Yoga Studies

YOGA ED: NEW PROGRAMS FOR K-8

2011-11-10T12:27:00.000-08:00

Abstract: Discourse regarding teachers in the United States is increasingly interested in the effects of stress on the classroom. Teacher stress is currently positioned as something that teachers must “manage” to do a “good” job. One method for dealing with stress is the Yoga Ed program, a K-8 curriculum that is designed to help create classrooms in which stress reduction and health of the body and mind are prioritized. While a few schools have adopted the Yoga Ed curriculum as a core component of their school culture, Yoga Ed is primarily a teacher initiated and sustained program. This paper introduces the reader to the Yoga Ed program and explores the complex relationship between teachers, schools and the privatization of stress.

Introduction

Teachers who take the Yoga Ed training are interested in creating a stress free classroom for themselves and their students. K-12 teachers are under incredible stress. A 2007 study on New York Public schools showed that 70% of teachers were thinking of retiring in two years, 25% of midcareer teachers were thinking of leaving and 30% of new teachers were considering alternate careers (Botwinik). Low salaries, long hours, emphasis on testing, competing family obligations, poor working conditions, behaviors of pupils and difficulties of classroom management are a few of the persistent stresses that inevitably take their toll - leaving many “burned out.” Burnout is described as “physical, emotional and mental exhaustion resulting from a chronic state and accumulation of pressure and stress at work; ” it is an occupational hazard for K-12 teachers (Jepson & Forrest, 2006, p. 184 ). Researchers are increasingly correlating classroom teachers who suffer the psychological and physiological distress of burnout with reduced effectiveness of schools - further adding to teacher stress (Kelly & Colquhoun, 2003, 2005; Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2007; Timms, Graham, & Caltabiano, 2006). Emphasis is given to teachers being able to “manage their stress,” with little emphasis on the governmental, infrastructural and administrative stresses that make this difficult (Kelly & Colquhoun, 2003).

The number of teachers who are taking it upon themselves to manage the stress levels in their classroom is increasing. In the summer of 2008, thirty-nine teachers gathered together at Kripalu, one of the largest centers for yoga, self-development, and health education in the United States; these teachers were here to restore their joy for teaching through a weeklong training called Yoga Ed. The Yoga Ed Program trains teachers on how to improve the health and wellness of their students and themselves by integrating yoga into the classroom, physical education departments and school culture. These teachers work in private, public, and charter schools teaching everything from foreign language, special ed., mathematics, English and physical education. The co-founder of Yoga Ed, Leah Kalish, states “Students who sit for more than 30 minutes are not learning; it is scientifically proven that we learn through our bodies. The wellbeing of the student’s mind and body is the job of the teacher. Part of what you will be learning here is to take care of yourselves so that you know how to take care of your students.” The teachers look unanimously interested.

Research shows that yoga can be helpful for children with ADHD, prevention of eating disorders, and stress reduction (Peck, Kehle, Bray, & Theodore, 2005; Scime, Cook-Cottone, Kane, & Watson, 2006; Stueck & Gloeckner, 2005). For the teachers at the Yoga Ed training, the health and wellbeing of the children they serve is important, but it is not the sole reason they are raptly listening to every word the co-founder has to say. As the class breaks for the evening a bright Special Ed teacher named Margaret exclaims, “I’ve been teaching for over twenty years and Leah is a powerful teacher! The whole time I am watching her, I am thinking this woman is gorgeous; she is in great shape, a fabulous presenter. I am thinking she must be 42 and then the woman next to me says she is 52! I am really inspired.”

The teachers who have come to the Yoga Ed workshop want to be vibrant, powerful and engaged teachers; teachers who are not overwhelmed with the continual stresses of being a teacher. They know that by prioritizing their own wellness they can better address the multiple problems that surface in their long and often stressful day as teachers. When I ask Margaret what brought her to yoga she states clearly, “I was at the burnout point. After a particularly hard day, I would come home and just plop down on the couch. I am an active person, but sometimes as a teacher you feel really beaten down. Then I found yoga. It completely rejuvenated me.” Margaret’s own experience with yoga’s benefits was what encouraged her to seek out Yoga Kids, one of the many nationwide programs that train teachers to integrate yoga into schools. After five years and three additional yoga teacher trainings, she has chosen to enroll in the Yoga Ed program as a way to continue her understanding of how and why yoga is so effective at rejuvenating her passion for teaching.

Americans are interested in finding out the effect yoga has on students and adults alike. While researchers are slowly documenting the benefits of yoga (Clance, Mitchell, & Engelman, 1980; Ospina et al., 2007; Peck et al., 2005; Proeger, Myrick, Florida Educational, & Development Council, 1980; Scime et al., 2006; Stueck & Gloeckner, 2005), surprisingly, little research has been conducted on programs of yoga that were specifically developed for the schools. Yoga Ed is one of four existing programs that are specifically designed for use by teachers (other programs in the United States are Yoga Kids, Yoga Playgrounds and Yoga in the Schools). Two of the three existing studies on Yoga Ed have been conducted by teachers who have taken the Yoga Ed program and were seeking to better understand its perceived effectiveness as part of their master’s level work in education (Davison, 2008; Pearson, 2007-2008); the third study was privately funded to find out how effective the Yoga Ed program was for students who regularly participated in the program (Slovacek, Tucker, & Pantoja, 2003).

No research exists which grounds the movement of yoga in education as part of a larger cultural context. In an attempt to understand how and why teachers are using the Yoga Ed program at this moment in history, I have interviewed teachers who have received training in Yoga Ed. I have also conducted a preliminary survey to investigate what motivates teachers to supplement their education with the Yoga Ed program to try and understand the predominating discourse on stress for teachers and schools (see Appendix One for the survey). I have also attended the Yoga Ed Training led by its co-founder, Leah Kalish in the summer of 2008. This pilot study found that teacher stress is “privatized,” or positioned as something that teachers must “manage” to do a “good” job. The privatization of stress has led innovative teachers to alternative programs like Yoga Ed, which inspires them to handle stress on their own.

Yoga Ed: What is it?

The health benefits of yoga were obvious to the classroom teacher Tara Guber. After experiencing the benefits of yoga firsthand, she was dedicated to bringing yoga to children and teachers throughout the United States. In 1994, Guber found her opportunity: The Accelerated School (TAS) in inner city Los Angeles. The founders had received a $200,000 grant from Wells Fargo to start their charter school, which was to include the integration of yoga as a core component of the curriculum (O'Connor, 2001). By 2001 Times Magazine nominated the Accelerated School as the “school of the year.” Student scores on the Stanford Achievement Test increasing 93% between 1997 and 2001; school officials believe the emphasis on art, poetry and yoga largely account for their success. The school’s co-founder Kevin Sved remarked, "Unless you're fully engaging the mind and body of the children, they're not going to be as productive" (Cry, 2001, p. paragraph 2).

In 2003, with funds raised by Leah Kalish from the children’s yoga community and Gaiam, TAS hired the Program Evaluation and Research Collaborative (PERC) to study the effectiveness of Yoga Ed on 405 students in the K-8 school. The results show that yoga class participation improved students physical fitness, attitudes towards themselves, behavior and academic performance (Slovacek et al., 2003). The successful integration of yoga into TAS inspired co-founders Tara Guber and Leah Kalish to bring their 36 week curriculum to other educators. Their instinct that educators would be interested in learning how to harnesses the power of yoga to facilitate a school culture in which teacher and student wellbeing are given priority was correct (Pearson, 2007-2008) . Over 1,000 schools in America have a teacher trained in Yoga Ed on their staff. Teachers come from as far away as Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, and Japan to learn techniques for integrating yoga into their classrooms, schools and physical education departments.

The mission of Yoga Ed is “to develop health/wellness programs and materials that utilize the physiological, emotional and educational benefits of yoga and creative play, and distributes them to children, teachers and parents through schools and communities nationwide” (Kalish & Guber, 2004, p. 2). Yoga Ed is one of the first education programs in the country to use the holistic paradigms of health and wellness to address stress for teachers. Their program has not only captivated teachers, but the popular press - magazine articles tout Yoga Ed as one of the most innovative new programs to address teacher and student wellness (Capouva, 2005; Chopra, 2007; O'Connor, 2001; Sexton, 2006; "Tara's Yoga for kids," 2004; "Yoga Education Controversial but Worthwhile," 2007).

