Neurodiversity, simply put, is the diversity among human minds. For 15 years or so after the term was coined, it was common for people to speak of neurodiversity as ‘‘diversity among brains.’’ There still are plenty of people who talk about it that way. I think this is a mistake; it’’s an overly reductionist and essentialist definition that’s decades behind present-day understandings of how human bodyminds work.

Mind is an embodied phenomenon. The mind is encoded in the brain as ever-changing webs of neural connectivity. The brain is part of the body, interconnected with the rest of the body by a vast network of nerves. The activity of the mind and body creates changes in the brain; changes in the brain affect both mind and embodiment. Mind, brain, and embodiment are intricately entwined in a single complex system. We’re not minds riding around in bodies, we’re bodyminds.

A lot of people hear neuro and they think, brain. But the prefix neuro doesn’t mean brain, it means nerve. The neuro in neurodiversity is most usefully understood as a convenient shorthand for the functionality of the whole bodymind and the way the nervous system weaves together cognition and embodiment. So neurodiversity refers to the diversity among minds, or among bodyminds.

In terms of scholarship, discourse, and praxis, there are two basic ways to approach the biopsychosocial phenomenon of neurodiversity. Sometime around 2010, I started referring to these two approaches as the pathology paradigm and the neurodiversity paradigm.

Toward a Neuroqueer Future: An Interview with Nick Walker | Autism in Adulthood

So much of my perception of my autistic self is embodied.

As indicated by the title, the first essential term for this book is bodymind. Bodymind is a materialist feminist disability studies concept from Margaret Price that refers to the enmeshment of the mind and body, which are typically understood as interacting and connected, yet distinct entities due to the Cartesian dualism of Western philosophy (“The Bodymind Problem and the Possibilities of Pain” 270). The term bodymind insists on the inextricability of mind and body and highlights how processes within our being impact one another in such a way that the notion of a physical versus mental process is difficult, if not impossible to clearly discern in most cases (269). Price argues that bodymind cannot be simply a rhetorical stand-in for the phrase “mind and body”; rather, it must do theoretical work as a disability studies term. Bodymind is an essential concept in chapter 3 in my discussion of hyperempathy, a nonrealist disability that is both mental and physical in origin and manifestation. Bodymind generally, however, is an important and theoretically useful term to use in analyzing speculative fiction as the nonrealist possibilities of human and nonhuman subjects, such as the werewolves discussed in chapter 4, often highlight the imbrication of mind and body, sometimes in extreme or explicitly apparent ways that do not exist in our reality.

In addition to the utility of the term bodymind in discussions of speculative fiction, I also use this term because of its theoretical utility in discussions of race and (dis)ability. For example, bodymind is particularly useful in discussing the toll racism takes on people of color. As more research reveals the ways experiences and histories of oppression impact us mentally, physically, and even on a cellular level, the term bodymind can help highlight the relationship of nonphysical experiences of oppression—psychic stress—and overall well-being. While this research is emergent, people of color and women have long challenged their association with pure embodiment and the degradation of the body as unable to produce knowledge through a rejection of the mind/body divide. Bodymind provides, therefore, a politically and theoretically useful term in discussing (dis)ability in black women’s speculative fiction and more.

Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction – Dr. Sami Schalk

Nothing in this culture wants us to have rest. Wants us to have ease. Wants us to have care. The softness was stolen. Our dreamspace has been stolen. Our space to just be has been stolen.

Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry.

Q: How does your training in somatics (both as a therapeutic orientation and your aikido background) factor into your work in the Neurodiversity Movement?

I see cognitive liberty as a core value of the Neurodiversity Movement.

The term cognitive liberty was coined by Wrye Sententia and Richard Glen Boire, the founders of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics. Cognitive liberty as an ethical value boils down to the idea that individuals have the right to absolute sovereignty over their own brains and their own cognitive processes. Advocates of cognitive liberty often break this idea down into two fundamental guiding ethical principles (originally inspired by the two “commandments” offered by Timothy Leary in The Politics of Ecstasy):

1. Individuals have the right to not have their brains and cognitive processes tampered with non-consensually.
2. Individuals have the right to tamper with their own brains and cognitive processes, or to voluntarily have them tampered with, in any way they choose.

