Postmodern and poststructuralist thought has provided useful tools for the conceptualisation of power and its execution within cultures and upon individuals. Through this lens we become aware of how power is exercised through language - but what does that really mean? It means we become aware of how power is embedded in the symbolic systems through which we articulate a meaning of our lives. As Gendlin points out, meaning begins not with its symbolisation but with its 'felt sense'. The felt sense of experience is extraordinarily intricate, detailed and highly ordered (not the product of an irrational or random unconscious) and only a small part of that felt sense of any moment of experience is represented within any one symbolisation of it. Symbolic systems are only approximations of felt sense. At the level of felt sense the body is still very present. We can access felt sense through the bodily component of any moment of experience.

I believe that power (creative and destructive) operates not only within our symbolic systems but also at the level of felt sense experience. At this level power is 'somatised', it is represented within the structure of the body or is one of the constitutive elements of the body. Evan Thompson's concept of enculturation speaks to this claim. Bodily representations of power can be a constructive (where the body is positively structurally -coupled with the environment), such as the body of an athlete which reflects the power of their ability to act with respect to a specific sport or a practitioner of yoga asana and pranayama, the practices that promote the physical mastery of the life force within the daily practice of living. They can also be destructive representations (structurally -coupled with the environment in a deconstitutive manner from the perspective of the organism), such as an illness/form of dis-ease. To attempt to articulate my point here I am bending the term somatisation. I am referring to the constitutive potential of power on the prereflexive in its entirety (highlighting the body) rather than only the influence of the psychological or even more narrowly psychological distress on the body.

Felt sense experience (the prereflexive) is constitutive of the symbolic and so we see traces of the somatisation of power within symbolic systems - but those symbolic traces are principally the products of this somatisation of power, they are not the entire process. Granted this is a two way street to an extent.

In professional practice, I observe something unique about reflective practices (mainly those from the East). There is something about the embodied affect and effect of mindfulness and other reflective processes that changes the practitioner/client at the level of embodied felt sense experience. Generally this effect is constructive or creative rather than destructive and it is often empowering. There are examples of cultures where mindfulness practices have been used to sustain complacency and the acceptance of destructive power structures but these are clearly a minority. What seems to make the difference is the values that accompany these practices.

Enactive cognitive science is founded on several premises that could help to reveal how the somatisation process occurs constructively and destructively. It is a scientific approach that does not impose the mind/body dichotomy on investigation and when combined with neurophenomenology (its methodological arm) supports dialogue between the natural and social sciences. The philosophies of the Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions would probably reveal why and how reflective practices have leverage on the somatisation process. I am curious about whether these and related traditions could provide humanity with tools for liberatory processes. Could they provide us with the tools to address sexism, for instance, and not just conceptually, but all the way from the level of the bodily constitutive, prereflexive, felt sense experience through to the symbolic realm? Kate Millet talked about the internalisation of sexual oppression as being the original source of all discrimination. If we could address this internalisation in a fully embodied manner I believe we would have made significant progress towards addressing all destructive articulations of power.