). Enactive interventions can enhance agency, health and social relationships during childhood.

LOZADA, MARIANA; PAOLA D´ADAMO

FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY

FRONTIERS

Año: 2024

1664-1078

Health is a profound, mysterious and complex phenomenon dynamically rooted in theexperience of being alive. According to the enactive approach, life involves autonomousself-organizing processes that underlie the intricate relationship between an organism andits environment. In this way, organisms don’t merely react to external disturbances bydisplaying specific actions in a given situation; instead, they actively regulate the conditionsof their interaction with the environment. Through this active regulation, they bring forth aworld, renewing and sustaining their own constitution (Varela et al., 1991). This approachconsiders that self-organization entails continuous homeodynamic organismic regulationbased on operational closure of the system, from which internal (autonomous) networksemerge (Maturana and Varela, 1991). This perspective emphasizes the significance of agency,understood as the active role played by living beings not only in bringing forth their worldbut also in creating meaning and value through these actions. In other words, agency isnot just a matter of directing one’s body and actions, but also of actively participating inthe construction of one’s own reality. By their actions, organisms directly enact a world ofmeaning (e.g., Di Paolo, 2021).