The body cartography technique, what it consists of

The body cartography technique allows the person to enter contact with his body and dialogue with him. This also allows the person to consciously analyze who he is, how he perceives the world and how he relates to others through his body, since this is the only means to interact with the environment.

With body cartography, it starts from the premise that everything that happens to a person is printed on his body, even the memories, whether they are happy or sad.

It is also considered that the body takes the words or prejudices of the person and manifests them.

The body cartography technique, origin and uses

The body, In addition to occupying a space, It houses symbolisms, while it has a social and cultural participation in the world.

According to Silva Jimena and others, in his study on the body in biographical investigations, the concept of body maps began to spread as a technique in the Bach Flower System, developed by Dietmar Kämer and Helmut Wild in the year 2000. To this was added the approach of the Mask Institute of the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where Mario Buchbinder and Elina Matoso worked Body ghostly map.

In the Biographical research also works with body maps, But not as a process to establish diagnosis or to intervene, but to stimulate the emergence of the meanings and speeches that the main body of the biography embodies.

Similarly, the sociologist and anthropologist David Le Breton has dedicated much of his work to study the body, analyzing with special emphasis how the body works today. According to this thinker, the current society is individualistic, so the body has become an object of hedonism, where each subject is in charge of its transformation and aestheticization.

Le Breton suggests that The body in modernity, rather than joining with others, is a personal brand that differentiates an individual from another, as a border. In addition, man has separated from the world, from the cosmos and even from himself when treating the body as something alien to his spirit.

In this sense, Cartography or body maps can help materialize speeches and experiences that are part of the body. Therefore, there are those who resort to body cartography as a technique, as an instrument or as a method, depending on the objective of the researchers.

Depending on the area of ​​knowledge, body cartography can have a Therapeutic use with which it seeks to produce knowledge to proceed with a Diagnosis and intervention of physical or mental health; has research, that allows the meanings and discourses to emerge and a pedagogical use, through which words are given to the body, also known as corpographies.

In it academic scope, Body maps are used to Understand issues associated with corporeality and motor skills, So the students to whom the technique is applied express brands, phrases, signs or words that represent their condition or incarnate body, to understand how discourses and experiences have built their inner world, while thinking and sentence beings, people With strengths and fears, with happy and sad experiences, in addition to the relationship they keep with their culture.

How to make body maps?

To perform the map or body cartography, proceed as follows:

• The map is made by building a Line of events in which the subjects identify the most important events that have lived.
• Proceeds to Draw the body in real size, so that the person identifies with the drawing he performs.
• The subject proceeds to Draw symbols, words or messages that represent your body and the experiences that the person decides to work -using the line of events-. The shapes, colors, textures and materials are under the creativity of the person who draws.
• When we proceed to Talk about the map, Two regulatory speeches are visualized, that is, punishments, restrictions, aesthetics, gender and ideas about beauty.

While the person exposes or talks about his cartography, you can also observe the practices that they carry out and that are linked to your body, The representations of the social image of the body and self -image, that is, the emotions, myths, sufferings or taboos registered in his corporeality. They can also visualize tensions or conflicts that prevent a person from moving towards their well -being and transformation.

Body cartography is an exercise that is enriching for those who decide to assume the challenge to build one, since students can also apply it if used in the educational field.

A cartography is the best way to see one's body, understanding the social functions that it fulfills. This also allows you to leave a record that can change, as the approaches that are made on the body are changing.

This technique allows the person to position himself with respect to his place in the family or in society in general, discovering new ways of seeing yourself, and creating new ways of representing themselves to others.

With the technique of body cartography, it can even be made to existence, because, as researcher Robert Tally states: "The experience of being in the world is navigation," this implies that the person can be located in relation to others, draw new routes, orient in space and time, take care or move. This is a way of understanding how the body sails.

The wheel of emotions

Bibliography

• Bovio, a. R. (2005). Body coordinates. Ideas to rethink the human being. Philosophy Magazine of the University of Costa Rica.
• Peña Duanca, to. P., & Mayorga Martinez, P. TO. (2022). Body cartography for the recognition of emotions and assertive communication in nursing and psychology students from a private university in Bogotá (Master'sses, El Bosque University).
• Silva, Jimena, Barrientos, Jaime, & Espinoza-Tapia, Ricardo. (2013). A methodological model for the study of the body in biographical research: body maps. Alpha (Osorno), (37), 163-182. https: // dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0718-22012013000200012
• Tally, r. T. (2014). INTRODUCTION: MAPPING NARRATIVES. In Literary Cartographies (pp. 1-12). Palgrave Macmillan, New York.