Judith Beth Cohen, Ph.D. Lesley University.
A recent conundrum led me to bring the principles of body/ mind integration learned from my yoga practice into my classroom teaching. Half-way through an all day graduate seminar in Interdisciplinary Perspectives, I noticed many students sprawled on the floor in various postures. Though the syllabus didn’t ask for it, their body language cried out for movement. Outside of academia, I’d become a serious student of yoga, yet in class I behaved as if we were no more than talking heads. After nearly a lifetime as a fairly sedentary academic, around age fifty, I developed a craving for regular physical activity. Skeptical of New Age fads, I was initially reluctant to join the yoga craze, but after months of taking regular classes, I was hooked. Yoga’s relative absence of ideological rhetoric, along with its rigorous combination of breath-work, strength and flexibility training had a powerful effect on me. It helped me to demolish a host of internalized assumptions about my aging female body; it increased my energy level, deepened my concentration, and sharpened my mental acuity. In a strange reversal of time, I became physically stronger and more flexible at sixty than I ‘d been in my youth. Why then, did I continue to operate like a Cartesian dualist in the classroom, disregarding my students’ corporeal selves? If I’m serious about mind/body integration, why not infuse these beliefs into my pedagogy? This dilemma lead me to further explore the role of the body in development and learning.
The greatest obstacle we face in the classroom may well be student’s learned passivity, the result of years spent watching television, or sitting inactively in school. When their bodies are not engaged, many of them tune out or turn off. Inspired by the students who practice dance, yoga and martial arts, I now incorporate some yoga-based mind/body principles into my teaching practices. Asking students to become aware of their breath, to squat after sitting, or stand balanced on one leg, brings their wandering thoughts back to the present. Even simple movements done sitting in a chair can use the breath to enliven the body. Yoga offers an antidote for our high tech culture which constantly offers us distracting stimulation. In this essay I hope to provoke thought rather than offer a list of lesson plans, but I believe that engaging the body actively in learning can have many positive effects. Beyond the obvious benefits of harnessing attention, and relieving stress, such activities promote the kinesthetic, somatic and cognitive integration thatmore accurately reflects the way our brains operate. (Damasio ).
Yoga philosophy has much in common with the progressive educational theories that have
influenced my pedagogy. Yoga’s roots go back 2000 years in India and can be found in Hindu, Buddhist and Jainist traditions (Feuerstein, 1999, Yoga, 2). The Sanskrit word yoga, “to yoke” encompasses both the disciplined, strenuous physical practice, and the spiritual concept of union or wholeness (Feuerstein, 1999, Yoga, p. 2). Hatha-Yoga, one of seven branches, uses the body as a route to liberation from limited self-conceptions (Feuerstein, 1999, Ten, p.1). Ha or sun and Tha or moon are images that represent a balance between the opposite poles of day and night, light and dark. Improved balance as well as greater physical strength and flexibility results from this combination of breath work, physical postures and meditation. Eventually these qualities become embodied at an unconscious level and begin to infuse one’s life. As I maintain a tree pose, standing on one leg with my arms outspread, I am enacting both balance and stability. Strength acquired through repeating these poses or asanas, decreases my sense of vulnerability and gives me a greater ability to focus and concentrate. Indeed, joint flexibility becomes more than a physical attribute when it is transformed into a living metaphor for accepting change and tolerating ambiguity, thus expanding one’s ability to deal with complex personal, social and academic issues. Yoga, like Buddhism, teaches that agonizing over one’s appearance, possessions, or relationships only causes suffering, for we cannot control these aspects of our lives. Currently, practices based upon eastern systems like Yoga, Tai Chuan and the martial arts have become increasingly popular in North America, perhaps because schools have neglected the body. A European-based tradition of bodywork going back to the mid-nineteenth century is not as well known. Work with those trained by such innovators as Elsa Gindler, F.M Alexander and Moshe Feldenkrais., is usually sought out by dancers, musicians and people with injuries. ( xvi. D. Johnson).
