Scholars of the body: Yoga as a tool for teaching and learning within higher education.

Tate, Amy and Douglass,Laura. “Scholars of the Body: Yoga as a Tool for Teaching and Learning within Higher Education.” The Future of Adult Higher Education: Principles, Contexts and Practices, Proceedings of the annual conference of the Adult Higher Education Alliance, Saratoga, NY, October 5-8, 2010. [DOC/143KB]ducation.

Abstract: This article examines the practice of yoga as it is taught by the authors in the course titled Yoga: Theory, culture, and practice at a small private college in New England. One of the aims of the course is to encourage students to explore their own bodily experiences of power, gender, class, race and sexuality. Students look at ways in which the practice of yoga in the United States feeds into the cultural construction of individual embodiment. The authors observe connections between discourses on the body and experienced embodiment through the physical practice of yoga. When used as a tool for teaching and learning, the philosophical and physical practice of yoga offers an organized method of inquiry which encourages practitioners to become scholars of the body.

KEYWORDS: yoga, embodied learning, higher education, pedagogy


Introduction


In 1994 US News reported that four million people practice yoga in America (this was twice as many as in 1991) (Hannon, 1994). America’s embrace of yoga is felt in higher education, where yoga postures, breathing practices and meditation have made gradual inroads as pedagogical tools (Cohen, 2006; Counihan, 2007; Douglass, 2007a, 2007b; Duvall et al., 2007; Gravois, 2005; Hall, 1999; Miller & Nozawa, 2005; Moffett, 1982; Moore, 1992; Schure, Christopher, & Christopher, 2008). This integration is more than skirting the borders of academia, embodied mindfulness practices have made strong inroads into major universities across America. To name just a few:

• Economists at Emory University are required to meditate on images of poor people (Gravois, 2005) as part of their curriculum.

• Brown University’s religious studies program offers meditation labs (Gravois, 2005).

• Simmon’s college offers a class a course titled, Integrating Yoga into Social Work Practice.

• Harvard University offers a course entitled Mind, Body and Medicine for medical students, which includes a weekly practice of yoga.

Despite the increase in popularity of yoga as a pedagogical tool and as a subject, little work is being done which uses yoga as a method by which students can begin to explore their own embodied experience of power, gender, class, race and sexuality.
The body as a vehicle of learning is well researched by scholars (Berdayes, 2004; Bordo et al., 1992; Kazan, 2005; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; McWilliam, 1996; Rani & Rao, 1994; Shapiro, 1999). The deliberate re-inclusion of the body within higher education is done with the understanding that “the commonalities and difference of our bodies are deeply laden with social meaning” (Shusterman, 2006, p. 4): from gender, ethnicity, age, ability, prejudices regarding weight, and ease of movement. Body based learning offers an opportunity for students to explore the way individuals embody social meaning; for we often understand the world in the same way that we understand our body (Sarukkai, 2002). This article will link literature on the politics of the body with observed connections in the discipline of yoga in an effort to show how yoga can be an organized method of inquiry which encourages students to become scholars of the body.

“The body” has become a term which describes an interdisciplinary field of intellectual examination in which corporeality is theorized within various facets of performance (Butler, 1993, 2004; Fausto-Sterling, 2000; Haraway, 1991; Scarry, 1985 among others). In feminist studies of sexuality and gender, thinking inevitably comes around to the body; this literature examines the physicality of human existence in philosophical ponderings on the self (Bordo et al., 1992; C. T. Mohanty, 2006), to anthropological studies (Alter, 2004; Strauss, 2005) and political analyses of bodies in relationship to the world (Shapiro, 1999). “The body” becomes a discipline of study in its own right and the experiences individuals achieve within their bodies or in manipulation of others’ bodies become sites of research. The course Yoga: theory, culture and practice allows students to not only theorize these concepts, but to experience the body as a site from which they can consciously explore and alter their relationships to power, race, class and gender.

Course Description

Yoga: Theory, Culture and Practice is a 15 week, 3 credit course that was developed in the Fall of 2005. The course is offered through the Social Sciences division and is a mandatory class for undergraduate students majoring in Holistic Psychology. The course also fills the General Education requirement for a non-Western perspective. This course is currently offered four times a year and has a three-fold purpose:

1) To introduce and examine the history and philosophy of yoga as it has been taught and practiced in India and within the transnational process (Strauss, 2005) through which it has spread around the world.

