CONCEPT
The Body Under Siege
The gradual suppression of bodily knowing during AI-augmented work — the small compressions by which somatic signals are overridden until the felt sense falls silent and the builder cannot tell productive flow from compulsive grinding.
Something happens to the builder's body during a long session with AI tools. Not all at once. Gradually, in increments too small to notice in real time, observable only in retrospect. The process begins with engagement — a rhythm establishes itself, prompt and response and adjustment and elaboration, faster than any human conversation. The momentum feels good. An hour passes. The builder has not moved. The body's hunger signal was sent forty minutes ago, processed briefly as minor inconvenience, and overridden by momentum. This dismissal is so culturally normalized it barely registers. But in Gendlin's framework, it is not trivial. It is the suppression of the body's participation in thinking — the marginalization of the felt sense channel that the cognitive channel has monopolized. Two hours in, the somatic checking that once paused before accepting each articulation has shortened. The body has dimmed.
In The You On AI Field Guide
This is the phenomenon the Berkeley