Ways to find your own face.

Posted on by Lynda Joy

So, you’ve been living your life as yourself for awhile and don’t you find it kind of unsatisfying that you have never directly observed your own face? So, why not try? Now’s the time!

So, first, find a comfortable seated position. You might be here for awhile. Begin by stretching your face about with elaborate jaw movements and begin searching for shadows of movement in the lower half of your face. Then start stretching your lips outward, and you should begin to see your upper lip. Remember that this task is only awkward if you place yourself in the position of the other and envision what it would be to see yourself from that external view. You are yourself, embodied, and this is an exploration of that state.

I noticed that as I would be talking sometimes my upper lip would sneak into my view and it was always very unnerving. There would be this little pink blurry thing moving at the bottom of my face, and kind of lingering in space but moving in synch with my actions. It reminded me that I had an upper lip, and that this lip was moving as I spoke. At the same time, though, it was very strange! I kept thinking, “What is this blurry pink spot doing in my visual frame? Go away!” It was like my experience was a film and a fingerprint on the lens of the camera was obscuring the view…my complete view…of my experiences. It was irritating in just that same way.

If you change something about your embodied state, then you change the self with which you live the world.

One thought on “Ways to find your own face.”

  1. It’s interesting how the brain behaves when it both is and is not presented with neuroelectrical feedback. For instance, just seeing the little pink blurry thing gives you not just an added awareness, but an ability that you previously lacked. Going forward, seeing the pink blurry thing will give you greater control over it.. in a way, it’s nature’s scientific method. The brain experiments with what it can do, but it needs to reach out and get results in order to make a conclusion. The degree to which a brain is capable of adapting to new results is generally referred to as neuroplasticity [which I’m sure you know], and I haven’t read much about it. I did hear recently that, in spite of the traditionally held belief that neuroplasticity declines as people age, there are actually ways to reverse that trend. What whaddaya know? Mental exercise is the number one way to do it.

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Lynda Joy is a American PhD student living in Denmark, researching sensorimotor training with multi-modal Augmented Reality technologies by using methodologies from Cognitive Neuropsychology. During her MA, she worked very closely with the Center for Subjectivity Research and studied Phenomenology and its plausible implementations in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science ("naturalized" phenomenology). Between her MA and PhD, she worked with labs in Berlin (Germany), Adelaide (Australia), Tallinn (Estonia), Zurich (Switzerland), and Paris (France). She was a keynote speaker at IEEE VR in 2016, and presented at the Augmented Reality World Expo in 2017. In her spare time, she is currently writing a novel about a virtual simulation of bardo (the stage between life and death to reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism). Her goal is to create experiences with new technologies that help people access more of the embodied subjectivity of another person/persons. Lynda wants her work to revere compassion to help allow the world to realize what a gift it is to both give and receive. Lynda is a strong believer in a better world that we collectively make by sharing a common vision, and that this vision comes through sharing our stories and our truths. That's what this blog is all about.