Re-embodiment: incorporation through embodied learning of wheelchair skills.

Abstract

In this article, the notion of re-embodiment is developed to include the ways that rearrangement and renewals of body schema take place in rehabilitation. More specifically, the embodied learning process of acquiring wheelchair skills serves as an off-set for fleshing out a phenomenological understanding of incorporation of assistive devices. By drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty, the reciprocal relation between acquisition of habits and incorporation of instruments is explored in relation to the learning of wheelchair skills. On the basis of this, it is argued that through learning to manoeuvre the wheelchair, a reversible relation between established between the moving body subject and the wheelchair. In this sense, re-embodiment involves a gestalt switch from body image to body schema.