ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the thesis that body experience is the basis of self-experience. First I describe a model of the unity of experience on the three levels of vegetative, muscular-motor and cognitive processes, and I show how the breathing can open up experience on all three levels. Then I summarise how subjective experience arises from the self-senses of proprioception and interoception, and I contextualise body experience within an understanding of the body self as part of a theory of self. I consider the significance of the concept of self for psychotherapy and present the stages model of the self. In conclusion, I explore to what extent disorders of body experience can be an essential element of mental pathologies.
