1st Edition
Exploring the Concept of Feel for Wellbeing and Performance How We Lost the Felt Experience, Why it Matters, and How to Return to Our Natural Way of Being
This book analyses and unpacks the term Feel by exploring its many definitions and examples in real life. Incorporating psychological theories and case studies, it offers a groundbreaking look into what it means to Feel and its importance in people’s everyday lives.
Experiencing life without Feel has led to many deleterious performance, health, and wellbeing consequences. Exploring the Concept of Feel for Wellbeing and Performance takes a deep dive into the origins and definitions of Feel, asking what has happened to the Feel experience, and what people must do to recoup their Feel. With a highly accessible tone and clear structure, the book provides its readers with effective ways to improve performance and enhance wellbeing. The authors challenge the status quo of both performance science and wellbeing practices and begin a conversation on why people should be more proactive when it comes to their Feel.
Anyone interested in helping themselves or others with performance excellence and wellbeing will benefit from this book, which blends science and practice and provides many examples of people from all walks of life who live with Feel. The book will also be key reading for students and practitioners interested in sport psychology, leadership studies, mental health studies counselling, and life coaching.
1. Feel Everywhere and Nowhere
The challenge of (mis)understanding Feel and the health and wellbeing consequences
2. Feel Lost?
How the felt experience got all mixed up with feelings and emotions
3. Science Goes in a Feel-less Direction
Why and how the scientific method relegated Feel to the backroom of human experience
4. Feel with Interest
Gaining clarity on the felt experience and its connection to freedom, meaning, and energy
5. Marketing Society Likes What You Want
How algorithms and illusions target feelings and distract us from Feel-based living
6. The Elephant Economy
Reconfiguring the Elephant/Rider metaphor as a means to balancing Feel with feelings
7. Touch, Feel, and Like the Damn Marshmallow
From a narrow marketing society view of success to a Feel-based one with interest and meaning
8. Feel With Living
Stories of the felt experience for optimal performance and wellbeing
9. Saving Our Elephants
Stepping off the path, reviving our Feel, and returning to a more natural way of being
Biography
Jay Kimiecik is Associate Professor of Wellbeing in the Department of Kinesiology, Nutrition, and Health, Miami University, USA. His academic research is grounded in positive subjective experience and continually bridges the gap between the art and science of health behavior change. He has consulted with many health organizations and wrote the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) Personal Fitness Program manual, which was used in hundreds of YMCAs in North America.
Doug Newburg was Faculty at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, USA, for 15 years, where he was named to the Academy of Distinguished Medical Educators. He has also interviewed and worked with hundreds of performers and professionals in fields as diverse as sports, health, business, the military, medicine, and education.
