From Slowness to Deepening: The Way of Emersive Awareness
Bernard Andrieu, Petrucia da Nobrega
December 3, 2025 DOI: 10.4324/9781003665885-3 (opens in new tab) via OpenAlex
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractThe paper demonstrates three senses of slow sport through three technical modalities. Self-awareness involves paying attention to what happens within oneself, where slowness is methodological and slowing down is ontological. Slowing down also entails synchronisation with the rhythm of the world and the body’s activity. In meditation, slowness seeks to synchronise consciousness with the body’s rhythms (breathing, heartbeat, sensation) for self-control, while slowing down aims to immerse oneself fully in the experience of the world. Deepening reveals duration as a dimension of time consciousness, using mindfulness and awareness to discover alternative rhythms like breathing or heart rate outside physical effort. Body scan meditation facilitates inner exploration by bringing attention to internal sensations until they can be localised by conscious attention.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Intervention | Body scan meditation |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Slowness Consciousness Rhythm Happening |
| Key finding | Argues that slowness in sport and meditation involves both methodological attention and ontological synchronisation with the body's rhythms, enabling immersion in experience and discovery of duration as a dimension of time consciousness. |
Abstract
In this paper three senses of slow sport are demonstrated through three modalities of technical, and as such, it is found within a precise methodology. Self-awareness is defined by paying attention to what is happening within oneself; here, slowness is methodological and slowing down is ontological. Slowing down is not only methodological slowness; it also involves a synchronisation with the rhythm of the world. Slowing down is both methodological in terms of attention and also ontological by the rhythm of body’s activity. Where slowness in meditation seeks to synchronise consciousness with the body’s rhythms (breathing, heartbeat, sensation) for the purpose of self-control, slowing down is an attempt to immerse oneself fully in the experience of the world. Deepening helps us to discover duration as a dimension of the consciousness of time. It involves mindfulness and awareness to discover alternative rhythms, such as that of one’s breathing or heart rate outside of some physical effort. Body scan meditation facilitates this inner exploration by bringing attention to the internal sensations in order to activate them. This occurs by allowing information from the living body to emerge to a point at which it can be localised by conscious attention