2) To introduce and implement the practice of hatha yoga, including physical postures (asana), breath work (pranayama), and meditation (dhyana).

3) Through reflection and critical analysis students examine and articulate the meaning being made through and within the body based practice of yoga.

Both instructors for the course are certified yoga teachers and are pursuing doctoral work that is connected with the practice of yoga.

Half of every class is spent engaging in the body based practices of yoga, with the other half devoted to lecture, group discussions, films and guest presentations. The readings assigned to students come from subjects as diverse as anthropology (Alter, 2004; Strauss, 2005), sociology (Hoyez, 2007; Strauss, 2005), critical pedagogy, feminism, religious studies (DeMichelis, 2005; Joshi, 1965), as well as articles by contemporary yoga practitioners (Cope, 1999; Farhi, 2003; Satchidananda, 2003) . Class time is spent discussing the embodied feeling and thoughts related to both the readings and the practice of yoga. Students are graded on a mid-term presentation/paper, final research paper, attendance and weekly journal.

Biopower and Yoga

The term biopower was coined by French philosopher Michel Foucault (1978) in The history of sexuality volume one. Foucault describes an analysis of power in which the regulation, modification, and management of bodies lie at the center of individual and population control. The term biopower serves to decentralize points from which power is manifest, thus contesting the idea that sovereignty is the supreme expression of power. Relations of power can be positive and negative; they create opportunities of action and of choice. According to Foucault, “power is everywhere” (1978, p. 93). Its genesis is not the result of, nor is it rooted in, structural binaries such as oppressor/oppressed. Power is a relationship that is not possessed by one and not the other. Power is exercised.

Intrinsic to the idea of power is the notion of resistance. Resistance does not live outside of power, but exists within it as an essential aspect of the relationship. Foucault was not interested in power as an irresistible force imposed by one social group on another, which in turn submits or resists (Foucault, 1962, 1978). For example in the classroom the professor clearly holds a certain level of power (in designing the curriculum, evaluations); but if the students decide to resist the instructions of the instructor, talk over her, or ignore her, they are exerting a power of their own. In stating that “power is everywhere,” Foucault points to an alternate way of viewing power dynamics, which unearths the more disturbing notions of the proliferation of power through discourses generated with the intentions of quelling it.

Through body-centered self investigation as well as theoretical examinations of “the body,” students engage Foucauldian thought and yogic practice in an attempt to understand their own experiences of power in the contexts of social control, resistance, and internal regulation. The inquiry into “freedom” is essential to the historical texts of yoga (Eliade, 1958; Muktibodhananda, 1993; Sarawati, 2005; Satchidananda, 2003; Sivananda, 1995; Whicher, 1998) and is a central concern in the course Yoga: theory, culture and practice. We are not attempting to discover a universal sense of freedom, but encourage students to inquire into the concept and embodied feeling of freedom. In Philosophy in the Flesh Lakoff and Johnson state,
“Embodied truth requires us to give up the illusion that there exists a unique correct description of any situation. Because of the multiple levels of our embodiment, there is no one level at which one can express all the truths we can know about a given subject matter. But even if there is no one correct description, there can still be many correct descriptions, depending on our embodied understandings at different levels or from different perspectives”(Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, p. 109)

One way that the discipline of yoga encourages reflection on the individual’s expression of power and freedom is by promoting reflection on ten ethical precepts called the yamas and niyamas. Classical yoga does not mandate the practice or acceptance of these precepts, but rather encourages students to reflect upon and understand how these ideas are embodied. During the course Yoga: theory, culture and practice students explore how these concepts are influenced by both a bodily expression of the “concept” and as heavily influenced by the cultures in which they have lived. For example, the impulse to be violent (himsa) is not merely an abstract thought, but is accompanied by concrete physical sensations. Violence has a feeling: tightness, constriction in the throat, tightness in the abdomen, an urge for movement. The absence of violence (ahimsa) is also accompanied by concrete physiological sensations . Every culture habituates its people to acceptable levels of violence and non-violence which are present both as an “idea” and as specific holding patterns within the body (Damasio, 1999; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). The practice of yoga encourages students to explore the postures of yoga (asanas) in a way that is completely easeful and peaceful - free of violence (ahimsa). Students have the opportunity to physically explore if they habitually tense their neck or the corners of their eyes or if they engage in negative self-talk and comparison to other students while holding simple postures or attempting to relax. In the dialogue portion of the course students can verbally explore how non-violence is and is not fostered within their own cultures and experienced in their bodies.