Those of us who are deeply involved in transformative somatic practices or in the field of Somatic Psychology understand that the psyche is somatically organized, which means that each individual’s distinctive neurocognitive processes are intimately entwined with that individual’s style of movement and embodiment. Changes in movement and embodiment create changes in cognition.

This means that to tamper with a person’s unique individual style of movement and embodiment (for instance, through the behaviorist techniques that are frequently used to make autistic children suppress the outward signs of autism) is to tamper with that person’s cognition, and thus to violate their cognitive liberty.

In other words, freedom of embodiment—that is, the freedom to indulge, adopt, and/or experiment with any styles or quirks of movement and embodiment, whether they come naturally to one or whether one chooses them—is an essential element of cognitive liberty, and thus an essential area of focus for the Neurodiversity Movement. The freedom to be autistic necessarily includes the freedom to give bodily expression to one’s neurodivergence.

Walker, Nick. Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities (pp. 142-143). Autonomous Press.

For somatically-oriented psychotherapists, one important implication of all this is that autistic clients will often have acquired habitual unconscious tensions (what Wilhelm Reich referred to as character armor) that prevent them from giving full expression to the movement style that is natural and optimal for them. These tensions will tend to be especially severe and deep-rooted in clients who, in childhood, were frequently shamed or otherwise abused for their physical expressions of neurodivergence, or who were subjected to behaviorist “therapies” or other forms of coerced physical conformity.

An integration of the neurodiversity paradigm into the field of Somatic Psychology would include the recognition of these habitual tensions as somatic manifestations of internalized oppression. And it seems to me that somatically-oriented psychotherapists, once they have embraced the neurodiversity paradigm, are uniquely qualified to assist autistic clients in the task of liberating themselves from the bonds of such tensions, and thus recovering their capacity for giving full expression to their unique potentials.

Walker, Nick. Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities (p. 143). Autonomous Press..

Sensing and labeling our internal sensations allows them to function more efficiently as our somatic rudder, steering a nimble course through the many decisions of our days. But does the body really have anything to contribute to our thinking—to processes we usually regard as taking place solely in our heads? It does. In fact, recent research suggests a rather astonishing possibility: the body can be more rational than the brain.

Paul, Annie Murphy. The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain (p. 29). HarperCollins.

What we discovered was that these regions are visceral somatomotor cortex, they are the feeling and regulation of the state of your guts and viscera. When people experience deep emotionally engaged thinking about complex issues, they are literally playing out that thinking process, our data would suggest and now many other sources of data would suggest, on the substrate of the cortisone cortical regions that literally also are feeling your guts.

Poets have had it right all along.

Keynote: Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang | Solving the Frankenstein Problem – YouTube

“Nonconscious information acquisition,” as Lewicki calls it, along with the ensuing application of such information, is happening in our lives all the time. As we navigate a new situation, we’re scrolling through our mental archive of stored patterns from the past, checking for ones that apply to our current circumstances. We’re not aware that these searches are under way; as Lewicki observes, “The human cognitive system is not equipped to handle such tasks on the consciously controlled level.” He adds, “Our conscious thinking needs to rely on notes and flowcharts and lists of ‘if-then’ statements—or on computers—to do the same job which our non-consciously operating processing algorithms can do without external help, and instantly.”

But—if our knowledge of these patterns is not conscious, how then can we make use of it? The answer is that, when a potentially relevant pattern is detected, it’s our interoceptive faculty that tips us off: with a shiver or a sigh, a quickening of the breath or a tensing of the muscles. The body is rung like a bell to alert us to this useful and otherwise inaccessible information. Though we typically think of the brain as telling the body what to do, just as much does the body guide the brain with an array of subtle nudges and prods. (One psychologist has called this guide our “somatic rudder.”) Researchers have even captured the body in mid-nudge, as it alerts its inhabitant to the appearance of a pattern that she may not have known she was looking for.

Paul, Annie Murphy. The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain (p. 25). HarperCollins.

This is Solarpunk. Finding the appropriate technologies to build aesthetically stimulating and liveable dwellings that tie us tightly with the landscape.

