Although binary sex roles dominate gay dating platforms in China, the identity construction processes underlying non-insertive sexual preferences, such as identifying as "side," remain underexplored. Guided by Sexual Script Theory (SST), this study explored the identity landscape and enacted practices of "side" among tongzhi (men romantically and sexually attracted to men) within Chinese contexts. Using virtual ethnographic observation and semi-structured interviews with 21 tongzhi who identified as "side," findings from narrative analysis indicated that "side" is not a fixed label, but a discursive and practical resource dynamically reconstructed across three levels. At the intrapsychic (bodily experience) and interpersonal levels (intimate relationship), tongzhi rewrote inner scripts, developing a being side identity, to mitigate embodied dissonance, while co-constructing interpersonal scripts through a fluid doing side strategy to renegotiate relational dynamics. At the cultural scenario level, digital platform infrastructures institutionalize insertive hegemony, compelling individuals to navigate tensions between exclusion and visibility. This study extends SST by demonstrating that "side" is not merely a behavioral preference, but a survival strategy through which tongzhi rework intimacy under patriarchal stigma and digital platform constraints in China. These findings call for public health interventions to address the fluid, negotiated nature of sexual identity in the digital era.

Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) is a rare genetic condition characterised by visible symptoms, clinical uncertainty, and psychosocial complexity. The experience of diagnosis often represents a key turning point that shapes personal identity, relationships, and perceptions of the body. However, little is known about how individuals make sense of and emotionally respond to receiving an NF1 diagnosis. This study aimed to explore the cognitive, emotional, and identity-related dimensions of the diagnostic experience among people living with NF1 in Poland. A qualitative study was conducted using semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 93 adults diagnosed with NF1, and the data were analysed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis. The findings indicate that receiving an NF1 diagnosis is not a single clinical event but an evolving identity process shaped by time, personal history, and social context. Participants' reactions to diagnosis varied depending on the diagnostic context and communication process. Four main patterns of response were generated: (1) lack of emotional reaction, relief, and acceptance of the diagnosis; (2) search for knowledge and active engagement with information; (3) denial, minimisation, and emotional distance; and (4) emotional crisis, somatic anxiety, and existential disorientation. The diagnosis also acted as a catalyst for redefining life, the body, and everyday experience, expressed through heightened bodily awareness and a reordering of life priorities, values, and relationships. Together, these themes demonstrate that the NF1 diagnosis functions both as a crisis and a transformative opportunity. It simultaneously confirms embodied experiences and challenges established self-concepts, prompting reflection, self-awareness, and biographical reorientation. The study highlights the importance of timely psychosocial support, empathetic and clear communication, and family-centred care in the diagnostic process. Understanding the emotional and identity-related responses to diagnosis may inform more holistic clinical practices and improve the quality of care for individuals and families affected by NF1.

ABSTRACT Background Teacher education is intended to connect theory and practice, yet integration is often approached as a linear, step-by-step process, with limited success. In physical education teacher education (PETE), disciplinary breadth and competing pedagogical traditions can further fragment messages about teaching and learning, complicating pre-service teachers’ (PSTs’) efforts to make meaningful theory-practice connections. This highlights the need for teacher educators to enact complex, integrated teaching-learning approaches. Accordingly, this research explores how teacher educators develop and enact pedagogies that integrate theory and practice in PETE, and how these enactments shape PSTs’ engagement. Theoretical framework and research question: Shulman’s (2005) ‘Signature Pedagogies in the Professions.' Daedalus 134 (3): 52–59. HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.1162/0011526054622015) notion of signature pedagogies – including surface, deep, and implicit structures, and the common features (public performance, uncertainty, and emotional stake) – framed the analysis of two teacher educators’ pedagogies for integrating theory and practice. The research was guided by the question: ‘What signature pedagogies do two teacher educators enact as they integrate theory and practice to support PSTs’ learning?’ Methods This study was conducted within a Norwegian five-year PETE programme and focused on two units taught by two teacher educators: one comprising five two-hour lessons with 35 first-year PSTs, and one comprising four four-hour lessons with 40 s-year PSTs. Data comprised observations of five lessons, audio recordings from five critical friend meetings (225 min), and two PST focus group interviews with five PSTs from each course (n = 10; 70 and 50 min). A general inductive approach guided the iterative data analysis. Findings and discussion Three themes were constructed: (i) Crafting and enacting experiential signature pedagogies within context, (ii) Deeper PST learning through varied and dynamic experiential pedagogies, and (iii) Tensions in inviting and being invited into the experiential learning process. Across distinct enactments, both teacher educators foregrounded bodily experiences, reflection, and interaction, positioning PSTs as active contributors while navigating uncertainty, accountability, and uneven engagement. Conclusion We argue that PETE should move beyond framing theory and practice as separate domains to be bridged and instead conceptualise them as intertwined within experiential signature pedagogies whose surface, deep, and implicit structures are realised through teacher educators’ enactment in contexts. Integrating bodily experience, reflection, and interaction enables PSTs to engage critically and meaningfully with theory in practice. Impact statement This research advances PETE by conceptualising signature pedagogies as non-prescriptive, context-sensitive frameworks for fostering coherent integration of theory and practice.

