Mindful embodiment in synthetic environments

Interactive and immersive synthetic experiences may utilize or even redesign the overall sense of embodiment of the person experiencing them mindfully. Because experience is ultimately mediated by the body, it is necessary to look at its affordances and constraints in physical space as the referent. The real-time quality and variety of connections to the body that are available to provide input into synthetic realities aid in extending the body into the virtual, to the point of being capable of redefining that body and its relation to the thought process in the embodied experience. In this article, first, mindfulness is characterized by the advantages it opens to representations such as those of synthetic environments. Then, the enactive approach is used to describe mindful embodiment in these environments. Other literature is called forward to consider how embodiment relates to self-representation as an attribute of presence in virtual space, how embodiment also relates to the perceptual system that is reformulated or extended by technology, and finally, how it is articulated in semantic constructions built from the experience of the body, which tie representation to the expansion of these constructions arguably created for the purpose of collective consciousness, which can be further understood as part of human evolution.