Yoga Ed and the Discourse of Self Awareness. Yoga Ed teaches that the effectiveness of yoga postures, breathing practices, meditation, visualizations and games is because of the way these practices help us to slow down, focus, and become more self-aware. The cultivation of self awareness is essential to the discourse of and about Yoga Ed. The author and physician Deepak Chopra extols Yoga Ed’s ability to cultivate self-awareness; he states, “Self awareness increases self esteem and determines behavior, perception, cognitive skills, moods and emotions, personal relationships, creativity and the environment we create” (Chopra, 2007, p. 118). This sentiment is echoed in the burgeoning literature on the important role of mindfulness in learning (Langer, 1993, 1997; Siegel, 2007). While most of the researcher on mindfulness is on adult learners rather than children, it contributes to an understanding of self-awareness as pivotal to the learning experience.

The focus on self-awareness positions the individual as being primarily responsible for their own well being. The Tools for Teachers Training Handbook states that one of its primary goals is to,
“…help teachers use Yoga Tools for their own personal and professional growth to encourage them to become more aware of their own feelings and reactions. When their students are disrespectful, hyper-active, or bored, how does this make them feel? What state does their student’s behavior send them into? …As you help teachers develop an awareness of their own state, they can start to connect specific Yoga Tools to shifting it…Yoga experientially teaches us to prioritize self-awareness and self-care as an effective and beneficial way to support ourselves in being and living in a healthy, peaceful, caring and powerful way” (Kalish & Guber, 2004, pp. 20-21).

For teachers trained in Yoga Ed, self-awareness is understood as a significant means by which the good teacher cultivates a positive learning environment. Yoga Ed promotes self awareness through the implementation of simple techniques. For example, students who are misbehaving do not get a time-out; they get a time-in. During time-ins, students close their eyes, gage how fast their minds are moving and try to get in touch with what it is that is causing them to be unable to participate in the classroom effectively. This fundamental change in approach to disruptions in the classroom creates a school culture in which every child is capable of self-awareness and is responsible for understanding his or her own behavior. Students and teachers alike have the opportunity to see how their own behavior contributes to a culture of collaboration.

Yoga Ed, School Culture and Change

In the early 1970’s anthropologists changed the way that we think about schools. Schools were no longer “neutral,” but were understood to be the primary mechanism through which cultural values are transmitted. These values are transmitted through the underlining set of norms, values, and unique beliefs that make up the unwritten rules on conduct within a specific school. From this perspective, the primary function of the school is teaching children how to operate within the school culture, or enculturation. “Enculturation is the process of conscious and unconscious, formal and informal, cultural conditioning, exercised always within the boundaries sanctioned by a given body of custom” (Spindler, 1997, p. 9). Changing the school culture is beginning to be understood as essential to the overall health of a school, with positive school cultures leading to decreases in truancy, drop-out rates, and violence (Mirsky, 2007; Peterson, 2002).

The Yoga Ed program seeks to create change in the schools through the promotion of a school culture that values health and wellness in body and mind. From the perspective of enculturation, the Yoga Ed program uses the school as a site where children learn how to make correct choices to deal with their emotions, minds, and bodies. They learn this not only in their yoga class, but in how the teacher models self-awareness in the classroom. The Yoga Ed literature provides practices based in yoga to positively change the body, habits of mind, nutritional choices, and even the choices teachers make to prevent behavioral problems in the classroom.
The Accelerated School in Los Angeles is the most well known school that has adopted the Yoga Ed program as part of their school culture. Not only do the administrators fully support and value the practice of yoga, but the primary activity of the physical fitness program is yoga (primarily due to space issues in their inner-city setting). Perhaps most importantly, there is an ongoing effort to train teachers on how to integrate yoga into their classroom to handle stress, emotions and to integrate body based learning. In a 2008 training with the co-founder of Yoga Ed, Leah Kalish, she stated that Yoga Ed was the “common language of the school” [at TAS in Los Angeles] (L. Kalish, personal communication, August 31, 2008); the discourse of mind-body awareness was accepted by administrators, teachers and children alike. Stress is not positioned as something that teachers must manage, rather self awareness is modeled as essential for all members of the school community. At TAS, Yoga Ed is not a teacher initiated and sustained program; it is a core component of the school culture.

In the 2003 study of the Yoga Ed program at TAS, the study showed that “yoga is clearly related to desirable school outcomes” (p. 43), but the authors do not make any suggestions as to how yoga contributed to changing the school culture. Exploring how the Yoga Ed program significantly altered the school culture at TAS should not be underestimated as a primary way in which lasting change was documented in everything from academic achievement, improved physical fitness and a decrease in behavioral problems (Slovacek et al., 2003). Having an initiative supported by the entire school community is a significant aspect of any initiative. Educational change requires attention by the entire system of the school, with attention paid to group dynamics and interpersonal influences (Mintz, 2007).

Privatization of Stress

It may be ideal for an entire school to embrace Yoga Ed, but this is rare. In the interviews I conducted it was more common for individual teachers to pay for and take time out of their summers to attend the Yoga Ed program. They may be the only teacher in the school who is attempting to integrate the Yoga Ed program or who is interested in self awareness or stress reduction. Pinning stress on the individual is a part of 20th century discourses that imagines the “self” as stressed and envisions therapeutic spaces in which this stress can be handled (Hoyez, 2007). Stress, within this contemporary context, is positioned as something that teachers need to manage appropriately as part of their profession.

Yoga Ed uses the dominate discourse of “self management” and “stress management” for teachers; with teacher wellbeing correlated to student achievement. Cofounders Tara Guber and Leah Kalish state that Yoga Ed, “believes that physical, mental and emotional health and well-being are directly correlated with enjoying successful relationships and a fulfilling life. Therefore, we are committed to modeling and teaching yoga-based exercises and techniques that develop what the medical profession has determined are the two contributors to lifetime health and wellness: self awareness and self management. When students and teachers are taught to regularly address the conditions of their mind-body states, and know how to implement specific tools to support their health and well-being, they are empowered to create a harmonious inner and outer environment. This has been shown to improve focus, concentration, responsible behavior and academic achievement” (Kalish & Guber, 2004, p. 2).

The Yoga Ed program uses the contemporary discourse on the privatization of stress, but provides specific tools by which the individual teacher can actually achieve this goal. The clarity with which they emphasize specific practices to achieve self care and self awareness in the classroom may be what entices innovative teachers to participate in their program.
Individual teachers feeling isolated in attempts to ameliorate the stress levels of their students through yoga was a consistent theme in the interviews I conducted. The following two quotes reflect the difficulties teachers face when they feel that they are single handedly addressing the stress which may be unconsciously promoted in the larger school culture:

“One of the most frustrating parts of being a teacher is that I sometimes feel like I don’t make a difference…Today my students came in and none of their work was done and they were screaming and yelling again. I took a really deep breath and asked myself ‘How are you going to deal with this? I took a pause because I thought I want a yoga classroom, one that is peaceful and respectful…this is just 40 minutes in their whole day and my struggle is going to be even harder given that.” Foreign language teacher, Yoga Ed trained · Title 1 Public School

“I feel like teachers are not really encouraged to take care of ourselves. It is so important, but so ignored within school… We are encouraged to explore on our own time, but you are supposed to do all these things, meet all these people. There is no time to relax and take care of ourselves in a healthy way…this is probably the missing component. Special Ed teacher, Yoga Ed trained · Private School for Children with Emotional and Behavioral Issues

Imagining that it is the “self” which is stressed creates a cultural context in which a “profound burden of responsibility” is placed on “school managers and teachers” (Kelly & Colquhoun, 2003, p. 201). Within this dominant discourse little time is spent addressing the larger socio-cultural factors that promote stressful conditions. Social science researchers have begun to question, “what makes it possible at this moment [in history] to link the success or otherwise of a massive institutional process of state-regulated schooling to the health and well-being of teachers and the management of this health and well-being by school managers?” (Kelly & Colquhoun, 2003, p. 192).

As part of the management of stress, the Yoga Ed program provides teachers with effective tools that are specifically designed to manage their own stress and the stress of the classroom. On the level of the individual, these tools do seem to be effective. Ellen Martenez, a public school teacher in a Title I school, states, “The Yoga Ed program showed me ways to bring yoga into the classroom. I was doing yoga before, but I was stressed out, really short fused and not making the connection with embodying yoga in the classroom.” Yet Martenez faces a difficult class. Many of her students have ADHD, difficulty with behavior problems, and violence. While some families are interested in helping her work through these difficulties, others are angry and blame her for the problems. The school administration acknowledges that bullying and violence are endemic, but no one is “really aware” of how Ellen is attempting to handle these ongoing stresses through the introduction of yoga. Despite stress from students, family, school culture and administration, Martenez takes on the blame for not doing enough. She states, “As I go through my first three weeks of school this year, I still find myself coming up short.”