Once students have some understanding of how their own embodiment is a source of power which is neither negative nor positive, but exists in relationship to history and culture, they often make impressive discoveries. One student noticed that some of the qualities expressed in the yamas and niyamas happen naturally in a society that is not oppressive. She noted that in a society in which all members have basic needs met there is less impulse to steal (asteya) or to be violent (ahimsa); in a society in which sexuality is celebrated there is natural sexual restraint in an effort to preserve the sanctity of sexual union (brahmacharya). While this may be a romanticized ideal about a “perfect” culture, it does allow students to begin to explore how their bodies are in relationship to specific socio-cultural contexts. Many students are able to explore when or how they felt pressured by outside forces to experience their body in a specific way and felt a renewed sense of ownership at seeing themselves, and their bodies as in relationship to others.

Foucault’s theories can be troubling as he insists upon a need for activists and scholars to take issue with concepts of liberation and freedom. Modern American democracy requires its subjects (we the people) to be free - which according to Foucauldian thought means that citizens are required to assume the weight of regulations previously imposed by government. Power bubbles up in the form of internal regulations, normalizations, and disciplinary measures not imposed by a Lord, but by individual citizens, free people. The difficult-to-swallow part here is the fact that this vision of power—indeed, biopower—implicates everyone and derails modern liberal visions of the successive elimination of restrictive modes of domination. Instead, Foucault points out that this domination resurfaces in even more sinister, internalized methods of control. Foucault’s thoughts on biopower might well line up with Patanjali’s Classical Yoga, as Patanjali also conceived of oppression as an internalized process which must be directly confronted by each individual (Stoler, 1995; (J. Mohanty, 2000).

We can see processes of internal regulation taught formally and informally in the American public school system. For example, the average American second grader is given positive regard for not moving and is given 15-20 minutes of recess a day; the body is often treated as an “accessory to a crime, like the restless body of a hyperactive student, or the listless posture of a sleeping, bored or exhausted student” (Ross in Peters et al., 2004, p. 171 ). The cultural message is that the body should be subordinate to both the mind and authorities. Students in Yoga: theory, culture and practice have the opportunity to directly experience just how entrenched these somatic norms are. The basic repertoire of yoga postures often seems so unfamiliar as to be experienced by the student as bizarre. By expanding the students’ repertoire of somatic norms, the class challenges more than their comfort level; it challenges years of schooling which has insisted that the body remain steady and unmoving in class. In the following section, we see other ways in which internalized regulations are examined and, in some cases, resisted.
Epistemology and the Politics of Experience

Chela Sandoval (2000) moves beyond the sphere of humanism in the book Methodology of the oppressed. She depicts the body as citizen-subject, capable of resisting individualistic fascist tendencies through desire for social change. This desire unfolds within the form of differential consciousness that privileges reality over ideology and (unapologetically) claims grounding in love. Sandoval lays the foundation for a theoretical framework to be utilized in action.
Integration of theoretical concepts comes through application and practice. It may be said that this is the work of the mind, where themes are extracted and analyzed, and then organized into a well-formed and articulated essay. In truth, an element of the methodology of the oppressed is the need to have a firm grasp on current and historical thought; it is necessary to speak the language of the oppressor in order to navigate the spaces in between and on the other side of dominant discourses. Indeed, Sandoval identifies the tools of the methodology of the oppressed as including semiology. Using such tools, it is important to not get stuck in the drudgery of the mind. Within the murky bodies of text and imagery that must be deconstructed as part of the process live and breathe actual bodies. Sandoval’s definition of “differential consciousness” is grounded in resistance in subversion, in the employment of multiple identities, and in the continuously shifting concept of presence according to context. All of which are utilized by marginalized groups and individuals not just for the purpose of survival, but to exact social change.

These concepts are not new within the context of yoga. The principles of yoga have been used as the basis of social justice movements throughout history (Alter, 2004). For example, In India the BJP (considered by many social scientists’ as a paramilitary, fundamentalist political party) sought to use the idea of “tradition” to secure power in a largely Hindu country (Jaffrelot, 1996). This political party wove the practices and philosophy of yoga into the discourse of the “free” state of India - even as the British Raj was crumbling. Indeed, yoga asana practice was utilized by those with a political agenda to strengthen the bodies of Indian soldiers in the fight for freedom from colonial rule, and is still practiced in some form by the Indian army (Alter, 2004; Prakash, 1999). Simultaneously, yoga in used by the elite of India as a secular practice to reduce stress, others see yoga as an important aspect of the Hindu faith and still others view yoga as therapeutic (Hoyez, 2007; Ramaswamy, Nicholas, & Banerjee, 2007). Students in the course Yoga: theory, culture and practice are introduced to the concept of yoga as an evolutionary practice. A practice with historically relevant roots, but not hermetically sealed in history.
Viewing yoga through Sandoval’s methodology of the oppressed raises an interesting paradox regarding embodied resistance. For individuals in the BJP, yoga is closely associated with the Hindu nationalist movement. As such, one of the many roles yoga plays is in perpetuating an oppressive regime (Alter, 2004; Strauss, 2005). Students in the course grapple with these multi-layered constructions of yoga. The meaning of yoga shifts depending on the individuals and groups who are practicing it. This work places the self-examination typically done at the beginning of the semester in a larger frame, allowing students to experience tensions in applied theoretical perspectives and to come to their own meanings based on bodily experience and observation.

Elizabeth Grosz (1994) illustrates the experience of watchful embodiment in a theoretical re-examination using the phantom limb phenomenon as a base in Volatile bodies. Her visionary framework of feminist scholarship on the body considers the body not simply as lived experience (“interior, subjective”) or “surface, corporeal exposures of the subject to social inscriptions and training” (p. 188) or the body in (as) text, but both, integrally connected and experienced together, not as one but as “two surfaces which cannot be collapsed into one and which do not always harmoniously blend with and support each other” (p. 189). This defies Cartesian dualistic thought and questions modes of scholarship which take a certain (white, male, middle-class) body as the norm and leave unexamined issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in the lived experience. Grosz’s ideas provide a feminist theoretical foundation to the practice of research which questions the tendency to turn “the body” into another theoretical binary: embodied / discursive.

Students in Yoga: Theory, culture, and practice are invited to explore the idea of watchful embodiment in the practice sessions and in the discussions. When we examine concepts in yoga theory such as the subtle body (the system of energetic transfer often placed in awkward comparison to the nervous system) we first examine texts which teach the theory on a basic level (Desikachar, 1995; Rama, Ballantine, Hynes, 1976). Students learn the yogic concept of energetic channels in the body called nadis. We learn that ancient texts and some current practitioners claim that each channel holds certain qualities. For example, ida is described as passive, introverted, feminine, while pingala is dominant, extroverted, masculine (Rama, Ballantine, Hynes, 1976). From there, we explore these ideas within the context of our yoga practice and attempt to experience these energy channels on an embodied level. Frequently, this leads to a discussion of the language used to illustrate these channels, as students attempt to express their felt discoveries. Gradually we come around to placing the primary textual description into cultural context and then questioning the gendering of the discourse on the practice.

Interweaving the theory, culture and practice of yoga allows students in the course to 1) absorb the social, cultural processes of yoga and 2) learn the skills to apply, analyze, and deconstruct such practices. In many ways the whole class is a paradox. We ask students to take the practice of yoga at face value and experience it—then we invite them to step back and see what is going on inside the practice. We question who is dictating the norms and procedures. We inquire into the processes that are taking place within the historical transmission of the practice. A study of the practice of yoga - in context of theory and culture - provides a methodology for examining how we make meaning through the experiences of the body.

