Considering the sensory dimension of clinical decision-making is a challenge for the training of health professionals. Therefore, how can we help them stimulate a form of sensory acuity? We conducted a study in partnership with the Simulation Laboratory of a Canadian hospital to understand the sensory work accomplished by nurses during a clinical decision-making. To do this, we analyzed the interactions occurring during focus groups to reveal the sensory work performed by nurses during the clinical evaluation of patients (personas).

Literature on bodily habit has often emphasised the inculcation of new bodily skills and embodied ways of being in practice. However, recent work demonstrates that skilled experts do focus on the body, its sensuous information, and engage in conscious and deliberate forms of bodily awareness during the performance of bodily skills. In this article, I present data from interviews with barbell coaches and yoga teachers in order to explore the social transmission of bodily knowledge. I analyse accounts from these experts (...) about the techniques and approaches they use to teach bodily skills, focusing on objective, subjective, and intersubjective strategies. I argue that while bodily knowledge is difficult to articulate, its fundamentally social basis means that it can be translated through coordinated activities and shaped by social processes. I thus advance literature on bodily knowledge by accounting for deliberation and reflexivity in learning bodily skills. (shrink)

Breath, the ephemeral materialization of air at the interface of body and world, engages with and alters the quality of both. As a process of inhalation and exhalation that signals its physiological universality, breath is an invisible prerequisite for life, an automated and functional necessity. Yet it is more than simply a reflexive action and can at times be controlled or manipulated. It can also affect or be affected by experiences, environments and relationships. In this essay, like the contributors to (...) the special issue it prefaces, we aim to address the lacuna that exists in the examination of the meanings and embodiment of breath as a central theme in the humanitics and social sciences. Interdisciplinary perspectives that explore breath as a multifaceted phenomenon, both intrinsically shared and contextually distinct, open new directions in the field of breath and body studies. (shrink)