands as you feel your way around; or your feet as you travel around.
it would seem reasonable that the focus of your interaction with the environment feels like its at one of your strongest senses but might be elsewhere for other people with different sensory wiring.
Cool question.
I have experienced a change in ‘location’ of my sense of self- it ‘spreads out’. It is a feeling that “I” do not reside in the particular head/body of Bageldaughter, but instead in both my head/body and the other things I happen to be keenly aware of. If I am deeply engrossed in a conversation or social activity, “I” will begin to be identified with the group of individuals as a whole. The particular intentions, thoughts or feelings that I typically associate with myself lose some of their distinguishing quality from the ones I perceive from others.
There is often an accompanying “spreading-out” of “my” location in time- the round-trip time of ideas through a group is often slower than just through my own head. I will get the sense that my “current moment” spans back to a thought that originated in my friend’s head one minute ago!
I can invoke this sensation pretty reliably. It can be fun. I get worried when people talk about experiencing this type of thing as some kind of higher truth than normal, because it seems like a sign of mental illness that may not end well.
As a single data point, this is totally bizarre to me… I’ve never in my life felt a “sense of self” anywhere myself, but I find the idea intriguing.
How do you locate yourself? Do you have to meditate or something, or are “you” just always there?
I commented in that thread myself and what you’ve said seems a worthy addition even without a disclaimer; it adds at least as much to the discussion as this post which nobody has downvoted. (of course, it might seem easy for me to say your comment should be posted if I’m not the once risking the karma punishment for doing so, so note that I’d be willing to copy/paste what you’ve said and take any punishment/reward for myself if you’d like)
Try closing your eyes and navigating your home with a cane at the same time and see if it persists? Try checking if it persists when you’re playing video-games? Does your sense of self go into the character? What about if you watch another person really closely?
I have a shifting spatial attention that changes according to the task at hand. The only sense in which “self” is located in my “head” is that to me the world “self” partially means things like “face” and “brain” to me and so recalling the word “self” directs my spatial attention there, in the same way that “door’ directs spatial attention to the door.
But as I go through the day I don’t think there is anything mentally privileged about the space right behind my eyes unless I specifically start thinking about “self” and what it means. I suspect spatial attention and the nature of how verbal concepts direct it is most of what is going on here.
As a single data point, this exactly corresponds to me. I identify with the locus of my vision. I wonder how blind, or blind-deaf people identify.
Maybe the head is the most vulnerable region to injury, and the locating of the self in the head reflects the need to protect the brain and other inputs (mouth, eyes, ears).
Besides just look at a dog or any animal really, it does everything with the head, eat, fight, hunt etc.
If you practice mindfulness meditation, you’ll realize that your sense of self is an illusion. It’s probably true that most people believe that their “self” is located in their head, but if you investigate it yourself, you’ll find that there’s actually no “self” at all.