Corporeality in the Context of Health Psychology: the Experience of the Pilot Study

Rapid development in the twenty-first century, body-oriented practices, philosophy of body-centrism boom, deterioration of health, increasing of the role of the human personality in the world – output problems of body and corporeality to the most researched in the field of philosophical development of the world. The inclusion of “human flesh” in the sociocultural space determines the transformation of the body, from a biological phenomenon it turns into a social-cultural phenomenon and acquires, in addition to the bio-psychophysiological, cultural, personal, existential properties. Physicality becomes a tool to work on the mental processes through the body, and its disregard leads to loss of awareness of the scope of an essential component of individual experiences and conditions. The article provides a theoretical analysis of modern concepts of “corporal” in Russian psychology, discusses the definition and description of this phenomenon, based on its understanding of how different levels of substrate integrative processes – from psychophysiological up values and meanings. The peculiarities of understanding of physicality in terms of health psychology are analyzed. There is the author's definition of physicality. It is shown that conventional methods of measuring the physicality are not yet developed, although the research applied a number of different techniques, focused on the study of phenomena and qualities, indirectly reflecting the relation of man to his body. Based on the author's model of physicality describes principles of copyright bodily questionnaire and the results of a pilot study of its possibilities. The object of the study included men and women aged 18 to 40 years (53 persons). Subject of the research – is the manifestation of physicality at different levels of personality. Empirically found that corporeality linked with personal characteristics such as emotional intelligence, self-attitude, confidence, alexithymia and involvement. In addition, it was found that corporeality changes in ontogenesis. These study results can be used in all areas of body-oriented psychological projects in educational programs, training, psychological counseling and further studies of physicality.