The Embodied Dimension of Imagination. Expanding the Loop Model.

While the sociocultural embeddedness of imagination received the researchers' attention over the last years, less research was dedicated to the embodied dimension of imaginary processes. Nevertheless, any person engaged in imagination is always also a body. Moreover, there is no clear limit between imagination in thought, and in exploratory external actions. The aim of the present paper is to contribute to the theorization of the embodied dimension of imagination, by drawing on Zittoun, Cerchia and Gillespie's imaginary loop model. We discuss the notion of here-and-now reality entailed in this model with the help of Schuetz' notion of provinces of meaning and argue that this definition of the here-and-now allows to use the loop model for the analysis of activities in which the body movements occupy a central place. This argument is sustained by the example of an analysis of aikido practice. This analysis leads us to propose to complete the imaginary loop model with a forth dimension representing the degree of embodiment.