ABSTRACT
Kinaesthesia is not just a feature of but fundamental to embodied life. This chapter opens up the philosophical and psychological reasoning behind this understanding. The close connection between touch/felt movement and the sense of reality is central to the argument. The discussion also draws in Kleinian psychoanalysis and object relations approaches to the earliest moments of birth. Reality, however it is thought about, is, after all, a matter of birth and death. In the light of experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, the chapter then uses knowledge of kinaesthesia to explore the difference between offline and online contact, that is, between felt movement involving bodily presence and movement that is only visible.
