52 4 Designing with Blends perceptions and activities in everyday life, such as leaning with one’s back against thewalloranotherperson,perceivingstablestructuresinnature,perceivingslippery or non-skid textures, arranging books on a shelf and so on (Fig. 4.1). We then grasp this structure of BALANCE repeatedly through those experiences, images, andperception.Patternedrecurringrelationsbetweenourselvesandtheenvironment developinto our meaning structures (Johnson 1987). The BALANCE schema is embodied from activities in our perception, bodily experiencethroughthe environment,and physical manipulationof objects. Patterns Expanding Throughvariousexperiencesofthe worldaroundus, we graduallygain and modify the meaning of and sense of force through bodily interactions. For example, we are often frustrated by “external and internal forces such as gravity, light, heat, wind,bodilyprocesses, andthe obtrusion of other physical objects” (Johnson 1987, p. 13). We sometimes successfully overcome the opposing force but often realize own impotence against such forces. We discover that we can exert forces in these repeating failures and successes. We also learn that we can utilize force by using tools, which may be a physical tool and even oral expressions that influence others. We thus develop patterns by interacting forcefully with our environment by movingourbodiesandmanipulatingobjectsasifwearecentresofforce.Wearepart of the environment and sources of force as well. Finally we learn skills from gross motortofinemotorcontrol,suchasusingchopsticks,grabbingacupormovingour bodies through space. In such fine and gross motor activities there are repeatable embodiedpatterns,whichgivecoherent,intelligible,well-regulatedandmeaningful structure to our bodily experience at a pre-conceptual level. Johnson(1987)suggests that: these embodied patterns do not remain private or peculiar to the person who experiences them. Our community helps interpret and codify many of our felt patterns. They become shared cultural modes of experience and help to determine the nature of our meaningful, coherent understanding of our world. (Johnson 1987, p. 14) EmergenceoftheBALANCESchema Babies try to stand, to walk but unsteadily, and sometimes fall to the floor. They repeatedly try and fail until they open a new world of balanced standing posture. With our body, we sense when the balance is right, how to make adjustments and how the patterns of physical movement organize the proper patterns in constant activity. Throughsuchsensualexperiencesofbodilybalance,andoflackofbalance, the meaningofbalanceis generated.We cometo understandthe notion of systemic balance in the pre-conceptual level through our bodily experience. According to Johnson(1987),animageschemasuchasBALANCEisnotanimage,notanobject we can physically touch or see, and not a propositional structure or a conceptual