How We Can Build A Solarpunk Future Right Now (ft. @Andrewism) – YouTube

Solarpunk is a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question “what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?” The aesthetics of solarpunk merge the practical with the beautiful, the well-designed with the green and wild, the bright and colorful with the earthy and solid. Solarpunk can be utopian, just optimistic, or concerned with the struggles en route to a better world — but never dystopian. As our world roils with calamity, we need solutions, not warnings. Solutions to live comfortably without fossil fuels, to equitably manage scarcity and share abundance, to be kinder to each other and to the planet we share. At once a vision of the future, a thoughtful provocation, and an achievable lifestyle.

SOLARPUNK : A REFERENCE GUIDE. The below was compiled by… | by Jay Springett | Solarpunks | Medium

But what if we imagined something different? What if we imagined worlds where nature, humanity, and technology not only coexist, but thrive together. Worlds that are rich with the greens and blues of abundance. Utopias? Maybe, but certainly utopias worth striving for.

This is what Solarpunk is all about. A burgeoning genre of art and a movement that casts off the dystopian, technology-heavy futurism of cyberpunk and instead tries to build a world wherein people not only live well, but also live well with the natural world.

Solarpunk is an exercise in imagination, but it is also a call to action. There are very real Solarpunk solutions that already exist or are currently feasible that can start to bring about a Solarpunk future today. And today, we’ll look at the viability of some of these solutions and answer the question: how can we build a Solarpunk world right now?

Solarpunk is high and low tech: Before we dive into the promising tools that might aid our quest for a Solarpunk world, we first need to understand the role of technology in the Solarpunk community. As we will soon see, technology doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

How We Can Build A Solarpunk Future Right Now (ft. @Andrewism) – YouTube

For those out of the loop, solarpunk is on a bit of a spectrum, from pure aesthetic hopeful imagining to actually building our collective futures here and now.

Solarpunk aims to look beyond the limitations of capitalism and beyond the rift between humanity and nature. Most importantly, it’s a project and vision of liberation that we co-create for our unique local conditions, ecosystems, and needs, as we work towards a better society.

Solarpunk isn’t something to be imposed from above, through capitalist ventures or state projects. It’s grassroots, and must incorporate the voices, experiences, and inputs of a wide range of people.

How We Can Build A Solarpunk Future (ft. @OurChangingClimate) – YouTube

And in the late 2000s, the concept of “solarpunk” emerged. YouTube channel Our Changing Climate with Andrewism published an overview of Solarpunk: “Ultimately Solarpunk envisions a world that might be slower, but more intentional. One that ties humanity closely to the natural world.” As Andrewism put in the replies: “A future with a human face and dirt behind its ears.”

But if solarpunk is the future with humanity put back in, achieving it means taking control of that future from economic, social, & political forces that seem to be on autopilot to self-destruction, utterly divorced from human desires & human intervention. One path we’ve imagined already, and its grimy survivalist individualism was the defining feature of Reagan-era science fiction classics. However, in its radical reimagination of economic & social structures, solarpunk resists the nihilism & doomerism of the grim dehumanized technological dystopias that dominate the worlds of Blade Runner, Robocop, & William Gibson’s Neuromancer. 

Do we have the willingness to challenge the predominant social, economic, & political structures & systems that need to be challenged? To change the very nature of humanity’s relationship to the planet? What role does education play in all of this? 

Fighting Back Against the Future | Human Restoration Project | Nick Covington Chris McNutt

Solarpunk is a lot of things. Its definitions are still growing, but at its heart, is always about one thing: a vision of a possible future where humanity nature and technology live in harmony beyond the human centric.

Solarpunk worlds are a green, sustainable, and socially just for everyone.

How Solarpunk Fiction Envisions a Better Tomorrow | Video Essay – YouTube

Solarpunk gives us the permission to imagine differently; to resist Giroux’s “dead zone of imagination.”

Imagining a better future isn’t naivety, it’s essential for a thriving world

We must preserve in the face of everything a positive outlook toward organizing surviving, and building anew or risk becoming stagnant.

Individual actions snowball and propagate through systems, and each act of service, each pushback, each classroom decision can fundamentally build a better future.

It’s up to us to make that tomorrow a reality.

Fighting Back Against the Future: Imagining a Solarpunk Education – YouTube

I would call our work to change the world “science fictional behavior”—being concerned with the way our actions and beliefs now, today, will shape the future, tomorrow, the next generations.

We are excited by what we can create, we believe it is possible to create the next world.

We believe.

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds