Yoga as Pedagogy in Higher Education

Since the time of Plato, Western scholars have been interested in living an “examined life.” Yoga mirrors what many academics have always encouraged in their students: the refusal to “split their work from their lives”(Mills, 1959, p. 195). Yoga has moved out of the physical education department and into the classroom as a topic of scholarly concern and as a possible pedagogical tool (Alter, 2004; Brockington et al., 2003; Cohen, 2006; Counihan, 2007; DeMichelis, 2005; Douglass, 2007; Michelis et al., 2008; Moore, 1992; Strauss, 2005). Consider the work of the following three scholars:

1. Cressida Heyes. Developed a cross-listed class called “Thinking Through the Body: Philosophy and Yoga” at the University of Alberta. She has documented her work in the following article:
   Hatale Helberg, Cressida Heyes and Jacyln Rohel (2009). Thinking through the body: Yoga Philosophy , and Physical Education. Teaching Philosophy 32(3), p. 263-284. Available at:http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~cheyes/research/TeachingPhil.pdf



2. Deborah Orr. A professor of philosophy developed the course Embodied Understanding in which students study the philosopher’s Wittgenstein, Patanjali, and Nagarjuna and practice yoga for one hour of class time. She also wrote Orr, D. (2002). The uses of mindfulness in anti-oppressive pedagogies: philosophy and praxis. Canadian Journal of Education 27(4), 477-497.


3. Metka Zupancic. Developed a class called Yoga: East and West at Alabama University. She has documented her work in the following unpublished article: Yoga in Academia. Available at: http://www.metkazupancic.com/pb/wp_f2948f69/wp_f2948f69.html (see link at the bottom of this page).
4. Miriam Cameron. Developed two classes called "Yoga: Ethics, Spirituality" and "Healing,
   Yoga, Ayurveda, and Tibetan Medicine in India." to find out more about her work go to: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~camer008/.

In 1959 the sociologist C. Wright Mills reminded academics that “the most admirable thinkers within the scholarly community…do not split their work from their lives” (Mills, 1959, p. 195 ). Scholarship, Mills argues, is a way of life in which the individual continually wrestles with the connections between our lived experience, ideas, and copious amount of reading. While different in many ways, scholarship and yoga are both concerned with cultivating a lifestyle of learning. The idea that academic life is an “… exceptional opportunity of designing a way of living which will encourage the habits of good workmanship” (Mills, 1959, p. 196) parallels the yogic idea that every aspect of life should be contemplative so that we can see things clearly and responding to life events with awareness and equanimity. In the contemporary Satyananda lineage of yoga, education is viewed as training in the art of living – with excessive mental stimulation believed to dull the senses, making one incapable of deep penetrating thoughts (Sivananda Saraswati, 2005). Learning is ideally embedded within the fabric of life, and the student is given opportunities to learn analytically, but also through creative and constructive interactions with the environment, family, and larger culture (Niranjananda, 1997). For academics and serious yoga practitioners, how we live our life determines the quality of our thinking. Lived experience influences and is influenced by theory.

Understanding the interrelationship between the body, our lived experience and theory is something that has historically been taken very seriously in yoga, as is evidenced in the classical literature of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and Gheranda Samhita, believed to have been written between 6th -15th centuries A.D. (Muktibodhananda, 1993; Ramacharaka, 1904; Vasu, 1976). The presence of yoga in the classroom may indicate scholar’s interest in sharing effective ways to close the gap between our ideas and our lived experience.

Scholars who do allow their practice of yoga to be a public aspect of their research tend to be part of feminist research, which pushes against the trend to separate scholarship from our lives as “no science is value free … we are all ‘shaped by culture,’ and our belief system inevitably influences our questions and interpretations” (Deutsch, 2004, p. 892). Scholars who are writing about yoga as a pedagogical technique within the higher education classroom appear to be more forthcoming about their lived practice of yoga (Cohen, 2006; Counihan, 2007; Orr, 2002). In the article Using Hatha Yoga Breathing Assignments: An Essai educator Beth Counihan states, “I’ll begin by saying that I am no yoga expert. I have been attending classes once or twice a week for about seven years, at Integral Yoga Institute on 13th Street in Manhattan” (Duvall et al., 2007, p. 25). By personally positioning her relationship with yoga, the reader is given an important insight into the beliefs and perspectives coloring her pedagogical choice to add yoga to her curriculum.

When yoga is discussed as a pedagogical tool (as opposed to a subject to be studied), it is either considered part of holistic studies (Miller et al., 2005) or the movement towards cultivating mindfulness in higher education (Duff, 2003; Hill, Herndon, & Karpinska, 2006; E. Langer, 1989; E. J. Langer, 1993). The Contemplative Mind in Society has been integral in encouraging scholars to use their personal experience as a bridge to the academic understanding of yoga as a possible pedagogical tool. In an interview with the director, Mirabai Bush, states
"What is radical about the work educators are doing is that they are combining yoga, meditation and other contemplative practices with traditional coursework. In the beginning, educators were “adding on” contemplative practices – maybe sitting in silence or doing a few yoga postures and then doing the class. Now these practices are an integral part of the coursework. The integration of this material is really changing how teachers are teaching and how students are learning. For example, a professor of philosophy at the University of Alberta has her students do warrior II pose and the students discovered they were reaching their limbs forward; it was very hard for them to stay stable and centered. The students discovered that this had to do with time; it had to do with their minds projecting forward into the future. She did not have to tell her students “our minds are always projecting in the future” - they really got it!

Most of the scholarship being done on the integration of contemplative practices into pedagogy takes practices from diverse traditions, as opposed to understanding one and drawing on it exclusively and in-depth. One scholar I interviewed challenged this “kind of cafeteria approach - taking a little bit of this and a little of that, is viewed by some people as cultural appropriation. I think we need to be sensitive to that. On the other side of the coin, culture is not static... we have always been influenced by multiple traditions.” I wonder, when is drawing on the worlds wisdom traditions a strength and when is it part of the movement to study and “resell” Eastern knowledge of yoga?

One individual I interviewed reminded me that practitioners and scholars … need to be sensitive that the written work produced by those from military and economic super powers is not the only work that is read and reproduced; otherwise it gives the dominant powers the privilege to define and stereotype the less powerful…Without symmetry between these views discord occurs. We need to explore the problems that exist in cross-cultural interpretation and translations of different traditions. There are clearly difficulties in translating one culture into another culture; one language into another language…What are these difficulties? How can these difficulties be minimized?

Taking my life as a scholar seriously I examine the choices I make; whether we cite Gramsci or Gandhi matters (Halliburton, 2004). It does not matter in some abstract way. Who we cite in our academic papers, the books on our course lists, determines and contributes to who is considered an authority. Not only what authors, but also what disciplines and what actions we ask our students to engage in.

Incorporating my personal relationship with yoga into my academic work solidifies the importance these East Indian practices have for me. I think (and feel) that they have significantly helped me to recognize when I act out of ambition and when I act out of integration. More importantly, being reflective about my practice of yoga exposes me to much needed critical questioning by my colleagues around the role of yoga in my life and how I was influenced by the teachings of my own guru, Swami Satchidananda. By answering these inquiries thoroughly, critically, I contribute to the growing discourse that the wisdom traditions of the East contain diverse knowledge systems, which are worthy of inquiry and practice. Ashis Nandy was one of the first intellectuals to associate colonialism with something more than sovereignty over another nation, but with a state of mind (2004): feelings of superiority, feeling powerless to change the system, lack of trust, fear of loss of control, the need for stability and dualistic thinking (Breault, 2003). Being open about the way in which my practice of yoga influences my scholarship helps me to understand that silencing is associated with shame. Post colonial thought questions how education persists under the weighty strain of continually having to prove one’s importance, and for some indigenous people, their very existence (Roy, 2001). I believe that as scholars the details of how we refine and share our own ideas regarding the place of yoga in pedagogy is important. What we reveal about our personal practice subtly shifts the questions we are willing to ask and the research we are willing to engage in.

References

Alter, J. (2004). Yoga in Modern India. New Jersey: Princeton University Press
Brockington, J., Carpenter, D., Whicher, I., Pflueger, L., Chapple, C. K., Sundaresan, V., et al. (2003). Yoga: The indian tradition. New York: Routledge Press.
Cohen, J. (2006). The missing body- Yoga and higher education. The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives in Learning 12(winter), 14-24.
Counihan, B. (2007). Using hatha Yoga breathing assignments: An essai. In S. Shelton-Colangelo, C. Mancuso & M. Duvall (Eds.), Teaching with joy: Educational practices for the twenty-first century New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. .
DeMichelis, E. (2005). A History of Modern Yoga. New York: Continuum.
Deutsch, N. (2004). Positionality and the Pen: Reflections on the process of becoming a feminist researcher and writer Qualitative Inquiry, 10(6), 885-902.
Douglass, L. (2007). Contemplative Online Learning Environments. Journal of Online Education, July 7, 2007.
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Hill, C., Herndon, A. A., & Karpinska, Z. (2006). Contemplative Practices: Educating for Peace and Tolerance. Teachers College Record, 108(9), 1915-1935.
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Mills, C. W. (1959). On Intellectual Craftsmanship. In The Sociological Imagination (pp. 195-201). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Moore, M. C. (1992). Using meditation in the classroom. Hispania, 75(3), 734-735.
Muktibodhananda, S. (1993). Hatha Yoga Pradipika. Bihar, India: Bihar School of Yoga.
Orr, D. (2002). The uses of mindfulness in anti-oppressive pedagogies: philosophy and praxis. Canadian Journal of Education 27(4), 477-497.
Ramacharaka, Y. (1904). Hatha Yoga or The Yogi Philosophy of Physical Well-Being. Chicago: Yogi Publicaton Society.
Strauss, S. (2005). Positioning Yoga: Balancing Acts Across Cultures. New York: Berg Press.
Vasu, S. C. (1976). The gheranda samhita: A treatsie on hatha Yoga (3rd ed.). Adyar, India: Theosophoical Publishing House Ltd.