This thesis questions the idea that; quantified self technology can make us understand our bodies better and facilitate a healthy relationship with the body. Instead, it proposes that a healthy relationship to the body is developed through technology that facilitates a somatic practice, involving the bodily experience in the interpretations of the data. This is achieved by bringing in values inspired by the practice of mindfulness as an alternative to the existing design values promoted in technological solutions dealing with the body. I have designed a first prototype, Inner Mirror, which explores adolescents’ body relationship through screen-based visuals. Inner Mirror detects adolescents’ arousals to visualize their emotional changes in abstract representations that they are invited to connect to specific emotional experiences. The process of designing Inner Mirror will be described thoroughly in the paper. The process was a continuous negotiation between the ideas and values that I brought into the project and the adolescents’ worldview. This is described through a first-person perspective and a participatory design approach. Two school classes of 43 adolescents (between 13 to 14 years old) have participated in the project through three workshops. In the end, I test the prototype in two different settings: on myself, adopting the first-person perspective and together with the adolescents. Finally, three concepts that emerged in the design work are evaluated to suggest a direction for future work.

How can vibrotactile stimuli be used to create a technology-mediated somatic learning experience? This question motivates this practice-based research, which explores how the Feldenkrais Method and cognate neuroscience research can be applied to technology design. Supported by somaesthetic philosophy, soma-based design theories, and a critical acknowledgement of the socially-inflected body, the research develops a systematic method grounded in first- and third-person accounts of embodied experience to inform the creation and evaluation of design of Haplós, a wearable, user-customisable, remote-controlled technology that plays methodically composed vibrotactile patterns on the skin in order to facilitate body awareness—the major outcome of this research and a significant contribution to soma-based creative work. The research also contributes to design theory and somatic practice by developing the notion of a somatic learning affordance, which emerged during course of the research and which describes the capacity of a material object to facilitate somatic learning. Two interdisciplinary collaborations involving Haplós contribute to additional fields and disciplines. In partnership with experimental psychologists, Haplós was used in a randomised controlled study that contributes to cognitive psychology by showing that vibrotactile compositions can reduce, with statistical significance, intrusive food-related thoughts. Haplós was also used in Bisensorial, an award-winning, collaboratively developed proof-of-concept of a neuroadaptive vibroacoustic therapeutic device that uses music and vibrotactile stimuli to induce desired mental states. Finally, this research contributes to cognitive science and embodied philosophy by advancing a neuroscientific understanding of vibrotactile somaesthetics, a novel extension of somaesthetic philosophy.