Somatic & Physical Literacy™

Research & Publications

Research & Publications

Somatic & Physical Literacy™ (SPL) is a descriptive discipline of bodily appearance that withholds interpretation, technique, and outcome claims. Its publications map the terrain of appearance-before-use across somatic industry ethics, temporal phenomenology, gravity and fascia, application pressure, and new civic architectures such as The Somatic Commons Initiative™ (SCI).

This page gathers the core research outputs authored and founded by Elise (Chloe) Felder and situates them within the SPL ecosystem.

White Papers: Foundational Series

These white papers establish SPL as a research category, clarify its jurisdiction, and open adjacent lines of inquiry in ethics, temporality, fascia, and civic architecture.

  • Somatic & Physical Literacy™ (SPL): A Conceptual Framework for Accountability, Ethical Restraint, and Descriptive Clarity in the Somatic Industry
    Defines SPL as a non-instrumental, phenomenology-adjacent discipline that describes bodily appearance prior to meaning, method, or outcome. Clarifies how SPL introduces accountability and ethical restraint into a somatic landscape often organized around technique, promise, and intervention, without becoming a modality or therapeutic approach itself.
  • AI-Augmented Cognitive Expression & Governance (AACEG)
    Develops a governance frame for AI-augmented human expression, with special attention to posture, authorship, and the boundary between assistance and overreach. Situates SPL-style descriptive restraint inside human/AI collaboration so that cognitive throughput can increase without collapsing ethical, phenomenological, or jurisdictional limits.
  • Ego, Exodus, and Deliverance: A Phenomenology of the Crossing
    Uses the Exodus crossing motif to describe how bodies bear temporal and ethical transitions without turning those transitions into spiritual or psychological instruction. The crossing appears as a reorganization of time, weight, and availability rather than a story of improvement, allowing deliverance to be treated as phenomenological structure rather than moral achievement.
  • Gravity-Informed Fascial Unwinding
    Describes how fascia, gravity, and timing organize under non-demand conditions without recoding those processes as technique, self-treatment, or manual therapy. “Unwinding” is approached as a gravitational and temporal appearance in tissue—thickening, thinning, turning, and reorganizing—rather than a method for release or correction.
  • RC Posture™: A Discipline of Descriptive Attention and Interpretive Restraint
    Articulates RetroCausal (RC) posture as the governing stance for SPL and related works: description precedes interpretation; opacity is permitted; and no technique is implied. RC posture names how attention can meet bodies, texts, and histories without converting them into instruction, guidance, or outcome claims.
  • The Temporal Phenomenology of Addiction: Sobriety, Fascia, and the Reorganization of Lived Time
    Examines addiction and sobriety as reorganizations of lived time rather than as purely psychological states or moral statuses. Describes how fascia, bearing, and sequence register temporal compression, extension, and re-patterning as sobriety accumulates, without promising transformation or prescribing recovery methods.
  • The Ethics of Recovery: A Phenomenology of Temporal Reorganization
    Extends the temporal account of addiction into an ethics of recovery grounded in time rather than in performance or compliance. Recovery appears as changes in pacing, access, and bearing—how long something takes, what becomes reachable, what ceases to be demanded—rather than as a checklist of outcomes or behaviors.
  • The Demandingness Spiral™: The Ethics of Not Helping
    Analyzes how moral pressure to help, intervene, or care can escalate into a demandingness spiral in which restraint feels unethical and non-action is framed as harm. Traces the moment-level mechanics of leaning forward, assuming access, and entering another’s system without clear authorization, and names refusal to intervene as a distinct ethical posture rather than neglect.
  • The Quiet Body Gap™: A White Paper on Pre-Interpretive Appearance in Somatic & Physical Literacy™
    Names and delineates the Quiet Body Gap™: the low-amplitude, under-described terrain of bodily life that is too subtle for performance metrics and too uninterpretable for many somatic narratives. Describes timing, micro-adjustments, weight distribution, and quiet-body conditions as primary units of literacy, without recruiting them into technique, optimization, or trauma explanation.
  • Recto/Verso Method™: A Temporal Structure for Phenomenological and Cognitive Expression
    Introduces Recto/Verso Method™ as a two-sided rendering of lived moments: recto for narrative sequence, verso for strictly descriptive bodily appearance. The method itself is the gap between pages; it teaches literacy by keeping story and somatic givenness side-by-side without synthesis, technique, or therapeutic promise.
  • The Somatic Commons Initiative™ — Project Repository
    Houses the descriptive documents, frameworks, and experiments associated with The Somatic Commons Initiative™ (SCI). The repository does not designate or certify sites; instead, it gathers language for recognizing civic spaces where showers, laundry, and quiet-body rooms appear as commons conditions rather than as services, outreach, or therapeutic programs.

