Questions in Mind to Investigate the Experiences

How to provoke experiences, observe them, emphasize certain aspects, and which questions to keep in mind

Choose a perceptual, cognitive, or affective experience that you can deliberately provoke in a relatively controllable situation.


For example, a thought (recollection or projection of a situation) that evokes a specific emotion, a perceptual experience such as an optical illusion, or playing a game at a difficulty level above your usual comfort zone—potentially triggering emotions like anger, frustration, or anxiety.


Instead of simply being carried away by the experience, allow yourself to closely follow it: observe how it arises, how it transforms, and how it becomes embodied.


Try to catch the exact moment when the experience begins to emerge—perhaps subtly, perhaps abruptly—and track its unfolding moment by moment.


You may try to suppress the emotional expression for a few moments and carefully observe how you do it and what internal pressure arises to express it.


Then, remain still and silent for a few moments, and notice what aspects of the experience are still present, even without any external motor expression.


As a complementary step, as soon as you notice the onset of the experience, you can try to voluntarily undo and redo it, by reproducing the bodily elements that compose it — such as internal posture, muscular tensions, or breathing.


Explore different dimensions of the experience, such as:

Contextual – the situation or condition that fosters its emergence;

Physiological – internal bodily changes;

Expressive – gestures, posture, and micro-expressions;

Motivational – action tendencies or impulses;

Functional – what the experience seems to attempt to achieve;

Behavioral – actions taken or avoided;

Cognitive – associated thoughts and mental imagery;

Experiential – the subjective feel of the experience itself, its first-person quality.


However, keep in mind: the focus of a micro-phenomenological investigation (see here) is on 'how' the experience takes place—that is, on its procedural aspects.


Avoid focusing on the 'what' or the 'why' of the experience, as well as on judgments, interpretations, conceptual explanations, or prior knowledge.


These elements can be brought back later, after the observation and description, as reflective analyses or speculative hypotheses.


During the investigation itself, the challenge is to stay with the experience in its most direct form, before naming or interpreting it.


If such contents do arise at first, treat them as entry points for returning to the lived process itself.


Guiding Questions for the Investigation

1. Experience

What is the experience?

What do I mean when I say that I feel it?

What exactly am I feeling? 

2. Bodily sensations and location

What is the quality of this sensation? Does it have shape, temperature, texture, rhythm, density, weight?

Where in the body do I perceive it? Is it localized or diffuse?

Does it move, pulse, vibrate, contract, expand?

Does any part of the body seem to relax, tense, harden, or shrink?


3. Temporal dynamics

When and where exactly did this experience begin?

Was there a subtle, almost imperceptible threshold marking a transition from a previous state?

How does the experience unfold, moment by moment?

Does it intensify, accumulate, fluctuate, or oscillate?

How does it end, transform, or dissolve?


4. Impulses and expressions

Is there a clear impulse to act in a specific way?

What action seems to "want" to happen? (shouting, fleeing, hitting, running, closing the eyes...)

What happens in the body when I try not to enact this impulse?

How does the internal pressure to express it manifest? Does it grow, pulse, insist?

Where does this pressure seem to originate?


5. Cognitions and imagery

What thoughts arise alongside the experience?

Do they appear before, during, or after the bodily sensations?

Are these thoughts verbal, visual, symbolic, or of another type?

Where in the experiential field do these thoughts seem to emerge—head, throat, chest...?

Do they repeat, speed up, fragment?


6. Affective quality

Is the experience pleasant, unpleasant, or ambiguous?

What is the intensity of what I'm feeling?

Are there subtle or mixed affective tones (e.g., fear with excitement, anger with sadness)?

How does my perception or relationship with the external environment change during the experience?


7. Phenomenological metacognition

How does my attention organize itself when trying to observe the experience?

Do I have difficulty accessing certain aspects? Why?

Does the experience change when I begin to observe it more closely?

Are there moments when I "get lost" in the experience? What is this getting lost like?


Check out these posts to understand the phenomenological approach used in providing these descriptions of experience: 1) What is Phenomenology; 2) Naturalization of Phenomenology; 3) Micro-Phenomenology; 4) Intersubjective Validation; 5) Embodied Cognition; 6) 4E

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