Let's talk about Seitai. Seitai here refers to the Seitai of Haruchika Noguchi and the Seitai of the Institute of Body Education (身体教育研究所). However, people who study Seitai vary from one to another, from those who say, "I don't take medicine, so I am a Seitai person" to those in the practice who say, "Who care about health". I think that's fine. Simply not taking medication is a contribution to society in the sense that it does not increase unnecessary medical costs, but in the eyes of the world, it is an antisocial presence. It's a strange world. Anyway, let's move on from the question of why seitai practitioners do not take medicine to the question of experience and education.
For example, if you read Noguchi's book, "COLDS AND THEIR BENEFITS," it says that when a person catches a cold, develops a fever and sweats, and then successfully passes through the period body temperature goes lower than normal, the body is refreshed. Many people understand this as just a health method, but from an educational standpoint, it suggests something really important. In other words, it is a model of how we assimilate our experiences. Let's say a cold is exogenous, like the flu for example. So the human body and the virus collide. The fever occurs on the borderline. The epidemiological mechanism of fever can be explained in many ways, but when a person experiences something, there is a chance to encounter with others. The "other" can be a virus or a new environment, or a human being. Some might say that this is too much anthropomorphizing viruses and bacteria, but if you think of a person as a unified entity, this is not anthropomorphizing or anything, it's just natural. The definition of "experience is born as an encounter with others" is not so far off the mark.
The question is, "How do we assimilate our experiences? According to Noguchi, when you catch a cold, it is natural to go through the process of fever, low temperature, and return to normal temperature, and after this process, you become a new body. The same is true for relaxation, hypersensitivity, and excretion in the case of the Katsugen Undo (活元運動). In other words, a "new body" means a body that has assimilated the experience. If you think about it that way, medication can be an obstacle to this process of assimilation. Yes, person of Seitai is not someone who does not take medication, but someone who can quietly look at the process of assimilation that is happening within him or her.
When you think about it, the difficulty of "experiential learning" also comes to light. If experientialism is just a field approach, it may end up confusing the learners. I worked for five years at the Japan Center of an American college program as I wrote about in another article, and looking back now, a lot of my work was spent as a counselor to take part in the assimilation process of students who are confused and stuck in the foreign culture.
Translated with a help of "www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)"
Originally written in Japanese as「なぜ身体教育なのか 2」on 2012/9/29