Textbook Series: Somatic & Physical Literacy™

These volumes form the canonical textbook backbone of SPL as a discipline.

  • Somatic & Physical Literacy™ Volume I: A Descriptive Discipline of Bodily Appearance
    Foundational textbook establishing SPL’s posture, terms, and jurisdiction. Introduces the Quiet Body Gap™, timing, interruption, support histories, and attentional restraint as the core grammar of SPL, and clarifies why SPL is not a modality, technique, or pre-therapeutic assessment layer.
  • Somatic & Physical Literacy™ Volume II: Bodily Time, Gravity, and Field Conditions
    Extends SPL into temporal and gravitational terrains: bodily time as organization rather than narrative; gravitational histories and bearing; saturation and quiet-body conditions; and how fields of appearance organize without becoming metaphors or diagnoses.
  • Somatic & Physical Literacy™ Volume III: Application, Boundaries, and Non-Conversion
    Describes application as an expectation-horizon and field pressure rather than an act, method, or outcome. Clarifies what happens when SPL enters applied environments, how application collapses into technique, and why SPL’s coherence depends on refusing conversion into use while remaining in conversation with applied domains.

Books & Extended Works

  • RetroCausal: A Somatic Witness
    A circular, phenomenological narrative tracing addiction, sobriety, and deliverance through the body’s own record—pressure, timing, jaw, breath—rather than through explanation or doctrine. RetroCausal holds theological motifs, lived sobriety, and somatic detail together without turning them into a program or method of recovery.
  • Recto / Verso
    A book-length implementation of Recto/Verso Method™: each moment appears twice, once as thought-sequence, once as pre-interpretive bodily givenness. The work functions as a practical field of SPL literacy, demonstrating how narrative and appearance diverge without asking the reader to choose between them.
  • Refusal to Intervene: The Ethics of Not Helping
    A long-form exploration of the demandingness spiral, moral pressure, and non-intervention at the level of posture and timing. The text stays with the discomfort of not helping long enough to clarify when entry into another system is actually authorized, and when “care” is reorganizing the other person’s field for the helper’s relief.

Frameworks & Civic Architectures

The Somatic Commons Initiative™ (SCI)

The Somatic Commons Initiative™ (SCI) names a civic category rather than a program, service, or therapeutic model. It describes how public environments can organize so that bodies may come to rest without demand, evaluation, or participation.

SCI does not designate, certify, or operate sites. Instead, it clarifies a form of civic space in which elements such as access to private hygiene, basic bodily maintenance (for example, laundry), and non-demand quiet-body rooms may appear in proximity without being converted into “services,” outreach, or care programs. These elements function as commons conditions: publicly available, minimally structured, and free of roles, outcomes, or expectations.

The Initiative provides descriptive language that distinguishes SCI-like environments from shelters, clinics, therapeutic facilities, or public aid. No designation, endorsement, or affiliation is implied when similar elements emerge in the world. At its core, SCI is a phenomenological clarification: a quiet civic posture in which bodies may restore their baseline through non-demand, privacy, and environmental quiet—before interpretation, before function, and before use.

Access, Citations & Permissions

Most SPL white papers and book manuscripts are being released through open research repositories (for example, OSF and related platforms). As DOIs and stable links are finalized, this page will be updated with direct access to each record.

For citations:
Please cite the specific white paper, textbook volume, or book by title and author (Elise/Chloe Felder) and include the repository link or DOI where available.

For institutional use and licensing:
Institutions, programs, and practitioners who wish to reference SPL, incorporate excerpts into curricula, or build offerings adjacent to SPL should refer to the Institutional Licensing and Licensing & Usage pages and contact SPL directly at contact@sophylit.com to discuss proper jurisdiction, boundaries, and permissions.