Abstract

Gendlin's philosophy of the body is used as an approach to the "truth values" of qualitative research. In this view, our bodily participation in life provides a grounded quality of understanding, a shared reference point for an experientially-grounded language that can "work." This understanding is a bodily-informed practice and involves the body's access to "more than words can say." As such a body is intimate to understanding and such bodily-informed sense-making adds a dimension to the ways we have access to and present truth. Implications of this approach for qualitative methodology will be discussed, in particular the implications for the informant's task, the interviewer's task, the task of analysis and the task of the reader.