Body, Meaning, and Time: Healing Response as a Transtemporal and Multimodal Meaning-Making Process

Abstract

The healing response is not a linear regression to balance. The human organism is an autopoietic system that recreates its balance in forward–backward and multimodal processes. The difference between actual and anticipated bodies generates free-energy, and meaning-making processes emerge to integrate it into the organism’s functional closure. The sign systems which form the body and regulate its energy are multimodal, interactive interpretations from the molecular to the intersubjective levels. The body needs to predict and control energy to keep itself far from entropy. The interoceptive prediction after proprioceptive drift towards an anticipated bodily state is the key to the transtemporal bodily experiences. Many experiments like rubber hand illusion and embodied virtual reality reveal the projective nature of the body and how we can experience other’s bodies and other potential bodies. All active or inert treatments have symbolic aspects that figurate a feeling of a relieved body. This essay is about how healing expectation leads to a multimodal image and transient homeostatic interoceptive feelings. We also explore how repetitive experiences of a potential body induce epigenetic changes and form new attractors in the actual body. A nonlocal, semiotic body may integrate our medical knowledge more effectively and unfold new gates to health and happiness.