While the privatization of stress can serve to empower teachers to make positive changes, Martenez’s distress at “coming up short” points to a potential pitfall in the privatization of stress management: it can disempower teachers if they are not aware of the role of school culture and educational policies which make “managing” stress a perpetual problem. In a survey I conducted on teachers who are using the Yoga Ed program in their school, 60% of the respondents said that teachers primarily discuss stress as something that they should resolve, as opposed to 20% who see teachers discussing stress as a responsibility of the school and larger educational institutions or policies. This suggests that teachers using the Yoga Ed program see the value in the privatization of stress management, but they may do so at their own peril. TAS, which has truly benefited from the Yoga Ed program, was accepted by all levels of the school culture; Yoga Ed was part of creating an educational environment that actively deals with the ongoing stresses of school. It may be unrealistic to assume that isolated teachers, isolated physical education programs or isolated afterschool programs can be as effective.

In an interview I conducted with Dr. Jullian Miller, a former principal of a K-4 public school, she discussed the importance of having the support of administration to create lasting change.
“A lot of administrators I knew evaluated their classrooms on the basis of kids being in their seats and quiet. Just the idea of kids getting up out of their seats and moving around is scary. I think scarier for administrators than for teachers because teachers are more on the front lines and they see the value of movement. Yet teachers can become afraid to let kids move because the principal might come by and see that they are letting the kids move.

Bringing structured movement like yoga into the classroom builds the kids awareness of their own bodies and their own movements and body boundaries. When I first started teaching I saw kids who didn’t know where their bodies were. They would bump into things and people and they didn’t know where their bodies were. Yoga really helps to clarify that for kids.

Principals need to be made aware of the role of yoga. A lot of curriculum issues that are supported by administrators really flourish; if they don’t the programs kind of die. I think that is a role that the principle has to play in any kind of progressive curriculum. The principle needs to be able to speak to and teach the parents and support the entire community.

One of the things Dr. Miller did as she decided to integrate yoga into her own classroom was to invite the principal of her school in to see “exactly what she was doing.” Principals are significant role models for the integration of any core curriculum into the school culture. The aim of the Yoga Ed program is to help students and teachers alike to understand how the cultivation of self-awareness and self-care positively impacts the learning environment; leaders in school communities need to be dedicated to modeling the privatization of stress management for the program to be successful. Individual behavior patterns alone may not be able to sustain lasting change; the modeling of individuals “managing” their stress needs to be echoed in the facilities, leadership and culture of the school for sustainable change. “Inconsistency between teaching and practice” confuses students, decreasing the “likelihood of emulation and educational effectiveness” (Lyons Higgs & McMillan, 2006, p. 40).

Discussion

There are four means of school change: individual role models, school facilities, school governance and school culture (Lyons Higgs & McMillan, 2006). Other than The Accelerated School in Los Angeles the primary way that the Yoga Ed program is being integrated is through individual role models. Yoga Ed is primarily a teacher initiated and sustained reform (Pearson, 2007-2008). Behaviors engaged in by teachers I interviewed included 1) integrating yoga postures as a way to include the body in the classroom, especially when the class had individuals with ADHD 2) introducing non-competitive physical activity and awareness of the breath and mind into the physical education department 3) cultivating self awareness and self care through the practice of yoga, meditation, massage and other stress reduction techniques and 4) helping students understand their own behaviors and how to modify them through the practices of yoga. While teachers expressed that these practice did work; those who had been the sole role model for these healthy behaviors for over five years expressed feeling “defeated” and “alone.”

The privatization of “stress management” may be more effective when engaged in by all levels of the school culture. Additional research is needed on how the Yoga Ed program is supported at The Accelerated School as this may uncover how the school culture, facilities, and leadership promotes self-awareness and self care. School leaders who model self-awareness and self-care may contribute to a school culture that is more effective. By having the schools rituals, pedagogy, buildings, programs, and extracurricular activities model self awareness and self care the school may be in a better position to benefit from the documented benefits of yoga practices. Each school’s challenges are unique, and while it is likely that we can learn from TAS it is equally likely that each school must take an individual approach to the cultivation of self-care and self-awareness (Thomas, 2008); the Yoga Ed program may work for urban schools, yet flounder in rural settings.

How to cope with the growing problems within our public schools is a subject of debate by the public, teachers, administrators, researchers and legislators. One place we can look to see what is effective is at teacher initiated and sustained programs. Yoga Ed’s acceptance by teachers shines light on what they perceive are significant problems, worthy of their time and limited resources. The privatization of stress is clearly important to the teachers who responded to my survey; 80% agreed with the statement that they “spend on average $100 a month on stress relief (massages, yoga classes, meditation, retreats).” Perhaps teachers accept the privatization of stress because this how they experience it: personally. Teachers are weighed down by the burden of our institutional inequities, pressures of testing, student behaviors and policies. While there is little that they can do about the larger forces that influence the classroom, there is something they can do to change their reaction to it – cultivate self-awareness and engage in self care. The Yoga Ed program speaks to the immediate needs of educators.

Yoga Ed is changing the way that teachers think about and reflect on their work as teachers. 60% responded that the primary reason they attended the Yoga Ed program was because they are “interested in teaching and always seeking new ways to innovate in the classroom” and 50% of respondents agreed with the statement that “participation in yoga or Yoga Ed makes teaching more meaningful to me.” Qualitative research is needed to find out what it is about the Yoga Ed program that is meaningful and creates positive change in the way teachers view their role and responsibilities.

The privatization of stress management is part of our contemporary cultural discourse. It is prevalent in the field of health as well as in education. Additional qualitative work is needed to understand what it is within our culture that makes the privatization of stress necessary. Does the emphasis on the individual take pressure off of governments to secure the resources, structures and support necessary to design effective teaching environments? This is the type of question that policy holders, educational leaders and researchers need to explore to better understand our cultural emphasis on the self as responsible for stress. Yoga Ed’s success as a grass-roots movement encourages additional questions, such as:

- Why does our culture emphasize student health over teacher health? (More research has been completed on student satisfaction and benefits from yoga, than teacher satisfaction and benefits).

- What factors lead teachers to voluntarily commit their own resources to regulate stress levels through programs like Yoga Ed?

- Do schools that integrate Yoga Ed have less teacher burnout?
- What is the experience for teachers who are not supported in their interest in Yoga Ed? How do they perceive their school culture?

- Why does our culture emphasize individual management of stress over cultural and institutional changes to address stress?

- Are grassroots programs like Yoga Ed sustainable to address the immediate problem of teacher dissatisfaction and burnout?

- Do schools that adopt the Yoga Ed program (as opposed to individual teachers) able to better model how self awareness and self care are significant for all members of the school community and culture at large?

The initial insight into how Yoga Ed uses the dominant discourse of the privatization of stress management and attempts to ameliorate these stresses through the engagement of specific practices was garnered in a short 3 month study. The study included 4 interviews, 5 responses to a survey and a literature review. While this work is sufficient to generate questions regarding the Yoga Ed program, the deeper insights into why Yoga Ed has become a popular program at this time will require a through and systematic qualitative study.

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Yoga for Eating Disorders

2011-10-19T13:12:00.000-07:00

The antidotal and case study evidence for yoga’s effectiveness for eating disorders is undoubtedly increasing. Learning about the somatic cues of the body and how to respond to these somatic cues may be a significant component of understanding and relating to the embodied experience. The yoga based practices of postures, breathing practices and deep relaxation are initial opportunities to learn how to self-soothe and begin to care for the self.

I recently spoke with a somatic educator and she claimed that it isn’t only individuals who have eating disorders that need to learn how to relate to their bodies; it is the masses of people who push themselves too far, engaging in an assortment of assaults to the body (too much coffee, too little food, too little water and too little rest) in an effort to discipline their bodies into the “right” shape. Others ignore their body’s needs in an effort to accomplish one more task. Listening to this educators “normalization” of the mistreatment of the body has me concerned – for we often treat our bodies the same way we treat the world around us. The body is our entry way to understanding self and other. Creating a culture of care for the body (not discipline or self indulgence) is something that North Americans are just beginning to inquire into. Too often yoga is positioned as a panacea or as an indulgence for middle class Americans. It is time for us to see care of the self much as the French philosopher Michel Foucault entreated us to: as the basis for all ethical behavior.

There is a lack of longitudinal and double blind studies on the effectiveness of yoga for eating disorders. Indeed, one study showed that there was no improvement in eating disorder behavior after engaging in yoga (Mitchell, K. S., Mazzeo, S. E., Rausch, S. M., & Cooke, K. L., 2007). In my interactions with yoga therapists I have seen a wide range of techniques proclaimed as “helpful” – from power yoga in heated rooms to mindfulness based practices. Understanding just which practices help which people is an area of needed study. I encourage yoga therapists and educators to explore who does and does not benefit from the practices they introduce – and to publish all of these results.