PurposeGuided by Watson's Caring Science, this study explored the humanistic care needs of hospitalized orthopedic patients and interpreted the lived meanings underlying these needs.DesignA descriptive phenomenological design was used.MethodsPurposive sampling was used to recruit 13 orthopedic inpatients from a tertiary hospital in Hebei Province, China. Data were collected through semistructured in-depth interviews and analyzed using Colaizzi's seven-step phenomenological method.FindingsNine themes were identified, covering pain management, safety and environmental needs, daily care, privacy and respect, psychological support, rehabilitation guidance, continuity of care, caring attention and support, and communication. Beyond these specific needs, the findings revealed a core lived experience of vulnerability, dependence, and threatened dignity during hospitalization. Patients sought not only symptom relief, but also humanistic care that helped them feel respected, understood, supported, and gradually move toward healing.ConclusionsOrthopedic inpatients have multidimensional humanistic care needs that reflect a holistic caring experience of body, mind, and spirit. Integrating technical care, relational care, and continuity of care may strengthen holistic nursing practice in orthopedic settings.

The experience of embodiment in emerging adults with type 1 diabetes: Developmental trajectories and associations with key markers of diabetes-related functioning.

Effects of basic body awareness therapy on movement quality, arousal regulation, and bodily experience in Danish military veterans with severe PTSD symptoms.

ABSTRACT This article reads how fatness has become a composite local cultural metaphor for Fat excesses and disability in South Asian societies. In South Asian cultural discourses, fatness is stereotypically linked to laziness, greed, and incapacity, associations reinforced in media portrayals such as Commander Safeguard. It focuses on the intersection of indigenous experience of fatness and aims to mobilize the way media portrays fat bodies as disgusting while drawing on Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection in analyzing fat characters in children’s indigenous South Asian cartoon series Commander Safeguard by Procter and Gamble, Ltd. Kristeva’s theory of abjection, as propounded in Powers of Horror, emphasizes repulsion caused by bodily experience and explains resultant behaviors in social attitudes. This theory has been analyzed in a psychoanalytic framework to read its impact on the minds of children. My focus is on the cartoon series which celebrates fat as funny, Fat as filthy, and Fat as flagrant. This article concerns itself with the aspect of the body image from Kristevan lens which has not been probed earlier with reference to the portrayal of South Asian fat children’s characters in films/cartoons/kids series. It is in this indigenous context of fat-shaming and body acceptance that I locate the research on the Commander Safeguard series.

This article examines the twenty-first-century Western’s evolving treatment of economic debt, particularly in the context of the 2008 recession, payday lending, and the prevailing orthodoxy that one must pay one’s debts. The resurgence of the Western’s popularity connects with how recent Western films harness the genre’s aesthetic and ideological legacy to critique the contemporary logic of repayment. Taking No Country for Old Men (2007) and Hell or High Water (2016) as primary case studies, the author shows how these films rework the Western’s legacy to register the human toll of economic debt in the twenty-first century. Through a recalibration of genre tropes, particularly the centrality of violence, these films transform abstract economic obligations into tangible bodily experiences. Such representations reframe the obligation to repay economic debt, casting it not as a moral or ontological imperative but as a deeply antisocial force, one that stands as a direct threat to all noneconomic bonds and to the idea of the human as such.

Positive body image is a pathway between nature contact and life satisfaction across 58 nations.