Though John Dewey may not have been thinking of yoga when he urged educators to make experience central to education, as early as 1898 he argued against the dualistic notion that thought and action, or theory and practice, could be separated and challenged the prevailing belief that theorizing was superior to acting. Dewey envisioned the university as bridge between the mind and the material world (Cite Hein). Jack Mezirow’s Transformative Learning Theory, especially influential in adult pedagogy, argues that education should lead students away from their old habits of mind and outmoded assumptions to a wider array of life choices (Mezirow). Like these progressive pedagogies, Yoga ultimately seeks human liberation. Compare scholar George Feuerstein’s description of yoga as “a gradual process of replacing our conscious patterns of thought and behavior with new, more benign patterns that are expressive of the higher powers and virtues of self-realization,” (Feuerstein, 1999, Ten Fundamental Principles, 3) to Mezirow’s goals of getting students to reflect upon and critically analyzing their experience, as well as become aware of “ the underlying premises that inform” their thinking (Ettling, 1)(Mezirow, 2000). Mezirow’s work builds upon Dewey, who refused to divorce education from direct experience. Like progressive education, yoga promotes major life changes through a continuum of theory and practice. Such liberatory or transformational approaches may carry implications that go beyond the cognitive realm, but one need not be a supernatural seeker to benefit from yoga. In its non-theistic forms, yoga envisions liberation taking place in ordinary life, with no ascetic behavior required (Feuerstein, Ten,1999).
Feminist theorists likewise emphasize self knowledge as a path toward liberation.
Developmentalists like Belenky et al stress the relational aspects of epistemology, a factor often overlooked in studies based upon male reasoning. The women they interviewed construct knowledge by making connections between personal experiences and new learning ( Belenky et al). Feminists point out that cultural attitudes about women’s bodies inscribed on our psyches and our institutions limit our possibilities, and often produce pathologies from anorexia nervosa to self-harm. Philosopher Susan Bordo critiques both post-modernist and feminist thinkers who dismiss the body as simply another text. She points out the danger of denying the materiality of human experiences. In fact, her own experience of being overlooked for an academic position “because she moved her body too much during the interview” (284) reveals the prejudice against calling any attention to one’s body in an academic setting. Furthermore, historical events like the Warsaw ghetto uprising or the more recent reality of suicide bombers remind us that we cannot take the body out of human history.
Many educators, including Mezirow, Tremmel, and Schon identify “reflection, sometimes called “critical reflection, ”as central to significant learning. In our rush for “coverage” we often deprive students of the time to look back at and make meaning of their studies. Just yesterday a colleague was asked by the Department Chair to add two more books to the syllabus of an already packed freshman survey course. The only reason given was the reading requirements had to be consistent across sections. Clearly, asking students to reflect upon their reading is not a high value in this department. Yet Donald Schon argues that it’s possible to be both thoughtful and active at the same time (Schon, 1983). He defines reflection as “knowing-in-action” (1987 , 72 ). When applied to pedagogy, a teacher enacts three functions simultaneously; she pays attention to external reality while also accessing her intuitive responses, and examining various alternative ways of proceeding. Learning to reflect in a moment of action, especially during difficult times, such as a challenge directed at you or a hostile exchange between students, allows you to construct a creative response rather than applying an old repertoire. Like Dewey, who called for the melding of theory and practice, Schon sees the teacher as a researcher whose laboratory is her classroom, just as the yoga practitioner uses her body as her research site.