In my own private sessions with individuals who have eating disorders, I see a slow but perceptible change in how they relate to their bodies. The goal of the embodied practices of yoga is to tune in towards the bodies intelligence, to begin hearing and responding to its needs so that we can experience our natural sense of lightness, wisdom and clarity. The first step is to feel a sense of safety in one’s body; a sense that the body can be a trusted ally. Once this safety is achieved, I encourage individuals to take a group class where they can experiment with feeling relaxed while in a room of strangers.

Understanding how the mind works, or mindfulness, is central to many new therapies in the West. I believe just as important is an understanding of our bodies, our spiritual yearnings and the typical mental and emotional difficulties that humans encounter in their daily lives. For those with a diagnosed mental illness it is essential to discriminate between what is part of the illness and what is part of ordinary human suffering. Yoga is particularly valuable for working with ordinary human suffering, which is often overlaid on top of or underneath an eating disorder.

At the heart of the practice and methodology of yoga is an ideology describing the nature of consciousness. Similar to psychology, yoga is an organized system of knowledge, based on observation that seeks to account for fundamental principles of human behavior and potential. Yogic theory has long asserted that our actions are sometimes motivated by unconscious motivations (called swapna in Sanskrit). Being grounded in the sensory experiences of the present moment is believed to help the individual to see the world as it is, free of our unconscious motivations and interpretations. Yoga does not ask us to accept its theories as truth, but to engage with these ideas as a method by which we can draw attention to our assumptions and begin to re-think for ourselves the nature of the mind and healing. This process of questioning assumptions seems to be something that individuals with eating disorders are particularly gifted at. Their critical minds are able to question the validity of assumptions and often do not accept answers with real, embodied truth to substantiate the claims.

Below is a list of some of the current studies on yoga and eating disorders:

Strength Training or Yoga for AN Patients? (2005). Eating Disorders Review, 16(2), 8-8.
Bachner-Melman, R., Zohar, A. H., Ebstein, R. P., & Bachar, E. (2007). The relationship between selflessness levels and the severity of anorexia nervosa symptomatology. European Eating Disorders Review, 15(3), 213-220.

Boudette, R. (2006). Question & answer: yoga in the treatment of disordered eating and body image disturbance: how can the practice of yoga be helpful in recovery from an eating disorder? Eating Disorders, 14(2), 167-170.

Carei, T. R., Breuner, C. C., & Fyfe-Johnson, A. (2007). 30: The evaluation of yoga in the treatment of eating disorders. Journal of Adolescent Health, 40(2, Supplement 1), S31-S32.

Dale, L. P., Mattison, A. M., Greening, K., Galen, G., Neace, W. P., & Matacin, M. L. (2009). Yoga Workshop Impacts Psychological Functioning and Mood of Women With Self-Reported History of Eating Disorders. [Article]. Eating Disorders, 17(5), 422-434. doi: 10.1080/10640260903210222

Dittmann, K. A., & Freedman, M. R. (2009). Body Awareness, Eating Attitudes, and Spiritual Beliefs of Women Practicing Yoga. [Article]. Eating Disorders, 17(4), 273-292. doi: 10.1080/10640260902991111

Douglass, L. (2009). Yoga as an intervention for eating disorders: Does it help? . Eating Disorders: The journal of treatment and prevention. , 17 (2), 126-139.

Douglass, L. (2011). Thinking Through the Body: The Conceptualization of Yoga as Therapy for Individuals with Eating Disorders. Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention. 19 (1) 83-107.

Marsden, P., Karagianni, E., & Morgan, J. F. (2007). Spirituality and clinical care in eating disorders: A qualitative study. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 40(1), 7-12.

McIver, S., O'Halloran, P., & McGartland, M. (2009). Yoga as a treatment for binge eating disorder: A preliminary study. Complementary Therapies in Medicine, 17(4), 196-202.

Mitchell, K. S., Mazzeo, S. E., Rausch, S. M., & Cooke, K. L. (2007). Innovative interventions for disordered eating: evaluating dissonance-based and yoga interventions. The International Journal Of Eating Disorders, 40(2), 120-128.

Rawal, A., Enayati, J., Williams, M., & Park, R. (2009). A mindful approach to eating disorders. [Article]. Healthcare Counselling & Psychotherapy Journal, 9(4), 16-20.

The Missing Body-- Yoga and Higher Education

2011-10-17T11:44:00.000-07:00

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).

Amann, Tara (2003)“Creating Space for Somatic Learning within Transformative Learning Theory,” paper presented at Fifth International Conference on Transformative Learning, Teachers College, Columbia University, October 23-25, 2003.

Barlas,C. (2001) Learning-within-relationship as context and process in adult education, 42nd Annual Adult Education Research Conference Proceedings, East Lansing: Michigan State University, June 1-3.

Beckett, D. (1998).Disembodied learning: How flexible delivery shoots higher education in the foot. Electronic Journal of Sociology, University of Melbourne, 1,www.sociology.org/content/vol003.003/beckett.html. Retrieved June 8, 2003.

Belenky,M.F et al (1986, 1996). Women’s Ways of Knowing, New York: Basic Books.
Benson, H. Wilcher, B. Greenbery, E. Huggins, M. Ennis, P.C. Zuttermeister, P.Meyers, and R. Friedman, (2000). Academic performance among middle school students after exposure to a relaxation response curriculum. Journal of Research and Development in Education,(33) 3.

Chapman,V.L.(1998). Adult education and the body. 39th Annual Adult Education Research Conference Proceedings,( pp. 91-102), ED. 381616

Clark, M.C. (2001). Off the beaten path: Some creative approaches to adult learning, New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, no. 89, San Francisco: California: Jossey Bass, 83-91.

Cohen, Judith Beth (1996) Rewriting our lives: Stories of meaning-making in an adult learning community. Journal of Narrative and Life History. 6(2), 145- 156.

Cohen, J and D. Piper, (2000). Transformation in a residential adult learning community,” in Jack Mezirow & Associates, Learning as Transformation: Critical Perspectives on a Theory in Process. (pp. 205-228), San Francisco, Ca: Jossey- Bass:

Damasio The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness,1999, Harcourt, new York.)

Dewey, John (1938). Experience and Education, New York, Collier Books, 1963.

D. Ettling, 2003, “Contemplative Dimension of transformative Learning,” Paper at conference).

Feuerstein,G. (1999) Ten fundamental principles of yoga, Yoga Research and

Education Center, (pp.1-3), www.yrec.org/10principles.html. Retrieved
June 5, 2003.

Feuerstein,G. (1999) Yoga: The Art and Science of Self-Transcendence, Yoga Research and Education Center, (pp.1-11), www.yrec.org/ art-science.html. Retrieved June 6, 2003.

Kristie Fleckenstein (in College English, 1999)

Gustafson, D.L.(1999). Embodied learning: The body as an epistemological site.
Meeting the Challenge: Innovative Feminist Pedagogies in Action, Eds. M. Mayberry and E.C. Ross, (pp.249-274), New York: Routledge,

Gardner, H. (1983).Frames of mind. New York: Basic Books. From The Disciplined Mind, 1999, New york: Simon & Schuster.

Jensen, E. (2000) (Educational Leadership, Nov.2000, “moving with the brain in mind, 34-37)
Johnson, Don H. Bone, Breath &Gesture: Practices of Embodiment, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, Ca. 1995.

Johnson, M.(1987). The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination and Reason, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1996). Mindfulness meditation: What is it, what it isn’t and its role in health care and medicine, In Haruki, Y.Ishii,Y, and Suzuki ,M. Comparative and Psychological Study on Meditation, Eburon: Netherlands.

Kerka, S. (2002). Somatic/embodied learning and adult education. ERIC Trends and Issues Alert No. 32, ericacve.org/docgen.asp?tbl=ita&ID=155. Retrieved May
30, 2003.

Lakoff, G and Johnson, M (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, New York: Basic Books.

Malathi, A. and A.Damodaran ( 1999).Stress due to exams in medical students–role of yoga. Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology,43, (2), 218-224.
Manjunath, N.K., and S. Telles. (2001). Improved performance in the tower of London test following yoga. Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, 45 (3), 351-354.
Unfolding Bodymind, Miller et al. 2001

Mezirow, Jack (1991). Transformative dimensions of adult learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Mezirow & Associates(2000). Learning as transformation:Critical perspectives on a theory in progress, San Francisco, Ca.: Jossey-Bass.

Polyani, Knowing and Being, Univ Of Chicago press, 1969, as quoted by Clark 85).