Post-burn itching is an important symptom that negatively affects patients during both the treatment and rehabilitation processes. Understanding patients' lived experiences regarding post-burn itching is essential to improving patient care. This qualitative study was conducted using a phenomenological approach. In-depth, face-to-face interviews were held with 10 patients who experienced itching after burn injuries. Data collection occurred between January and May 2024. Thematic analysis was employed to evaluate the data. Analysis of the data revealed four main themes and 13 sub-themes. The main themes identified were: (1) the psychological burden of itching, (2) the bodily experience of itching, (3) difficulties in daily life, and (4) coping strategies. The study findings provide detailed insights into the experiences of patients suffering from post-burn itching. These results enhance current knowledge in this area and may inform the development of holistic, patient-centred, and community-based care strategies tailored to patient needs.

The human brain stores and retrieves tactile experiences, allowing object recognition by touch, the definition of haptic preferences, and the retrieval of past bodily experiences. However, little is known about the spatial code of tactile body memories, particularly whether encoding takes place in a body-centered (tactile) reference frame, not influenced by hand posture or visual cues, or whether it takes place in an external reference frame, where tactile information is integrated with proprioceptive and visual information. Here, we combined a passive tactile pattern memory task with the crossed-hands paradigm to investigate if tactile pattern retrieval accuracy is influenced by in-/congruent hand position during learning and retrieval (experiment 1) and/or the spatial context surrounding the hand (experiment 2). We hypothesized that significant effects of hand position and/or visual context on retrieval accuracy evidence external encoding, whereas the absence of such effects are more consistent with body-centered encoding. Our data is in accordance with the latter hypothesis, and do not support external encoding. The results can be considered plausible in light of clinical evidence where bodily sensations related to past memories are often confined to specific body locations rather than remapped to external space.

Mindfulness-based programs (MBPs) are a promising approach to enhancing elite athlete wellbeing, yet little is known about the mechanisms through which they exert their effects. Guided by a critical realist approach, we qualitatively explored mechanisms of change during an 8-week MBP (the Mindfulness for Wellbeing program) delivered to 13 elite athletes (8 females, 5 males; M age = 22.23). Data were drawn from participants’ stated intentions, practice notes, and semistructured interviews, and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. We generated four themes: (1) Wellbeing intentions guide wellbeing outcomes; (2) Developing moment-to-moment awareness to improve positive affect and autonomy; (3) Attending to bodily and sensory experience to support emotional regulation and disengagement from thoughts; and (4) Cultivating self-compassion to enhance growth in sport and personal life. These findings provide contextual insight into further refinement of MBPs to better promote and protect mental wellbeing in elite athletes or other athlete populations.

ABSTRACT Mountains have long been considered locations conducive to symbolic, existential and spiritual reflection. The present article puts forward a theological interpretation of mountaineering, grounded in an integrated understanding of human motricity. This study draws from a range of disciplines including travel writing, as well as the study of the sublime, to argue that the ascent offers a unifying experience of body, soul, and desire that has the potential to facilitate pathways to transcendence. By examining classic and contemporary mountaineering narratives, this study highlights how altitude cultivates discernment, presence, and vulnerability. The grammar of mountains is suggested as a valuable source of coordinates for a public theology rooted in the gestures of everyday life.

ABSTRACT Purpose: This article presents the theoretical framework of the physical culture circle, grounded in an analysis of the culture circle − a participatory and dialogical popular education approach developed by Paulo Freire. Methods: The study examines Freirean pedagogy, particularly the culture circle, in dialogue with decolonial studies and physical cultural studies. This interdisciplinary engagement seeks to articulate a theoretical and pedagogical proposal that integrates critical bodily experience into educational practice, highlighting the convergences and divergences among these perspectives. Results: The physical culture circle is proposed as a pedagogical framework that values collective, critical, and engaged learning, challenging the logics of body colonization and hierarchies of knowledge. By fostering awareness of social markers of difference and encouraging empowerment through embodied practices, this approach contributes to transforming experiences into acts of resistance and emancipation. Conclusion: By consolidating the physical culture circle as a robust theoretical framework, the study offers educators, researchers, and community practitioners a structure that fosters participatory spaces for dialogue, resistance, and collective knowledge construction. This framework challenges dominant paradigms by centering the moving body as a site of political, cultural, and pedagogical significance, affirming its role in the struggle against social hierarchies and injustices.