Building upon Schon’s work, Robert Tremmel cautions us that reflection involves more than thinking about something for it requires a stillness of mind and body usually absent in
traditional academic discourse ( Tremmel, 1993, p. 442). He argues that genuine reflection must be cultivated and we can learn much about this from eastern teachings like Zen Buddhism (Tremmel, 1993). Buddhism defines Mindfulness as “intentional, non-judgmental awareness of what is taking place in the present moment” ( Thich Nhat Hanh 1987).(N.Waring course syllabus (May, 2005). Its aims to help one let go of distracting thoughts in order to free the mind to experience what is. Ideally, this leads one to insights unsullied by distracting needs or worries.( D. Ettling, 2003,). Using Mindfulness training as a basis, Jon Kabat-Zinn started the Mindfulness-Based Stress reduction program (MBSR) at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center for patients dealing with chronic pain and life threatening diseases ( Kabat-Zinn, 1996). This program has spawned two hundred others as well as many research projects, some of which apply this practice to education ( Waring, 21 Hippocrates, July, 2000). Since “Mindfulness” asks that we constantly call our attention back to the here and now, Tremmel believes that this metaphor of returning again and again better expresses what Schon intended by reflection. One doesn’t simply think about something, but rather one brings awareness to an action as it is taking place, staying attentive, rather than turning to a pat response (Tremmel,1993, p. 449). Tremmel reminds us that the process he and Schon advocate is similar to what Michael Polanyi named “personal knowledge,” (435. Polyani 1969). According to Polanyi, “Every time we make sense of the world, we rely on our tacit knowledge of impacts made by the world on our body and the complex responses of our body to these impacts”( 147-148). Mindfulness, like consciousness itself, is deeply enmeshed in the material body.
Perhaps the strongest case for acknowledging the body in pedagogy comes from
the neurologist’s laboratory (.Damasio,1999,). Explaining the origins of human consciousness, Damasio argues for the existence of a pre-linguistic core self that takes its cues from the body as it works to maintain our survival. He proposes that emotions and feelings, both necessary for consciousness, are derived from images based on our bodily states and consciousness emerges from the encounter between external objects and our bodies (30-31). As Damasio so cleverly puts it: “Body-minded minds help save the body” (143). He pictures the brain as “the body’s captive audience”( 150), and views consciousness as what “connects the biological machinery of life regulation and biological machinery of thought” (304). In his view, a metaphorical veil hides this internal process from us and draws us instead to focus outward on the external environment.
Damasio’s laboratory research supports the argument of philosophers Lakoff and
Johnson who remind us that our current understanding of the mind “is radically at odds with the major classical philosophical views”of human nature (1999, p. 5), whether this be
the ancient image of the homonculus or little man living in our heads, or Descartes’ notion of the body as a machine. Despite the persistent denial of our bodily reality in intellectual discourse, Lakoff and Johnson believe that our rational faculties emerge from the structural “details of our embodiment;” that reason itself “is shaped by our bodies peculiarities, our brain’s neural structures, and our everyday functioning in the world”(p.4). Such fundamental concepts as up and down, near and far, and more or less depend upon images derived from our bodily experiences. Our intellectual ideas are “constructed” or “built,” upon “foundations,” language derived from the material world of architecture;(Johnson, M. 1987, p. 102-107). If emotion and reason are both deeply rooted in the body, then leaving the body out of education is all the more irrational.
When it comes to body awareness, the business world is ahead of universities. Training professionals have begun using body based exercises with their corporate clients. Citing research in neurology, and physiology, Ruth Weiss tells readers of Training and Development that a three minute breath exercise can change group interaction more effectively than a 30 minute presentation on organizational behavior ( 67). In education attention to the bodily basis of learning is more apparent in elementary schools than in secondary or post secondary education, yet the recent push for standardized testing is threatening these innovations. Howard Gardner identified “kinesthetic intelligence” as one domain of his Multiple Intelligence theory, leading many educators to design curricula that teach academic subjects through physical, musical and spatial activities.(Gardner, 1983, add later refs). James Zull (2002) and Eric Jensen (2000) have both influenced elementary educators to include the body in their academic lessons rather than relegating it to athletics or extra curricular work. Jensen (2000) cites research from brain studies, human development and ergonomics to argue for the movement in the classroom. According to him, brain research confirms that physical activity such as moving, stretching walking-can enhance the learning process ( 34 ). The brain-mind studies of researchers like Herbert Benson on the relaxation response have also made their way into some classrooms (Benson et al, 2000).
