Researcher's Profile

The word "sport" derives from the Latin deportare, originally signifying diversion and play — encompassing not only competition but also immersion in the natural environment. This laboratory redefines sport as playing between the body and the environment.
Since the modern era, a brain-centered view of the human being — one that confines the mind within the skull — has remained dominant. In contrast, we relocate the self not as a given entity but as an event that emerges, moment by moment, between body and environment. As Jakob von Uexküll proposed with his concept of the Umwelt, living beings direct their attention toward what matters to them, and perception therefore carries a gradient. In humans, social context becomes embedded within the Umwelt, and the gradient of meaning grows intricately fixed — resistant to linguistic or volitional intervention, yet continuously operative. While this gradient enables efficient perception and action, it also distorts the subject's world. The very gradient that generates individuality simultaneously produces bias and narrows human possibility. Because it operates beneath conscious awareness, deliberate intervention is difficult.
Through playing with and through the body, human beings can forge new relationships with their environment. Play is an immersion into an uncertain world — a temporary departure from fixed gradients of meaning that loosens what has become rigid. Such experiences can transform relations between humans and their environment, and among humans themselves. By keeping the world's structure from solidifying, play may guide society toward greater softness and inclusion.
This research tests the hypothesis through real-world bodily data from athletes, people with disabilities, and children. By understanding the human through movement, we aim to illuminate common experiences that transcend ability, disability, and age, and to rearticulate the principles of a society in which diverse people live together.