Panic disorder (PD) is associated with altered interoceptive experience, but it remains unclear how self-reported interoception relates to neurophysiological indices of bodily-signal processing. This study examined whether associations between self-reported interoception and resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) markers differ between participants with PD and healthy controls (HC). This analysis included 19 PD participants and 21 HCs from a previously published resting-state EEG dataset. Self-reported interoception was assessed using the Body Perception Questionnaire-Very Short Form (BPQ-VSF) and the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA). Resting-state EEG signals were recorded during eyes-closed and eyes-open conditions. Heartbeat-evoked potentials (HEP) and relative band power (RBP) were extracted to index cardiac-related cortical processing and frequency-specific resting-state activity. Associations between self-report measures and EEG indices were examined using Pearson correlations with 95% confidence intervals, Bayes factors, and false-discovery-rate (FDR) correction across scalp regions within predefined analysis families. Age-adjusted sensitivity analyses and group × self-report interaction models were used to assess robustness and formally test group differences in association patterns. Compared with HCs, PD participants reported higher body-focused attention and lower scores on several adaptive interoceptive dimensions, including Not-Distracting, Not-Worrying, and Trusting. In the 235-301 ms HEP window, age-adjusted interaction models showed that BPQ-VSF HEP coupling differed between groups, especially under eyes-open conditions. Within-group analyses showed an exploratory opposite-direction BPQ-VSF HEP pattern, with positive associations in HC and negative associations in PD. The clearest FDR-corrected HEP association within panic disorder involved Not-Worrying under eyes closed. RBP analyses showed PD-concentrated θ (theta)- and β (beta)-band association profiles. Trusting was positively associated with θ power in PD, and BPQ-VSF showed positive β-band associations under eyes closed that remained robust after age adjustment. Not-Distracting showed negative θ-band associations in the primary correlation analyses, but these were attenuated after controlling for age. These findings provide preliminary FDR-controlled and age-informed evidence that PD involves altered, condition- and frequency-dependent mappings between subjective bodily experience and resting-state EEG markers. The clearest formal group-difference evidence was observed for BPQ-VSF HEP coupling, whereas PD-specific associations were most robust for Not-Worrying-HEP, Trusting-θ power, and BPQ-VSF β power. Given the modest sample size and exploratory correlational design, replication in larger samples is needed.

Political emotions are widely acknowledged as key drivers of political participation and polarization. Yet while it is well established that political emotions matter, far less is known about how they are felt and represented in the body. Across a preregistered, nationally representative study (N = 992), we introduce an embodied approach to political emotion using the validated emBODY-tool, which allows participants to map where in the body they experience sensations when feeling canonical emotions (e.g., anger) and their political counterparts (e.g., "political anger"). Specifically, we address three questions: 1) how political emotions are embodied and differ from their nonpolitical counterparts, 2) whether political dispositions influence how these political emotions are embodied, and 3) how their embodied experience interacts with political dispositions in explaining political attitudes and behavior. Pixelwise bodily sensation maps and aggregated "embodied impact" metrics show that political anger, anxiety, depression, disgust, and hope do not merely mirror their canonical forms, but take on distinct bodily patterns. Political ideology, but not political sophistication, modulates these bodily experiences, with Democrat-leaning participants reporting more intense sensations for negative political emotions, suggesting the presence of "ideological bodies." Crucially, political participation is not explained by how intensely people report feeling emotions, but is instead closely linked to how strongly these emotions are embodied in the body. Together, our findings underscore the body's central role in democratic engagement by showing how political contexts shape embodied emotional experience and how these embodied experiences shape politics and democracy.

