This paper investigates the primacy of the corporal in understanding immersive environments. Writing from the perspective of an installation artist who takes this conceit as one of the founding principles of her work, which is predicated on developing immersive installations that are designed to be understood primarily through the somatic perceptual systems (e.g. www.sensedigital.co.uk/SG1.htm). the aim of the paper is to explore the notion that such installations can serve to enhance, or heighten corporal literacy. The installation iSensuous Geographies, created with Alistair MacDonald in 2003, is used to exemplify this practice. In this paper the terms ‘literacy’ and ‘literate’ are used in an extended sense, frequently transposing their original meanings (which pertain to the written word) into meanings which refer to those understandings we glean through our senses. Just as in the visual arts the term visually literate is used to refer to the ability to make fine discriminations in the detail, texture and structures of visual phenomena, and in music the term aurally literate refers to a highly refined ability to identify the detail, texture and structure of sound, the term corporal literacy is used to refer to the ability to discriminate equally subtle details of the structurings and textures of corporal sensation that emanate from the somatic perceptual system during interaction with the environment.