Raghuraj, P. and S. Telles (1997) Muscle power, dexterity and visual perception in community home girls trained in yoga or sports and regular school girls. Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, 41 (4), 409-415.
Schlattner, L.(1994). The body in transformative learning.35th Annual Adult Education Research Conference Proceedings, (pp. 324-329), ED 426247.

Schon, D.A.(1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books.

Taylor, Edward (1997).Building upon the theoretical debate: A critical review of the empirical studies of Mezirow’s transformative learning theory.” Adult Education Quarterly, 48, (1), 34-59.

Tremmel, Robert (1993) Zen and the art of reflective practice in teacher education. Harvard Educational Review, 63 (4), 434-458.

Todd, J. (2001). Body knowledge, empathy and the body politic. The Humanist, 62,
(March-April): 23-28.

Weiss, Ruth. TD, 63, Sept. 2001. Vol 55 No. 9 61-67.

YREC (2001),Yoga Research and Education Center, Yoga and education bibliography,
Santa Rosa, Ca. http://www.yrec.org/. Retrieved June 10, 2003.

Zull, James.(2002). The Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning. Stylus Publishing Co.

* Though my doctorate is in Literature and Writing, I teach adults in a Interdisciplinary Studies Master’s program with a self-designed specialization.

Contact the author at: Markanjudy@msn.com

University of Minnesota

2011-09-12T07:29:00.000-07:00

Dr. Miriam Cameron is a member of the Graduate Faculty, as well as Lead Faculty of the Tibetan Healing Initiative, at the University of Minnesota Center for Spirituality & Healing. She had developed and teaches three graduate courses about the practices of Tibetan Medicine, Yoga, and Ayurveda. For more information go to: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~camer008/bio.html

Traditional Tibetan Medicine: Ethics, Spirituality & Healing. 3 credits.

This course will introduce students to ethics, spirituality, and healing from the perspective of traditional Tibetan medicine. Traditional Tibetan doctors believe that illness results from imbalance and that treating illness requires correcting the underlying imbalance. Students will learn how to apply these principles personally, integrate them into clinical practice, and consult with a traditional Tibetan doctor.

Yoga: Ethics, Spirituality, and Healing. 3 credits.

This course will introduce students to ethics, spirituality, and healing from the perspective of Yoga, an ancient Indian discipline. Students will examine the claim that systematic Yoga practice leads to optimal health. Using critical thinking, students will evaluate philosophical knowledge, scientific evidence, and practical application, and propose research-based programs for integrating Yoga into personal and professional life.

Tibetan Medicine, Ayurveda, and Yoga in India. 3 credits.

Tibetan Medicine, Ayurveda, and Yoga are interrelated, ancient, holistic, Tibetan and Indian traditions that integrate ethics, spirituality, and healing. While studying with expert practitioners in India, students will examine the claim that systematic practice of these traditions promotes optimal health. Using critical thinking, students will evaluate philosophical knowledge, cultural practices, and scientific evidence, and propose research-based programs for integrating these traditions into personal and professional life.

To find out more about these offerings go to:
http://www.csh.umn.edu/thi/ or
go to: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~camer008/bio.html

Yoga Labs” in the Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts Classroom

2011-06-07T11:17:00.000-07:00

Andrea Olsen became interested in the potential role of yoga in higher education when she received a Contemplative Practice Fellowship in l999 from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). The year-long grant encouraged fellowship holders to explore ways to introduce contemplative techniques into the curriculum, and she chose to incorporate a yoga lab in two of her courses—Anatomy and Kinesiology, and Body and Earth. In addition to college teaching, Olsen is on the faculty of a yoga teacher training program and offers workshops and performances in international venues and annual training programs to the general public.

Olsen explains that the word “Hatha” is a compound of the words Ha and Tha (Sanskrit for the words sun and moon). Physical yoga classes are intended to assist the practitioner in achieving balance between action and rest, doing and being. Hatha Yoga is a system of thought believed to have been developed by Yogi Swatmarama, the compiler of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika (Muktibodhananda, 1993); this classical text on the physical practices of yoga, integrates shatkriyas, or internal cleansing practices, along with the practice of physical postures (asanas) and breathing practices (pranayama) as a way to prepare the mind for the deeper cognitive work of meditation. Contemporary hatha yoga practices (often referred to as “modern postural yoga” by scholars) are believed to be as influenced by the disciplines of dance and gymnastics as they are East Indian philosophy (Singelton, 2010).

Olsen was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in New Zealand in 2003, teaching and conducting research for a semester at Whitirea Community Polytechnic, an arts program (Whitirea Performing Arts) that served Maori, Cook Island, and Samoan dancers. Many of Olsen’s students had felt challenged in traditional academic settings, and she found the integration of yoga into her dance classes was particularly useful to help students concentrate--and also to rest after hours of physical training. She states, “Some students need to move--to embody their knowledge—particularly in inner city and junior high school settings, where there is pent up energy. Getting young people to sustain focus these days is potent, and yoga calms the mind and channels energy in a productive way. It’s an awareness practice, and awareness is the first step in changing behavior.”

As a professor of dance and environmental studies, Olsen has taught “Anatomy and Kinesiology” for three decades. The semester-long course meets twice a week for an hour-and-a-half of experiential learning and was the basis for her first book, Bodystories: A Guide to Experiential Anatomy, written in collaboration with colleague Caryn McHose. Olsen added a “yoga lab” to her course, a concept that parallels that found in chemistry labs across the country: to provide an opportunity to further investigate what is being studied in the core component of the course.

Olsen explains the structure of the class, “There is a significant memorization component for exams, with a focus on the skeletal, muscular, and nervous systems. In the yoga labs we deepened the experience.” The yoga lab allowed Olsen, and her students to use the anatomical terms within the context yoga postures, encourage applied learning. For example, she would say, “Feel your calcaneus on the ground, rather than feel your heel. Movement through the yoga postures also pumps the fluids through the body, which helps to balance the endocrine system. Hormones traveling through the blood can get trapped or pooled in areas of the body through tension and stress. Depending on what asanas or postures you are doing in yoga, certain glands and tissues of the endocrine system are stimulated.” Olsen’s anatomy course usually enrolls thirty to forty students, and fills with college juniors and seniors from a variety of disciplines with dance and premed students given priority. She explains, “Pre-med students learn techniques that may help them assist future patients. If someone comes into their medical practice with hypertension, they might suggest yoga or breathing techniques. They know in their own bodies the effectiveness of the process they are recommending.”

Each of Olsen’s yoga labs starts with an exploration of one of the ten yamas and niyamas in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Patanjali postulated that ethics was the basis of the eight step path necessary for seeing beyond the conditioned mind (known as asthanga yoga). The first stage on this path towards freedom is the practice of ethical principles, known as yamas (non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, continence/non-addictiveness, and non-greed) and the second is the niyamas (personal practices): (purity/cleanliness, contentment, austerity/ , self-study, and self-surrender). These principles apply both to physical and mental aspects of the practice; for example, non-harming includes both restraining from hurting others or yourself in the physical practice and from hurting with your thoughts—through self criticism or a judgmental attitude.” During the ten-week course, Olsen “introduces one yama or niyama in each class, while students are focusing on breath in a basic seated posture. “I connect the principles both to yoga practice and to life, so they understand that there is philosophic underpinning to the science of the postures—it’s not just a physical practice or an exercise regime. In an hour-long class, I can’t go in depth into yoga philosophy, but I might read a passage from Iyengar so students know there is a literary heritage for further research.”

Olsen also uses a weekly yoga lab in her “Body and Earth” course. This is an undergraduate interdisciplinary course that combines the science of body with the science of place--the intersection of the “body systems with earth systems.” She has taught this material in the Environmental Studies program for a decade, resulting in her second book, Body and Earth: An Experiential Guide, which includes yoga images as part of the artwork. She sometimes finds the yoga lab less effective for this course, as students want experiential work and field trips outside the studio. She explains, “From the beginning of the course students explore how evolutionary concepts are present within their own bodies. For example, life began in the ocean with the first single cells three billion years ago. The human body is still mostly water (sixty-seventy percent) and this fluid responsiveness underlies the health of our other body systems. Body is Earth: our bones, breath and blood are the minerals, air, and water inside us, not separate but same. Whatever we put in the air or soil goes into the water and eventually into us.” Olsen sees the interdisciplinary nature of her course as one of its strengths, as interdisciplinary studies “support the understanding of interconnected systems.” Olsen sees the unity of body, mind, and spirit as fundamental to yoga, and sees interdisciplinary environmental studies programs as offering a compatible model.