Purpose Physical activity may improve the function and well-being of individuals with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT). We conducted a study to explore patients’ experiences related to physical activity, investigating how physiotherapists may promote and facilitate activity. Materials and methods A qualitative study eliciting 10 patients’ and 12 physiotherapists’ views in four focus groups. Results Previous experiences shaped how individuals with CMT viewed physical activity. Both individuals with CMT and physiotherapists emphasised a tailored approach that acknowledged personal perspectives, as feeling understood increased motivation. Physiotherapists could facilitate activity and mastery by validating patients’ bodily experiences, reassuring them that occasional pain and fatigue are normal, raising awareness of how daily cumulative demands affect symptoms, and assessing signs of abnormal responses. Individuals with CMT recognised that inactivity led to stiffness and heaviness, motivating them to stay active. Both groups called for improved knowledge, collaboration, access to skilled physiotherapists, and stronger professional networks. Conclusion Previous experiences and beliefs about the benefits and harms of physical activity influence individuals with CMT regarding their views on physical activity. Physiotherapists may promote engagement by nurturing therapeutic relationships and personalising their approach. The shortage of qualified professionals and facilities may restrict opportunities for those with CMT.

To describe how persons with diabetes experience learning about self-care, with a particular focus on foot self-care. Narrative, semi-structured interviews were conducted with persons diagnosed with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes. Participants were recruited through an advertisement in a diabetes association magazine and through convenience and snowball sampling. Eleven participants aged 53-87 were interviewed between December 2024 and April 2025. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using a phenomenological hermeneutic approach. Learning about foot self-care emerged as a gradual, lived process shaped by bodily experiences, social relationships and access to support. Three themes were identified: the social landscape of self-care, the being of the feet and taking knowledge into your own hands. Learning was influenced by encounters with healthcare professionals, informal support from relatives and personal experiences over time. Bodily symptoms acted as driving forces for learning and self-care actions. Understanding why self-care mattered was essential for motivation, while seeking and evaluating knowledge became a strategy for control and participation in care. Learning about foot self-care among persons with diabetes is an embodied, relational and ongoing process. That develops through interaction among lived bodily experiences, social support and personal responsibility rather than through information alone. Healthcare professionals must integrate persons' experience-based knowledge and support dialogue, reflection and shared learning to strengthen foot self-care practices. The study addressed the limited understanding of how persons with diabetes learn foot self-care. The results showed that learning is shaped by lived experience, relationships and meaning-making. The findings are relevant for persons with diabetes and healthcare professionals involved in diabetes care. The study adhered to the COREQ criteria. No patient or public contribution.

Drawing on qualitative narrative testimonies from 35 displaced Palestinian refugee women collected during the 2024–2025 assault, the study illuminates the relational, embodied, and ethical labor through which life is sustained under siege. Using a decolonial feminist psychological framework, the study integrates structural analysis, narrative interpretation, and thematic mapping across six experiential domains: rupture of home, cyclical displacement, embodied precarity, silenced endurance, maternal survival work, and testimony as presence. The analysis challenges dominant trauma paradigms by situating emotional and bodily experiences within ongoing colonial violence, enclosure, and infrastructural collapse. Findings demonstrate how care, vigilance, moral restraint, and relational commitments form a coherent survival praxis. The study contributes to transnational feminist scholarship by foregrounding locally grounded knowledge production and offering an alternative understanding of psychological life that resists depoliticization and pathologization. • Decolonial feminist narrative study of women's survival in Gaza's genocidal violence • Shows how displacement reshapes space into gendered sites of resistance and memory • Reveals women's agency and collective care as central to survival under warfare

Touch is a foundational sensory modality in early development, playing a pivotal role in shaping social, emotional, and cognitive functions. This study focused on EEG data from 8-month-old infants to investigate the neural networks underlying the processing of naturalistic hand-to-hand touch-both felt and observed. Unlike prior research in which infants were presented with artificial stimuli, we employed ecologically valid, caregiver-like tactile interactions to better capture real-world dynamics. Our findings reveal that felt touch elicited widespread, highly coordinated gamma-band activity across sensory and higher-order cortical areas, supporting early integration of bodily experiences with attentional and perceptual systems. Observed touch, while activating a more localized somatosensory network, still demonstrated distinct gamma connectivity, consistent with early self-other differentiation. A control condition involving observed failed contact elicited increased frontal and temporal activity, possibly reflecting expectancy violation and heightened attentional demands. These results underscore the significance of touch in scaffolding early neural architecture, especially within sensorimotor and social-cognitive domains. Furthermore, our findings highlight the value of analyzing multiple frequency bands beyond traditional μ rhythm desynchronization to understand infant mirroring mechanisms. Importantly, this study advances our understanding of how early tactile experiences may shape the developing connectome, revealing gamma oscillations as a marker of sensorimotor processing and emerging intersubjective awareness.