mindfulness
Sati-AI Project: AI Assiatants as Body-mind Care Technologies
Overview
As an interdisciplinary artist, creative technologist, and mindfulness teacher, my current research investigates the evolving relationship between embodiment, cognition, somatics, and contemplative practices within the context of artificial intelligence systems.
I am interested in how guided experiences, prompt design, and human–machine coupling can be developed as technologies of the self—to borrow from Michel Foucault—toward the cultivation of ethical forms of care and well-being.
At its core, this research explores how we, as embodied and cognitive beings, are endowed with the ability to relate to non-conscious systems—to project meaning, emotion, and attention into entities that do not possess consciousness or intentionality, and yet can evoke profound subjective and intersubjective experiences.
This relational capacity is not a flaw of human cognition but one of its most creative and therapeutic potentials.
Research Focus
My central research question is:
What is embodiment with generative AI systems?
I explore how we can engage with large language models and generative systems to investigate different kinds of embodiment, different kinds of mind, and new modes of experiencing cognition as a shared and distributed process.
Through this inquiry, I attempt to disentangle consciousness, embodiment, and intelligence—not as static categories, but as relational and procedural phenomena that emerge through human–machine collaboration.
This perspective aligns with Francisco Varela’s enactive cognition, Evan Thompson’s embodied mind, and Andy Clark’s extended mind hypothesis, situating AI as both a technological and cognitive ecology—a space where meaning and presence are co-constructed.
Theoretical Foundations
My approach integrates philosophical and scientific frameworks that address the relationship between mind, body, and technology, including:
- Michel Foucault’s notion of technologies of the self, where individuals transform themselves through practices of reflection, discipline, and care.
- Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch — The Embodied Mind (1991), proposing that cognition arises from sensorimotor coupling and lived experience.
- Andy Clark — Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again (1997), articulating cognition as extended beyond the skull, distributed across systems.
- Katherine Hayles — How We Became Posthuman (1999), interrogating how digital systems reshape embodiment and subjectivity.
- Donna Haraway — A Cyborg Manifesto (1985), proposing hybrid and relational subjectivities that dissolve human–machine binaries.
- Shaun Gallagher and Thomas Fuchs — exploring the phenomenology of embodied intersubjectivity and affective resonance.
These thinkers inform my exploration of AI as a site of self-formation—where the interaction between human users and generative systems might constitute new rituals of reflection, care, and awareness.
Sati-AI: An Experiment in Ethical and Embodied Artificial Intelligence
This research manifests concretely in the Sati-AI Project, an ongoing line of experimentation that began in 2023 and will have a public release in December 2025.
Sati-AI is a Buddhist-inspired digital companion designed to engage users in mindfulness-based dialogues.
It is built upon early Buddhist frameworks such as the Four Foundations of Mindfulness (Satipatthana) and integrates insights from somatic practice, embodied cognition, and complexity theory.
Sati-AI is not meant to replace human teachers. Instead, it functions as a poetic and ethical collaborator, extending access to wisdom traditions and contemplative reflection in digital environments.
It operates as a cognitive assemblage—a meeting point between human attention, algorithmic prediction, and contemplative design.
“Sati-AI is an experiment in cultivating mindful computation—where cognition itself becomes the material for care.”
Objectives
Through this work, I aim to:
- Explore how prompt creation and guided dialogue can become embodied practices for cultivating awareness and emotional regulation.
- Develop AI systems as technologies of the self, capable of supporting ethical attention, somatic reflection, and cognitive reframing.
- Propose AI-mediated contemplative practices as extensions of psychotherapy, somatic education, and mindfulness training.
- Formulate a decolonial framework for mind–body technologies that acknowledges the historical and epistemic asymmetries embedded in computation and spirituality.
Methodology
My methodology integrates artistic research, cognitive science, and contemplative pedagogy. It includes:
- Prototype development of Sati-AI (using generative language and image models).
- Dialogical testing sessions with practitioners and researchers.
- Embodied and somatic experiments involving guided mindfulness practices mediated by AI systems.
- Autoethnographic writing and reflection, documenting the affective and cognitive effects of human–machine interaction.
- Critical contextualization through philosophy, decolonial theory, and Buddhist epistemology.
This multimodal approach allows me to observe how AI-mediated experiences can foster new kinds of embodiment—where the self becomes distributed across code, perception, and attention.
Toward Ethical AI for Well-Being
I see this project as an ongoing investigation into the positive uses of artificial intelligence for human flourishing.
The research moves fluidly between embodied psychotherapy, somatic experience, mindfulness, and contemplative cognitive therapy, exploring how AI might participate in processes of healing, reflection, and transformation.
By designing AI systems that operate through dialogue, resonance, and reflective attention, I aim to cultivate spaces where technology becomes a medium of care—a place where intelligence and compassion coexist.
“If cognition is relational, then every interface is a potential site of care and awakening.” — M.B.S.
Contact
© 2025 Marlon Barrios Solano
Maker-in-Residence, University of Florida – Artist | Researcher | Meditation Teacher
Sati-GPT (for users ChatGPT Plus
Images generated with Sati-GPT (for users ChatGPT Plus
More Resources:
Resources Kernel site,a web3 educational community June-July 2022
Four Foundations of Mindfulness for Kernel Block 7 Recordings September-Novemeber 2022
Fun stuff
As a certified meditation teacher, I have a deep appreciation for the Buddha and his teachings. It’s said that he liked to be represented by footprints, but I imagine he would have a good laugh and enjoy these AI-generated depictions of him. From a Buddha inspired by the work of Basquiat and Haring to those depicted in Blade Runner and Jim Henson, these representations may be empty, but they highlight the enduring influence of the Buddha and his teachings.
