Close your eyes and ask yourself, 'What do I feel?'

What was your experience? Did you feel the physical presence of your body - its size, its shape? Did you feel any of your body's needs, like hunger or thirst? You probably also had a sense of whether you were feeling healthy or unwell.

All of these sensations are kinds of body feelings, and although many of them are always present, in modern life we don't pay much attention to them. Most of the time they lurk in the background of our consciousness, and we may hardly notice our bodies at all unless we swivel our heads down to look at them.

But our experiences, our thoughts, our minds entire, are dependent upon and shaped by our bodies and what they do. The minds that we have, the experiences we have, are the way they are because of our bodies. What we see and hear, our agonies and ecstasies, how we think, everything we do depends upon our bodies and reflects their form and structure: our feeling of being alive is the feeling of having, controlling and using a physical body.

How are all the bodily feelings produced? What are they telling us and can they be trusted? This book answers these questions and takes you on a tour through your innards and into the deep recesses of the mind, and from there to your conscious thoughts, perceptions and emotions.