Yoga itself has become part of the elementary school curriculum in many states, as well as in Canada, France, India, Australia, England, Ireland, South Africa and Slovakia (YREC, 2001). Advocates make impressive claims about yoga’s positive effects, such as improved concentration and test performance, decreases in hyperactivity, and improvements in asthmatic conditions, but these accounts are largely anecdotal (YREC, 2001). Medically based research studies on yoga and education have been underway in India. They tell us that yoga can have positive effects on muscle power, dexterity and visual perception in young girls ( Raghuraj and Telles, 1997), that girls who engage in yoga can solve puzzles faster than girls who haven’t ( Manjunath et al., 2001), and medical students who practiced yoga before and after taking exams showed measurable psycho-physiological changes ( Malathi, et al , 1998). Such “hard” evidence may help persuade the skeptical that yoga is more than a “New Age” fad, but paradoxically these controlled studies seem reductionist in light of Yoga’s doctrine of wholeness (Feuerstein, yrec p.3 of 11).
In higher education, embodied education has multiple meanings. Theories of gender, race, and disability may have moved discourse about the body onto the syllabus, but the discussants usually sit passively, often uncomfortably and it’s still rare to find the bodies of students engaged in a college classroom. The universities I searched address the active body only in physical education or health studies departments. With the exception of programs such as dance, performing arts or expressive therapies, colleges and universities don’t appear to consider the body a site of learning. In our own Interdisciplinary Studies Master’s program at Lesley University, students can combine subjects like writing and environmental studies, or art and technology to create a unique degree focus, yet their bodies move only if they elect classes devoted to dance or drama. Some individual faculty have been exploring bodily based approaches to learning (Kerka, 2002). Though many acknowledge that our students’ bodies are more than inconvenient baggage to be attended at bathroom breaks, or mentioned in gender studies courses, we lack a common discourse on this topic. In a review of the literature on embodied learning, Tara Amann, (herself a yoga teacher) found a confusing assortment of definitions( Amnann, 2003). Terms included “Somatic,” referring to experiences like role-playing or art-making; “Kinesthetic,” when speaking of moving muscles, joints and tendons; “Sensory,” meaning activities which involved sight, hearing, taste and touch directly; “Affective,” which meant dealing with emotions, and finally, “Spiritual,” which encompassed notions of transcendence and philosophy. Despite the labels many of these categories contained similar activities.
If we reject the mind/body dichotomy, we need a unified way of describing what we mean. A group of Canadian educators have chosen the word “bodymind” to capture the integration of thinking, being doing and interacting. They hold that “knowledge does not reside in body or mind but in interactions with world.” Miller ( Xvii). Composition theorist Kristie Fleckenstein has another suggestion. For her, the concept of “somatic mind,” recognizes the fluidity of boundaries between the material world and discourse, seeing each influencing the other in a continuous process. 1999 (5). She argues that our somatic minds can change our corporeal situation just as our DNA operates from a back and forth flow in our cellular make-up,(8). To address this problem in composition studies, she advocates a form of writing that is simultaneously immersed and emerging, because “the writing figure cannot be separated from the figure writing...both are immanent in the other” (16). Fleckenstein further argues that “...eliding bodies and denying the language of blood and bone, ... amputates physiology from meaning.”
The tendency of post-modernist approaches to reduce everything to discourse ...“cripples the transformative power of (its) critique, and undermines its potential contribution to transformative pedagogies”( 2). Her notion of somatic mind corresponds to both neurologist Damasio’s view of consciousness, and philosophers Lakoff and Johnson’s of reason as emerging from the body’s interaction with objects in the environment.