Embodied Scholarship

Researchers have made advances in the arena of embodied scholarship. Reflexive systems of inquiry are utilized in an attempt to integrate and qualify systems of body knowledge. Susan Bordo’s work is a case in point (1999, 1993). The reader gets a sense of her (very strong) presence in her work when she describes her own sexual desire piqued by a visual representation of the male body in an advertisement (p. 168). With the admission of this experience, she relates on an embodied and intellectual level with the plight of men as they are faced with images of the objectified female body in today’s “visual society” (p. 168). She situates herself as a living, desiring body within the narrative. It is not so much the content of her books that inspire it’s placement under the heading “embodied scholarship” as it is her use of her own body as a site of analysis.

Using the body as a way to make sense of and analyze our experiences is essential to scholarship. Learning occurs through the medium of the body. This concept has gained gradual acceptance in the fields of neuroscience (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Siegel, 2007; Zull et al., 2006) (Babu et al., 2002; Fischer, Murray, & Bundy, 1991) and psychology (Babu et al., 2002; Macnaughton, 2004; Ogden, Minton, & Pain, 2006; Rothschild, 2000). Despite new knowledge from these fields the body remains, for the most part, in the department of physical education or dance. This means of integrating the body into the curriculum is deeply rooted in the dichotomy of the body and mind. The course Yoga: theory, culture and practice challenges this dichotomy and seeks to teach students how the body can be a significant site of inquiry and analysis.

Challenging the way in which academia has historically understood the dichotomy of the body and mind is not always easy. It is difficult to find physical accommodations at the university that allows for both the free movement of the body and the typical higher education activities of discussions, lectures, group work and films. Students are also challenged by having their bodies a site of inquiry. Students frequently comment on how the use of alcohol, poor dietary habits, lack of sleep and stress inhibit them from perceiving correctly. This conversation and experience helps them understand how they actively participate in the dichotomizing the body and mind.
Embodied scholarship resists dualistic binaries and promotes (in yogic terms), witness consciousness in writing and research. Paul Stoller (1997), in Sensuous scholarship, presents his work with a lens on the so called “lower senses”—those of sound and taste—in the ethnographic process. In this way, Stoller places his, the researcher’s body, the taster and listener, in relationship with his subject. Likewise, our concept of embodied scholarship integrates the theoretical works on the politics of the body and suggests that we value our lived experience of corporeality as valid sources from which to write and research. Throughout the semester students in Yoga: theory, culture and practice are invited to address the tensions which arise in the interplay of their own embodied experiences with politics, economic structures, history and difference in their weekly reflection papers.

Helen Thomas and Jamilah Ahmed (2004) relate research on the body to “sense-making” and point out that the process “will only generate one version of many possible senses” (p. 6). Thus, current forms of embodied ethnographic research have at their core what Donna Haraway coined “situated knowledge.” Feminist scholars place researchers firmly within their work, forcing generalized and normalized truth statements out of academia and naming knowledge as contextual. When students in Yoga: theory, culture and practice begin to articulate their experience of the practice of yoga, they learn to situate it within a socio-cultural perspective. They learn how their embodied experience is similar to and different from other expressions of yoga throughout the world. They learn that their embodied experience is valid and true, but that it is part of the vast trans-cultural production of yoga.

Embodied scholarship takes corporality as a significant method to address the relationship between researcher and subject. Students in Yoga: theory, culture and practice have an opportunity to use their own embodied experience as a significant way of knowing in a qualitative research project in which they engage in a practice of yoga within America (students have chosen to visit local yoga studios and yoga centers, to attend yoga classes at the Lakshmi Temple and lectures on yoga at the Ramakrishna Center). They use this lived experience as a valid method by which to understand the diversity of ways in which yoga is thought about in America – and that these different conceptions of yoga actually feel different.

There is no one perspective from which to consider issues of the body. As scholars, it is easy to get lost in the heady realm of language on and about the body. The matrix of bodily experience is a tricky business; it is easy in academia to forget the lived, corporeal world. Intertwining the lived experience with academic theory and history is a form of scholarship that stretches the discursive limits of qualitative research and provides an alternate paradigm of inquiry. In our work with students we try to come together to close the gap between the lived, internal, sensing self, and the textual body.

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