THE TRANSFORMATION OF BODY EXPERIENCE INTO LANGUAGE 1 REINHARD STELTER University of Copenhagern, Denmark A BSTRACT Body experience can be seen as the basis for the formation of the self-con- cept. The relation between body experience and self-concept is fundamen- tal for human existence and is especially in focus in the elds of psychotherapy (Gendlin, 1981) and movement activities (Stelter, 1996, 1998). But body expe- rience is a “data source” which is diYcult to handle scientically. Body expe- riences are based on “internal physical sensations”—which Gendlin also describes as the felt meaning or the felt sense, and is not in opposition to phenomenology. To bridge the gap between internal sensations—which are the foundation of the creation of meaning—and language as the medium in both everyday and scientic communication, a form of visualisation tech- nique is introduced to help to evoke descriptions and metaphors that are able to transform body experiences as the pre-reective mode of information into language as the digital mode of information. Metaphors are the source domain for the target domain body experience (see: LakoV, 1987). Through the presentation of an empirical project in the eld of movement and sport, the theoretical reections on the process of transforming body experience into language will be exemplied. This paper is an attempt to present a non-objectivist approach 2 to human understanding and the possible consequences of this approach for the con- duct of qualitative research studies and clinical work. Following Johnsen (1987, p. 175) understanding is treated as a historically and culturally embedded, humanly embodied, imaginatively structured event. According to phenomenological theory (Merleau-Ponty, 1962) the basis for human understanding is a matter of being in the world and of getting a grasp of the world through the ow of experiences which are bodily anchored. Understanding the world and ourselves can be described as giving meaning to the situation. In that sense a theory of understanding is a theory of meaning and vice versa. In a non-objectivist approach 3 there 63 Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 31, No. 1, 2000, 63–77