As a writing teacher and thesis director, I encourage students to include personal
narratives in their academic work, and I reject the polarized debate about the relative merits of expressive versus cognitively based writing. Elsewhere, I have argued that examining one’s own story can lead to livelier research papers since students are motivated to answer their own burning question (1996). With mature students, personal narrative writing can uncover unconscious assumptions and unquestioned cultural scripts leading to deeper critical thinking. As a result of revising their narratives, I’ve seen women who doubted their intellectual ability reclaim their intelligence, and men whose identity was based on macho silence become more flexible thinkers (Cohen, 1996, Cohen and Piper, 2000). Indeed, narrative writing can be a powerful container for experiences that involve the body, helping students access unconscious assumptions and propelling real life changes. When Nancy, an adult student, embodied her learning by narrating her experience of sexual abuse, she was more deeply motivated to research the causes and prevention of abuse, and ultimately went from an academic inquiry to action, becoming an advocate for battered women. Narrative writing assignments that move students from personal stories to research helps them to connect theories, experiences and action, (to immerse and emerge in Fleckenstein’s words). Yet, my yoga practice continues to raise questions about the sufficiency of language for fully capturing the bodily elements of our lives. Infusing yoga principles into writing activities could help to address the language gap since the process of movement, breathing and self-observation involves both immersion in internal experience and emergence into external observations.
When advising Dunya, a professional dancer writing her Master’s thesis on dance as a spiritual practice, I urged her to search the dance literature for literary models. After extensive reading that included dancer’s memoirs and spiritual autobiographies, she failed to find
writing that “initiated somatic resonance in the reader.” (Dunya). For her, the dance memoirs were disappointing: “these books were about the body or dance, (but) the telling was located in the disembodied mind. The body was an object and the dance existed as an abstract subject”(personal communication). She discovered clues to her dilemma in the literary memoirs of Harry Crews, Vivian Gornick and Tobias Wolff.( Cite these?). “Their ability to move fluidly through time and jump realities illuminated my interior space much in the way I wanted to be able to illuminate my reader’s somatic field.(personal communication, July 20, 2005). The book that resonated the most for her was Gretel Erhlich’s This Cold Heaven; Seven Seasons in Greenland 2001 NY Random House, Vintage Books. Erhlich’s travel memoir revealed scant personal material about the writer, yet her evocations of the landscape made Dunya feel the text in her body. She found Erhlich’s body images especially powerful: “as if my eyes had been smeared with ground glass” (194), or “ice pinched and pocked like old skin,” (310). As she revised her memoir about her long career as a dancer and Sufi teacher, Dunya continually sought to “substitute my body for her Greenland”(personal communication).
Sarah Latta a student in the Lesley University MFA creative writing program, developed
a writing/yoga retreat as an independent study to fulfill an interdisciplinary requirement. Her motivation came from finding a solution to a problem she had been wrestling with in her novel at the end of a challenging yoga class. “It was as if the asanas or poses had somehow liberated this knowledge trapped in my body” (personal communication, June 25, 2005). In the retreat she designed and led with a yoga instructor she used some concepts of yoga philosophy to generate the writing exercises. For example, using Ahimsa or non-violence, she asked participants to try to abandon the separation between themselves and a character they disliked and spend ten minutes writing from that character’s point of view. In another session, the class focused on twists ( which turn the mind inward and encourage self -study), then using the concept of self study, she asked the group to free write in response to a list of prompts intended to elicit vivid, emotional responses. Finally, she asked them to list specific writing projects they were working on and reflect upon how the yoga insights might apply.* In the yoga workshop, movement, intellectual concepts and reflection are seamlessly combined so that one hardly notices these false categories. In the linear college classroom, the such melding offers greater challenges.
