How a sensorial practice supports a transformation of interiorised gender representations and power relations ?

Stillness can often carry a complex meaning for the female gendered body. In my experience, being still, quiet or restrained was associated with forms of limitation, passivity or domination. This research explores a different possibility: what happens when stillness becomes a conscious practice, a space of perception of others kinds of movements and transformation?

From a feminist perspective, my research examines both the challenges and the possibilities of stillness. Drawing on qualitative research based on my journals, it explores how specific principles and practices of Full Presence Meditation® contributed to questioning and undoing certain patriarchal gendered representations that had been internalised throughout my life.

At the same time, this work revealed the emergence of new forms of agency: a renewed sense of capacity, stability and embodied power arising through the specific qualities of this meditative stillness.

The research also focuses on the final phase of this introspective process — the phase of resonance — where an unexpected relationship to myself and to the world began to emerge, beyond fixed gender binaries. In a world where gendered constructions have shaped so many of our interactions and relationships, this experience opened a different possibility of relating to oneself and others, permeable rather than fixed.

Ultimately, this research suggests that Full Presence Meditation® may offer a pathway towards reclaiming embodied agency and developing a relationship with the world beyond patriarchal gender dichotomies.

This research was conducted during my studies as a Perceptual Pedagogy Practitioner (Pédagogie Perceptive) and validated by the Cerap.org and Pessoa University, Porto, Portugal in 2024.