Using yoga in her classes has specific challenges. Students view yoga as yet another method to control their bodies, rather than learning to listen to the deep, inherent intelligence of their bodies and earth. She explains, “My goal is to teach a deep respect for the body—body listening. Your conscious mind can only be aware of a tiny amount of what is going on around you at any moment, or you’d be overwhelmed. The body, however, registers more information below the conscious level. We know more than we think we know. We have to learn to listen to this deeper knowing. But if you ask students why they take yoga, many would say it’s to gain control. One of the things I say right away is that we are experiencing yoga to create a dialogue with our intrinsic intelligence—the extraordinary knowledge that we have, but tend to ignore.”

Yoga in an Undergraduate Course in the Southern United States

2011-05-24T07:13:00.000-07:00

Metka Zupancic is a professor of French/Modern languages at a public university in Alabama, where she also serves as a graduate adviser and teaches courses in critical theory and philosophy of literature. In her “Critical Theory” graduate course, Zupancic encourages her students to approach literary theory from a larger perspective, where mindfulness and understanding of patterns of thinking help them to better understand literary phenomena. She wants them to expand their approach from perspectives that are exclusively Eurocentric. She includes authors such as Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, who she feels bring a much needed and fresher dimension to contemporary literature by the inclusion of myths and symbols from a culture that remains obscure for Westerners.

In 2002 Zupancic developed the course, “Yoga: East to West,” to develop what she feels is a missing need in Euro-American education: a way to addresses the multiple ways in which humans make meaning - through the body, mind, emotion and spirit. She explains, “Where did Western critical theory originate? Nietzsche’s death of God. This is when we see the human mind wanting to control everything. Individuals began to search for new ways to navigate meaning, because ultimately we are a meaning making species.” “Yoga: East and West” is situated in the Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Initiative of the University of Alabama. During the 3 credit, 15 week course students spend half of their three hours studying the philosophical texts of Yoga and the other half of their time practicing Yoga postures in the Iyengar tradition, breathing practices and various forms of meditation. Students also read texts written by Georg Feurstein, a Yogic scholar who has authored over thirty books on Yoga, Tantra and Hinduism (Feurstein, 2003). In “Yoga: East to West” students explore how the concept of Yoga changes from East to West, and how the transcultural production of Yoga influences its production. She explains, “Yoga is not one thing only. It has always been plural. It has always been transcultural, a multitude of traditions that are cross pollinating each other.”

Students also have the opportunity to study some of the more esoteric dimensions of Yoga, such as the “chakras,” auras and specific energy practices, which Dr. Zupancic is rather cautious about. She explains, “There may be situations outside of the university context where students are learning all these Yogic techniques, about how to work with the chakras and with the subtle bodies. With no previous knowledge about these dimensions and no solid preparation, such as an ongoing Hatha Yoga practice, these young people may tend to run away from reality and believe in some special skills, instead of remaining grounded in everyday reality and its challenges. Although the course can only address some of the multiple aspects of how Yoga is used (and eventually misused) in the contemporary world, especially in the West, students may start to think more critically and be able to choose among possible further teachers. I hope they keep in mind that the ultimate goal for all is the betterment of humankind.”

Dr. Zupancic’s primary influence from the Yoga tradition is Iyengar Yoga, a form developed by B.K.S. Iyengar of Pune, India. Iyengar emphasizes an alignment-based approach to the physical postures (asanas), and stresses the significance of the intellectual and spiritual components of body-based learning. Iyengar describes his approach to Yoga as, "research based experience" and "experience based research" (www.bksiyengar.com, 2010, ¶ 1). Iyengar sees Yoga as a methodological form of inquiry that leads the practitioner to mental acuity and a direct experience of philosophical teaching. Academics are particularly attracted to Iyengar’s methodological approach to thinking though the body, as is evidence in DeMichelis’s A History of Modern Yoga (2005), and in several articles on the topic of how modern postural yoga leads to knowledge and self-reflexivity (Lea, 2009; Pagis, 2009). Zupancic resonates with Iyengar’s tangible and accessible approach to exploring philosophy.

Her course challenges her colleagues, who worry about the integration of spirituality and body based ways of knowing. It also challenges her students, who can often be uncomfortable with these new ways of knowing. Indeed, Zupancic sees her course, “Yoga: East and West” as challenging some of the fundamental ways in which North Americans approach undergraduate scholarship. Zupancic’s class challenges students to question their relationship with scholarship and text. She explains, “Students don’t know how to approach a text and they are trained to come to a text with a preconceived set of ideas – ‘what they want to get out of it.’ And that is the Western paradigm, an approach that is part of a colonizing attitude or mindset.” In the class discussion Zupancic encourages students to understand where the writings come from, and why they focus on dimensions that are unfamiliar to them; thus, moving quickly towards criticism and rejection of the ideas presented in the texts.

The Yoga practice component of the course gives students an opportunity to explore their bodies in new ways. Dr. Zupancic explains, “That deep pleasure, that joy of inhabiting the body and moving the body that emerges from the Yoga practice is a component of what is learned in the class.” She feels that Yoga is particularly important for her North American students in the South, whose idea of the body is heavily influenced by Puritanism. She explains, “where the idea of the body may often be linked to a number of taboos, the embodied practice of Yoga allow students to see what their present state is like, physically and mentally, without attempting to suppress or deny that reality.”

Zupancic feels that in the South classes like “Yoga: East to West” in which students explore their beliefs around their bodies and minds will always be in the minority. She explains, “I have students who are flexible in their bodies and are interested in exploring their potential further, but when I read their journals they are saying ‘I believe in my God and I will not let that be shaken.’ There are others who will highly praise the unique opportunity they were offered in this course, but who will remain faithful to their solid initial beliefs. Since we live in an environment where expressing criticism is considered rude, it might take time for them to truly express their positions more overtly. Quite often, they might be indirectly saying, ‘I am not letting your thought process effect mine.’ Others, though, will appreciate for years to come the process of sharing and open collective learning this course enhanced and promoted. There is no saying when and how their interest in other cultures, or in Yoga, may surface again.”

Zupancic is interested in seeing the development of a master’s degrees or a Ph.D.’s in Yoga philosophy at her institution. She envisions such programs as introducing students to the multiple paradigms of Yoga. Such programs would have a critical thinking component, but also an embodied component in which students “are in the body and observe their minds.” Ph.D.’s in Yoga “might allow student to cultivate a relationship with their bodies, and to allow students to know their own self and thinking patterns through experiential exercises.” For the most part, she is “losing faith to be able to do this at [her] institution,” but she does think that there is some momentum in her part of the country to expand course offerings related to Yoga.

_____________________________________________________________

Dr. Zupancic holds a Doctorat de 3e cycle in French and Comparative Literature from the Université des Sciences Humaines in France, a Ph.D. in Romance Philology from the University of Zagreb in Croatia and completed her post-doctorate at the Université de Poitiers, in France. Her interest in language studies has gradually included her interest in Yoga,and general issues pertaining to spirituality and world religion. In between her teaching and writing, she began training in contemporary Yogic practices and has studied with many well-known teachers of modern postural yoga: Judith Hanson Lasater, Ramanand Patel and Aadil Palkhivala among others. Zupancic does not exclusively study or practice Yoga, and feels equally influenced by Qi Gong (a Chinese systems of physical and mental training for health and awareness), Buddhism and Reiki (a form of healing developed in 1922 by Mikao Usui).

She has written about her classroom experiences and the reader can access her own words describing her work at: http://metkazupancic.com/

Yoga in a Philosophy Course, Thinking Through the Body.

2011-05-12T06:47:00.000-07:00

Heavily influenced by feminist philosophers, like Susan Bordo (Bordo 1993), Cressida Heyes seeks to situate the “body” within a cultural and historical context. She wants philosophers to explore “real bodies,” not just discourse about and of bodies. Dr. Heyes found almost no examples of professors including the body as a legitimate way of knowing and learning within the classroom. She explains, “I had been working for quite a while in the philosophy of the body and one of the things I got frustrated by is that there are lots of textual arguments which lead to the conclusion: if you want to change your bodily experience, you have to do new things with your body and not just talk about it. I was compelled by these arguments. I thought ‘if that is right, why do we sit around and talk about ideas and read about ideas? This paradox became more and more pressing for me.” She wanted her students “to practice their bodies and philosophy differently,” and to move beyond “thinking” into experiencing the ideas of philosophy.

Dr. Heyes’ began to conceptualize a course in which students were engaged with ideas intellectually, but also emotionally and physically; a course in which the gap between philosophical theory and how students/teachers live their lives was closed. She wanted to be part of a course in which the so-called “Descartes’ Error,” of separating the mind from the body, no longer existed in the way that she taught. If she could develop an academic course that brought together her knowledge of the body, culture and philosophy, she thought that in “some small way I will have done a service.”