Yoga in Class
Since I teach in a variety of formats including week long intensives, weekend sessions and day long classes geared toward adult graduate students, I have much time flexibility, yet these ideas could also be integrated into a traditional class setting. In a core requirement for the Master’s program: Ways of Knowing: How We Make Meaning, a course that examines and critiques the western paradigm, I ask students to identify their strongest “intelligence” using an inventory based upon Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory (Gardner, 1983). Their first assignment is to engage in an activity in their weakest domain, record their observations, and then share their discoveries with the class. Half the students tend to select body-based activities, further evidence of their desire to bring somatic elements into their academic work. For her project, Sarah W. a preschool teacher, passionate about her inner city kids, reluctantly signed up for yoga classes. Fit and agile, Sarah appeared younger than her twenty-seven years, but she was frank about her bodily discomfort.
..I consider my body to be a heavy jangle of parts. It seems to get in my way of knowing the world, causing embarrassment..... My body has failed me before...my mind has too, but it’s hard to hold your brain in contempt the way you can your body ( Sarah Warren, personal communication, April,15, 2004).
Sarah’s image of her body and brain as distinct entities captures the way our linguistic concepts lag behind what is known about body/mind integration. When we address this contradiction directly, we begin to notice changes:
The teacher comes over during the downward facing dog routine and tells me to stick my butt in the air more and to bend my knees a little. Something changes, something serious. I feel this whole other kind of stretch happening. She asks me to focus, to really focus on what I’m about to do before I do it; I try again; I hold the tree pose. .. I begin to carry the teachings to the rest of my life. I pay attention to my shoulders and what their position tells me about my stress level and mood, I tell myself to breathe more... it seems to take a great deal of awareness to help the body be integrated with the mind (S. Warren, personal communication, April 15, 2004).
Sarah moves toward integration as she “pays attention” to stress in her body and connects
this with her mood, an observation she did not make before her yoga experience.
Mary, a very academically oriented scholar, chose to embark on a weight loss/exercise
program which lasted the entire semester. She wrote: “When processing through experience of
the body....the outcomes are intrinsically valuable and not recognized in traditional academic contexts. ...This knowing is new– I think it will allow me to synthesize thought more easily as I learn how to produce through process, not just product.” (Mary Sheys, personal communication, April 26, 2005). Other activities students have chosen include: learning to dance, studying meditation, and Japanese swordsmanship. The challenge to engage bodily and then reflect on the experience could be integrated into any number of writing assignments.
In addition to these out of class assignments, I also bring body-based activities into real class time. The changes are small but I try to model the observation, reflection and critical thinking that I wish students to copy. During a discussion, I remind them to listen without judgement before leaping into a defensive position or a rushed response. When discourse is the dominant mode, silence can be welcome. Before turning inward to notice one’s breath or movement, the quiet itself can be observed. What do they notice? How unusual is it to be silent in a group? Silent moments can disrupt patterns in which the same students jump in with answers. Those who tend to be quieter or less articulate may feel that more space has opened for them.
When using free writing, I add some breathing. If you stop and pay attention to your breath before you write or speak, it brings your mind back to the present moment. Unlike silence, breathing gives a focus to emptiness. A further instruction would be to try a three part breath, where one consciously breathes in to the count of three, holds the breath for three and exhales for three. (A longer count can be added each time). For students who may be resistant to “writing on command,” breathing allows time for thoughts to form, and offers them a practice to use when dealing with their own resistance to the blank page.
To create a transition from one topic or activity to another, I engage students in a simple stretching and breathing exercise. I ask them to notice how their bodies are feeling, and then give them time to make themselves more comfortable. They may simply stand with eyes closed sensing their feet on the floor. They might do a more energizing stretch such as “breath of fire,” which involves inhaling, bending and exhaling in rapid succession. For me the Buddhist image of my mind as a naughty, distractable monkey seems apt, and I tell them how I tame that wild creature through taking on a challenging pose like the dancer where I must stand on one leg, and reach backwards to grasp my extended leg. I invite them to try a balancing pose, such as the tree or dancer. All of these are voluntary and anyone who prefers to watch is free to do so.
