The purpose of this paper is to outline the structure of the Study of Embodied Culture so that it may be established as an independent field of the academia. The current problems concerning embodied activity in our everyday living have not been clearly situated in the academic discussion. I would like to propose that these problems should be reviewed from the standpoint of human existence as a bipedal locomotion being, considering its origin and development of our embodied culture based on it over four million years. In this paper, I would develop the perspectives of studying methodology to outline the Study of Embodied Culture by incorporating the following five elements, Yuasa's indications, inside-river logic, outside-river logic, original culture and embodiment. It is my sincere hope that this paper offers a good start point for the academic discussion on these problems, and we can eventually lay the firm foundation of the Study of Embodied Culture.

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The spiritual practice that produces incredibly intense heat has been known since the time of Rigveda in India. Related with this spiritual tradition was formed the Buddhist tantric theory of the subtle body, whose culmination can be found in the "Profound Inner Meaning" written by Karma Rangjung Dorje in Tibet during the 14^<th> century. The theory of subtle body, as is found in this text, has a striking similarity with the most recent findings of neuroscience, and specially those of the new paradigm which emerged from the contemplative neuroscience of the 21^<st> century, which I would call the "Neuroscience of Self-transformation". Further study of and dialogue on the phenomena that occurs at the time of death among the tantric practitioners, called "thugs dam", may lead to a breakthrough within the two traditions, that is, Tibetan Buddhism and neuroscience.

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The purpose of this paper is to construct a framework for consideration about the concept of the body in the educational studies. If our body have inhabited in the world before our conscious come to work, as the Phenomenological studies investigate, modern educational studies can be released from closed view of "Cogito," which claims that the subject is separated from the body and it unilaterally controls the body. The body has rich experiences, that is, the body is "opened" to the world. In order to get a perspective about the "opened body," I make a consideration into two persons of Martial Arts, Jigoro KANO and Morihei UESHIBA. They were persons who lived in modern-constructed era in 20^<th> Japan, practiced old bodily performance, JUDO or AIKIDO, and they also casted their experiences into the words. Between their activities or performances and their thoughts or words, we may be able to find a wisdom, which enables us to fix mind-body dualism, or theory-practice dualism. It seems to us that the comprehension of the body in KANO is "the body as object," and the one in UESHIBA is "the body as subject." These two views of the bodies will be two typical frameworks in investigations to the body in educational studies. Between these two poles, the body "opened to the world" or "inhabited in the world" will emerge vividly.

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The author, working as a midwife, has seen many mysterious phenomena pertaining to natural childbirth. According to Shinto, a native religion in Japan, "Musubi" is a god involved in creating life. This paper presents ten cases of mystical experiences of childbirth the author has witnessed, and examines the power of Musubi in childbirth in view of the Musubi theory of Hirata Atsutane, a Japanese classical and theological scholar in the late Edo period. In all these cases mothers found a relationship between the birth of their children and the death of their family or of their relatives. According to Hirata's ideas of death and reincarnation, the soul of the dead as well as that of the baby to be born are watching his or her family on the earth from their world beyond. This is testified in this paper. Testified also is the existence of strong links among the souls of the dead, of the coming baby and of their family or relatives. Therefore, the author believes that the function of Musubi in childbirth is to link souls, and a new life created through linking of souls is the incarnation of Musubi himself, who links other souls in turn. By recognizing the importance of this soul linking, we come to the understanding that we are able only to live through our relationship with other people. This realization leads us to find the meaning of living.

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Embodied knowledge is a type of knowledge in which the body knows how to act (e.g., how to touch type, how to ride a bicycle, etc.). One of the important features of embodied knowledge is that the body knows how to act in a given situation; that is, the body, not the mind, is the knowing subject and the procedures for the performance are embodied. To investigate the process of embodiment and to clarify the steps of how the body becomes the knowing subject, we conducted a learning experiment on ball juggling. In this experiment, volunteer participants (n=8; 5 men and 3 women) with no prior juggling experience were encouraged to learn the three-ball cascade juggling over four weeks. We examined how the participants acquired the juggling skill, from the first person, subjective perspective, as well as from the third person, objective one. Only three participants attained the learning goal of catching the ball more than an average of 100 times, but we observed notable changes common for all the participants, in the ball trajectories, upper limb movements, and the postures. Moreover, through qualitative analysis of interviews with them, we found three general techniques used for cascade juggling; (1) finding the spatial point for focusing the eyes, (2) refraining from thinking during the action, and (3) getting into the rhythm of movements. Based on these results, we reached a conclusion that discontinuous changes occur through the process of learning motor skills. There is a moment of emergence at which the body schema gets transformed and several body parts start to coordinate differently from before. This moment is experienced as an occasional correspondence between intention and action, or, as Merleau-Ponty pointed out, 'the motor grasping of a motor significance'. It is suggested that this is the process by which the body becomes the knowing subject.

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The aim of this study is to reveal the usage of Saliva ORP (Oxidation Reduction Potential) as a method for objective assessment in acupuncture practice. We investigated the relationship between the diurnal and monthly variation of Saliva ORP and subjective assessment. In diurnal variation, the Saliva ORP levels were maintained at the subjects' resting state. In contrast, Saliva ORP had a tendency to increase on-duty and was recovered by sleeping. The subjects that were sleep deprived revealed the same high levels of Saliva ORP as the night before. In a monthly variation, students' Saliva ORP levels that were having many exams had a tendency to increase along the time while in student subjects with fewer exams the levels only increased at the exam time. There was no significant correlation between Saliva ORP and subjective assessment. However, these results suggest Saliva ORP measurement as a good method to objectively evaluate the state of physical and mental health.

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