The course Dr. Heyes developed to meet this need was called “Thinking Through the Body: Philosophy and Yoga.” This three credit undergraduate course was cross-listed in the physical education and philosophy departments. The course met twice a week in two, ninety minute sessions. In the first ninety minute session students started with a short meditation and then explored articles like “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Comportment, Motility and Spatiality” (Young, 1980) and a “Body of Knowledge” (Shusterman, 2006). This exploration of discourse about and of the body was supplemented by a second ninety minute session in which students engaged in a yoga practice of postures, breathing practices and meditation techniques based in the teachings of Pattabhi Jois. Together, these two distinct pedagogical approaches were designed to help students explore how the body has its own methods of knowing and that the embodied experience can be further analyzed with critical thinking. Part of what students learn in class is that philosophical ideas can be verified for truth by exploring how they do and do not manifest in the embodied experience, and that embodied experience might itself be a source of knowledge.

Initially, Dr. Heyes worried that students might think of the readings, research papers and philosophical discussions as the “real” class, the space in which knowledge was occurring. Dr. Heyes explains, “we are not good at having experiences that are bodily experiences and counting that as a form of knowledge. Second, we do not work with our embodied knowledge politically. We tend to just talk about it. The addition of yoga to the course offers a chance to experience this form of knowledge.” To counter this, students were required to learn and practice a basic series of postures so that the memory of the practice was embedded in their bodies. She evaluated students at the end of the thirteen week semester on their ability to implement the sequence independently and on their ability to modify the sequence according to their own physical ability. Students had the opportunity to see how they perceived from the body, and that these perceptions altered their propositional knowledge.

One of the problems Dr. Heyes experienced in integrating yoga into the higher education setting is that many North American’s view yoga as an “anti-intellectual activity; yoga is essentially viewed and practiced as ‘just physical exercise.’ ” Dr. Heyes finds that yoga is often devalued in North America because, “Anti-intellectual sentiments play really well here.” She explains, “There is a lot of fear and distain for intellectuals. There is a sense that if you can act spontaneously then somehow you are free. There is the idea that ‘what it is to be an intellectual is to be bound by thought.’ If you are bound by thought then you are not free. You are uptight and constricted in some way. It is an inchoate kind of view, but it is popular. It is particularly popular in the yoga world [people who primarily practice modern postural yoga] and I’ve thought, actually it is a disrespectful view of yoga. Yoga has a really rich textual tradition.” One of the things Dr. Heyes hoped to address in her class is that other cultures do have a way in which the body is valued as a medium of knowing, and that this is not antithetical to intellectual thought.One of the reasons Dr. Heyes chose to cross list her class in physical education and philosophy was to bring the two disciplines together. She explains, “This is how yoga is taught in many places in the world. Hatha yoga is considered a way to prepare the mind for thinking and as way to experience different ideas.”

Dr. Heyes chose to teach Western feminist philosophy as opposed to the Eastern texts related to yoga because this is the literature she knows best. She tells the students in her class, “there is a literature here [in yoga] that you should be reading in conjunction with doing this practice, that properly belongs to this practice, but I don’t know that literature as a scholar. I am not well educated enough in this literature to be able to teach it within a scholarly community. I am going to teach you the literature I do understand and we are going to do this [yoga] practice and we’ll see what happens.” She has gotten criticism from other academics that it is “incorrect” for an educator to take ideas from Western epistemology and put them next to a series of yogic practices that actually have a context, history and their own spiritual lineage. However, the juxtaposition of different cultural ideas and practices allows for contemporary issues of the body, that many Euro-Americans experience, to be explored within the course. For example, the literature of yoga, such as the Hatha Yoga Pradipika (Muktibodhananda, 1993) and Gheranda Samhita (Vasu, 1976) do not address women at all, nor do these texts discuss the relatively new cultural phenomena of eating disorders.

Dr. Heyes calls her class a “pedagogical experiment,” an experiment in learning that she engages in with her students. After the course had ended, she met with a small group of her students to talk about the experience of the course, and to learn from her students what worked and what didn’t in the inclusion of yoga. She explains, “I am trying to break down what it is to ‘do philosophy’ and explore the role of the teacher with my students. This is met with a tremendous relief on the part of a lot of students…Higher Education is an opportunity for professors and students to understand that freedom is not a set of prescriptions: do this, this and this and then be free. We need to understand that freedom, as a practice, results in a great deal of uncertainty.”

Dr. Heyes isn’t certain that pedagogical experiments like “Thinking Through the Body: Philosophy and Yoga” have enough support to continue at her university. Despite the fact the course was cross-listed in philosophy and physical education, only one physical education major took the course – meaning that perhaps there is not enough student support to continue the class. Furthermore, Dr. Heyes was required to apply for and receive a grant that would cover the cost of an adjunct to make up for the larger philosophy class she usually teaches. This adds to Dr. Heyes’ work load (in designing a new course, evaluating that course with students and applying for grants), making it unlikely that others in her department will engage in the pedagogical experimentation necessary to explore new ways of knowing.

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The reader can find more about her work at http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~cheyes/research/index.htm.

She has also co-authored the following article on her integration of yoga as pedagogy: Helberg, N., Heyes, C., & Rohel, J. (2009). Thinking through the body: yoga, philosophy, and physical education. Teaching Philosophy, 32(3), 263(218).

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Cressida Heyes received her B.A. in Politics and Philosophy, an M.A. in Political Science in quick succession. Within weeks of receiving her doctorate, Heyes moved to pursue an academic tenure track job at Michigan State University. She now holds a Canada Research Chair at the University of Alberta. Dr. Heyes is best known for her highly interdisciplinary work that explores the intersection of philosophy with gender, sexuality, and health. She has written widely on the embodied experience, including texts on cosmetic surgery, transgender studies, weight loss, dieting, identity politics and sexuality. She is a widely sought after public speaker, lecturing on the role of the body in society in Canada, Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Yoga as counternarrative: American higher education rethinks difference and interdependency

2011-05-11T05:59:00.000-07:00

Douglass, L. (2011). "Yoga as counternarrative: American higher education rethinks difference and interdependency " Pedagogy, Pluralism and Practice(15): 1-35.

Abstract: This article explores how the subject and practice of Yoga is emerging in American higher education as a counter-narrative, or alternative, to mainstream opinions and views. In democratic education, alternative views are important to fueling academic debate, but new views are also resisted. This article will explore
the way in which Yoga is simultaneously embraced and resisted to show how counternarratives challenge a deeply pluralistic society. Examining the inclusion of Yoga in America’s higher education system asks us to critically question our assumptions of homogeneity and refashion knowledge in terms of interdependency and co-construction.

Keywords: Yoga, Critical pedagogy, Counternarrative, Higher Education

Link to full article: http://www.lesley.edu/provost/jppp/content/jppp_15_douglass.pdf

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

2011-05-10T11:30:00.000-07:00

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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Survey on Yoga in Higher Education

2010-06-09T06:03:00.000-07:00

I am currently doing doctoral research at Lesley University exploring the meaning of yoga for educators who are integrating yoga based practices into their curriculum at public and private universities. This short survey (15 questions) is intended to help me better understand some of the characteristics of educators who are integrating yoga as a pedagogical tool and how pervasive the practice is within North America.

If you have tried using or are using one or more yoga based practice(s) in your classroom (meditation, breathing practices, postures, deep relaxation, chanting, concentration techniques etc), I would appreciate your participation in the following short survey. To participate please click on the following link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/yogainhighereducation.

The last date to participate is November 30, 2010.

Thank you for your participation,

Laura Douglass

The Body at the Center of Education: What educators need to know about embodied learning

2010-05-20T06:15:00.000-07:00

By Laura Douglass

Abstract It is now recognized that learning always contains a somatic component. This paper will explore some of the underlining reasons why education seeks to establish learning as an activity free of the body and how this claim is being dismantled in the field of neuroscience and psychology. Examples will be taken from one form of embodied education, hatha yoga, to show how attention to the body supports learning. This paper advocates for teachers themselves to engage in mindful, embodied practices to assist them in integrating awareness of the body as a site of learning in methodological ways.

“When we create curricula for our schools rarely is a somatic curriculum drafted as well, but an implicit one is always being implemented in the classroom” (Ross in Peters et al., 2004, p. 176).

It is now recognized that learning always contains a somatic component. This paper will explore some of the underlining reasons why education seeks to establish learning as an activity free of the body and how this claim is being dismantled in the field of neuroscience and psychology. Examples will be taken from one form of embodied education, hatha yoga, to show how attention to the body supports learning. This paper advocates for teachers themselves to engage in mindful, embodied practices.