I try to model a form of inquiry based upon observation. Information gathered from our somatic laboratories can help us to become more sensitive observers of other phenomena.. Since most yoga postures (or asanas) are repeated on one’s left and right sides, the practitioner is asked to notice subtle differences in her body. Working with sensory evidence can build the habit of collecting data and drawing conclusions, contrasting one’s own observations to dominant knowledge claims and questioning them when appropriate (Kerka, 2002). If my own body tells me that my left side responds differently than my right side, perhaps I should question generalizations made about women’s bodies or menopause or ethnic traits. Discourse with others about one’s own bodily responses in a non-competitive learning environment can demonstrate that human diversity is more complex than categories like race and gender imply (Barlas, 2000, Gustafson, 1999, Todd, 2001 as cited by Kerka, 2002). Finally, noticing our bodily changes from day to day undermines the outdated Platonic notion of essentialized identities, and confounds the conservative doctrine that views human nature as fixed and unchanging. The more fluid, scientifically sound view that posits culture and identity as complex, dynamic processes becomes visceral as well as theoretical.
During longer classes, I incorporate activities that require movement and make use of the entire room as well as the hallways when possible. For one assignment students create a visual representation or poster instead of a paper. We then hold class as a conference-format poster session in which students move around the room in small groups and talk with the presenters. For visually oriented students, this provides an alternative way of processing the material. Though some use power point or video, most construct old fashioned posters out of art materials and each person explains her visual. After ten or fifteen minutes, I call time and they move on to the next presenter. If Howard Gardner is right, this classroom activity should create optimal conditions for brain functioning since it involves interacting physically with materials, asking questions and dialogue (82, 1999).
Yoga offers many benefits to those who practice, ranging from a stronger body, to a sense of calm, increased concentration, sharpened perception and possibly to more spiritual claims, but what interests me most are the cognitive advantages that come from engaging the body in learning. Rather then leading to an inward focus that ignores social conditions, I think that bringing the body into the classroom makes us more sensitive to the plight of human bodies in our world, whether the issue be prisoner abuse, starvation, war or suicide bombers. In fact, the educational fragmentation that leaves the body out of learning, despite ample evidence of its centrality, is likely to lead to more such abominations. Our entrenched patterns or habits of mind, especially those rewarded by the culture such as speed, competition and “multi-tasking” are extremely resistant to change. When the body is fully engaged, these structures become conscious and thus more accessible. Though other practices such as Tai Chi Chuan also promote body/ mind integration, yoga movements need not be carried out in a fixed sequence. Once learned, the rather simple acts of breathing, moving and attending can be done almost any place. Like Mindfulness, yoga’s gentle approach to self-observation asks us observe without judgement. As I coordinate inhaling and exhaling with stretching or moving my limbs, simultaneously attending to breath, balance and alignment harnesses my energy for a single purpose. My thoughts scatter less and reflection deepens. An image I find helpful for communicating this mind/body integration is to picture a serpent (the goddess Shakti) awakening at the base of my spinal column, moved by my breath all the way to the crown of my head. As I imagine my breath snaking up the spine to my brain, breathing becomes linked with thinking. This embodied image of breath, body and mind helps to bridge the dualistic divide. From my head, Shakti then leaves my body to unite with her divine spouse Shiva (Feuerstein, 1999, Yoga, 10). Such an erotic metaphor seems right for capturing the way breath, or prana, integrates our body/minds and links us to other invisible forms of energy. Perhaps an ecstatic union like Shakti’s with Shiva, between yoga and academic inquiry is asking too much, but maybe a courtship is possible.
(Endnote: A useful reference for combining writing and yoga is Davis, Jeff, The Journey from the center to the page: Yoga Philosophies and Practices as Muse for Authentic Writing. (Gotham Books, NY, 2004).
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* Though my doctorate is in Literature and Writing, I teach adults in a Interdisciplinary Studies Master’s program with a self-designed specialization.
