Taa: Knowing That Comes From the Body

Series: Breathing, Body, Consciousness, and the Shifting of the Tensional Selves (Eus Tensionais)

Introduction — Brain Bee (first-person consciousness)

I can read about breathing.
I can understand graphs, concepts, and explanations.
But only when my body changes its rhythm—
only when my posture reorganizes—
only when something in me feels different—
does knowing truly happen.

Before that, it is information.
After that, it is lived experience.
My body knows when something is real.

Taa: knowledge that cannot fit only in language

In many Indigenous traditions, Taa is not accumulated knowledge.
It is embodied knowledge.

Taa happens when:

• the body recognizes,

• feeling reorganizes,

• action changes without needing explanation.

Reading informs.
Hearing orients.
But only living transforms the body.

This principle is not philosophical.
It is physiological.

Why reading does not change the body by itself

Reading acts primarily on:

• semantic networks,

• language,

• declarative memory.

It can:

• expand repertoire,

• organize concepts,

• generate intention.

But it does not directly change:

• breathing patterns,

• postural tone,

• autonomic reflexes,

• heart rate variability.

Without lived experience, the body remains the same.
And bodily consciousness remains the same.

Lived experience as physiological reorganization

When something is lived bodily:

• breathing changes,

• posture adjusts,

• the heart varies,

• the brain responds differently.

This appears clearly in objective measures:

• EEG,

• ERP,

• NIRS/fNIRS.

Not as symbol,
but as real signal change.

EEG and lived knowing

In EEG, consistent bodily experiences:

• alter power patterns,

• reorganize functional connectivity,

• modulate rhythms (alpha, theta, gamma).

These changes do not appear simply because a concept is understood.
They emerge when the body enters another state.

The brain learns when the body enters learning.

ERP: the timing of the body learning

Evoked potentials (ERP) show something crucial:
the brain responds differently before conscious decision,
and bodily states shift latencies and amplitudes.

After a bodily experience:

• identical stimuli produce different responses,

• attention reorganizes,

• the body already “knows” first.

This is Taa at the neural level.

fNIRS: the body teaching the brain

In fNIRS, real bodily changes:

• alter prefrontal oxygenation,

• modify cortical recruitment,

• reflect effort, fruition, or reorganization.

Breathing, posture, and cardiac rhythm
appear directly in the signals.

The body teaches the brain—
and fNIRS records it.

Taa, Tensional Selves, and belonging

A Tensional Self does not change because it was convinced.
It changes when:

• the body finds another way to exist,

• breathing opens space,

• posture permits,

• feeling reorganizes.

This generates:

• new bodily belonging,

• a new relationship with the environment,

• a new way of acting.

This is the kind of knowing that remains.

Agreement with science, not opposition

The Indigenous view of Taa does not contradict modern neuroscience.
It anticipates it.

Today we know that:

• deep learning depends on bodily state,

• cognition is embodied,

• consciousness emerges from body–brain–environment interaction.

Taa is an ancestral description
of what science now measures.

When culture blocks Taa

Cultures that privilege only:

• reading,

• repetition,

• verbal belief,
  can produce bodies that are:

• tense,

• low in variability,

• poor in interoceptive listening.

Knowing stays in the head.
The body remains unchanged.
And without the body, there is no real transformation.

Recognizing Taa in yourself

Simple questions:

• Did my body change, or did I only understand?

• Did my breathing reorganize?

• Did my posture find another axis?

• Did my feeling become different?

If there was no bodily change,
knowing has not arrived yet.

Closing

Taa is not belief.
Not information.
Not accumulation.

Taa is when:
the body learns—
and consciousness follows.

Science measures it.
The body confirms it.
And life continues.

This text is part of the series Breathing, Body, Consciousness, and the Shifting of the Tensional Selves (Eus Tensionais), where different aspects of the same living system are approached from complementary angles.

References (post-2020)

Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (recent editions / post-2020 re-readings). The Embodied Mind. MIT Press.
→ Grounds cognition as an embodied process, aligned with the concept of Taa.

Allen, M., et al. (2021). Interoceptive Learning and the Predictive Brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience.
→ Shows how bodily experience changes learning and brain inference.

Berntson, G. G., & Khalsa, S. S. (2021). Neural Circuits of Interoception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
→ Describes the neural basis of bodily knowing prior to language.

Park, H. D., et al. (2022). EEG Markers of Interoceptive Awareness. NeuroImage.
→ Links bodily lived experience to measurable EEG changes.

Herold, F., et al. (2021). Functional Brain Changes Induced by Physical and Bodily States. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.
→ Shows how bodily states reorganize brain activity.

Tachtsidis, I., & Scholkmann, F. (2021). Systemic Physiology and fNIRS Signals. Neurophotonics.
→ Demonstrates agreement between lived bodily physiology and fNIRS signals.

Critchley, H. D., & Garfinkel, S. N. (2021). Interoception and Conscious Experience. Current Opinion in Psychology.
→ Relates bodily sensing to the formation of conscious experience.

Seth, A. K. (2021). Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. Faber & Faber.
→ Integrates contemporary consciousness science with lived bodily perception.