Introduction

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). America’s embrace of embodied ways of knowing such as 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). Despite the increase in acceptance of embodied ways of knowing, much of the literature still struggles to justify the body’s inevitable place in education (Berdayes, 2004; Kazan, 2005; Peters et al., 2004; Shannahoff-Khalsa, 1999; Shapiro, 1999). This paper will explore some of the underlining reasons why education has established learning as an activity free from the body and how this claim is being dismantled in the field of neuroscience and psychology.

The definition of “embodiment” has cultural and biological considerations. Embodiment for sociologists and educators usually refers to “the process by which the body becomes a vehicle for socialization ("Breath control helps quell errant stress response," 2006; Shapiro, 1999, p. 24). For example, the average American second grader is given positive regard for not moving (movement is frequently described as “disrupting”), and is given 15 minutes of recess a day. The cultural message is that the body should be subordinate to both the mind and authorities. Neurobiologist’s view embodiment differently; embodiment refers specifically to the biology of the human experience. The neurobiologist is interest in the biological effects of having 15 minutes of recess a day. In this essay, embodiment refers to both the underlining biological processes of learning and the sociological meaning we make in education by our decision to include or exclude the body.

The recent findings in neuroscience regarding embodied learning have not significantly shifted pedagogy or curriculum. In part this is related to a deeply entrenched philosophical separation of the mind from the body, now infamously known as “Descartes Error” (Damasio, 1999; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). Educator Vincent Berdayes states in The Body in Human Inquiry: Interdisciplinary Explorations of Embodiment,

“Those of us who have been schooled enough… feel a primal disconnection between thought and experience, no matter what we think, say, or hope for. Those primal feelings seep into the dissociated climate of academic texts, pedagogy, social structures, and interpersonal behavior, even when they are rooted in phenomenological claims” (Berdayes, 2004, p. 1).

This paper advocates for teachers to engage in mindful[1], embodied practices to assist them in integrating awareness of the body as a site of learning in methodological ways. Yoga will be used as an example of an embodied practice as it has both a distinct and established methodology and has already begun to be integrated in limited ways in American higher education and K-12 curriculum.

Embodied Practices in the Classroom: This Fox New Special Looks at "Luster Learning" in the Classroom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g_CEHeg-8s

What are we teaching by not including the body?

“The body has been the hidden student in America’s classrooms. It has been absorbing lessons we weren’t even aware were being taught. Responding in ways direct and obvious and hidden and recondite, it has shown itself as a product of academia, a product few were aware was being produced” (Ross in Peters et al., 2004, p.169 ).

Most educators would agree that they are committed to facilitating the learning process and that their curriculum reflects their unconscious and conscious assumptions about how learning best occurs. Most educators would also agree that while the bodies of our students are present, they are often unengaged. 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 ). In most classrooms, the body is expected to cope with long hours of limited movement, scheduled bathroom breaks and meals and limited access to water. After a day of learning the body of a child is often restless, while the body of an adult often hurts.
The body has been missing from Euro-American higher education since the time of Descartes, who claimed that the mind preceded the body (“I think, therefore I am”). Despite the fact that this claim has been dismantled by philosophers (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999) and neurobiologists alike (Damasio, 1999) the body has recently begun to disappear from early childhood education as well. This disappearance is something new (Tobin, 2004); most first graders in America are spending 15-20 minutes of a seven hour day in recess. Are we unconsciously teaching students that “to be educated” means to be separate from and disengaged from one’s body?

Recent findings in the field of neuroscience advocate for more, not less time engaging the body (Zull et al., 2006), but education is not just based on science – it is also concerned with passing on cultural values. Educator Hill points out, “What is learned need not be ‘correct’ or adaptive (we learn bad habits as well as good), need not be conscious or deliberate (one of the advantages of coaching in a skill is that it makes us aware of mistakes we have unconsciously learned to make), and need not involve any overt act (attitudes and emotions can be learned as well as knowledge and skills)” (Merriam, Caffarella, & Baumgartner, 2007, p. 276). The fact that many educators are not aware of the recent findings on the significance of the body in education points to our cultural belief that the body is not a noteworthy consideration in learning. The increase in online education, even for high school students, further solidifies our cultural belief that the body need not be present to learn.

Since the 1970’s, educational anthropologists have affirmed that all education serves to replicate cultural values (Spindler, 1997); education is specifically intended to inculcate its practitioners within a cultural system. These beliefs are often so deeply rooted that they persist despite scientific findings. Lakoff and Johnson explain in Philosophy in the Flesh that, “Once we have learned a conceptual system, it is neurally instantiated in our brains and we are not free to think just anything” (1999, p. 5). In part, beliefs are difficult to change because they have an embodied component - thoughts create specific patterns of neurons that are difficult to change.
The regulation, modification, and “somatic norms” of a culture are often “taken for granted and so escape critical consciousness” (Shusterman, 2006, p.6). French philosopher Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu make the management of bodies central to all issues of power. For example, disciplining the body that cannot “sit still,” rather than directing him or her to ways of working with the body (either in the class or directing the individual to the many forms of occupation that require and value embodiment) the student unconsciously learns that the body, when not controlled, leads to alienation and suffering. By understanding how the body is a site of political and cultural power, educators can have a clear understanding of what we are teaching when we choose not to make the body a considered aspect of education.

The body vividly expresses our differences somatically - through gestures, hair color, facial and bodily expressions. The body makes explicit our age, ethnicity, emotions and physical ability (Shusterman, 2006). These expressions are always read in the traditional classroom, but may not affect pedagogical practices if the teacher is unskilled in embodied ways of knowing. Visceral reactions to topics such as racism, classism and violence may be stifled in favor of a more rational response. This approach reinforces that learning does not happen through the body and that there is nothing to learn from understanding one’s bodily reaction to ideas; learning takes place without the body.

“What happens when we learn to turn our awareness in repeated methodical ways towards the intricacies of our bodily experience?”(Berdayes, 2004, p. 1). What happens is a lot of learning. Learning is a “process that brings together cognitive, emotional, and environmental influences and experiences for acquiring, enhancing, or making changes in one’s knowledge, skills, values, and worldview” (Merriam et al., 2007, p. 277). All of these aspects of learning are directly and profoundly influenced by the body. By turning their awareness to the body neuroscientists and psychologists have made major breakthroughs in understanding the human experience. This understanding sheds new light on our pedagogical practices.

Neuroscience and Learning.

“Cognitive science, the science of the mind and the brain, has in its brief existence been enormously fruitful. It has given us a way to know ourselves better, to see how our physical being – flesh, blood, and sinew, hormone, cell and synapse – and all things we encounter daily in the world make us who we are. This is philosophy in the flesh” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, p. 568).

Prior to integrating embodied learning into education, teachers need a clear understanding of why this is significant We need to know the ways in which the body is directly concerned with learning and what practices positively shape the learning experience. Fortunately, neuroscience has recently answered many of these questions. This section of the paper is not intended to be a comprehensive explanation of neuroscience and learning, but is meant to clarify what has been learned about how the body is central to the learning process. Research regarding the somatic practices of yoga will follow each section so that the reader can have an understanding of how this particular practice does and does not affect learning.

Every educator is intuitively aware that the state of the body directly affects learning. For example, we know that a malnourished student will have difficulty concentrating; a student in chronic pain may find their ability to connect with other students in the class diminished. Bodily well-being directly affects our thoughts and ability to successfully engage in learning. While we are intuitively aware of this process, many educators are less familiar with exactly how the body’s neurotransmitters and neural plasticity is enhanced by our physical well being.

Changes in Neurotransmitters[2] and Learning.

Communication of information between neurons is essential for learning to take place. This communication occurs through the movement of chemicals or hormones across a small space between the cells called the synapse; these chemicals are called neurotransmitters (see figure 2). Neurotransmitters are implicated in almost every aspect of our health and well-being including impulsivity, novelty seeking, memory and learning (Dalley, Mar, Economidou, & Robbins, 2008; El Idrissi, 2008; Suzuki et al., 2008; Thomas et al., 2008). These hormonal messengers are both positively and negatively affected by diet, exercise, stress, mood and relaxation (Avena, Bocarsly, Rada, Kim, & Hoebel, 2008; El Idrissi, 2008; Humphries, Pretorius, & Naudao, 2008; Timothy & Xu-Feng, 2008; Torres & Nowson, 2007; Watson, 2008). While many of the latest studies are done on animal models with implications for humans, neuroscientists agree that neurotransmitters are essential for human well being, learning and cognition.

Neurotransmitters act on the learning process by modifying the intensity and contribution of each chemical in the learning cycle. In Key Aspects of How the Brain Learns, James Zull gives the example of an experiment where the neurotransmitters directly responsible for changes in hearing were manipulated; the influx of auditory related neurotransmitters resulted in changes to how the individual responded to high and low pitch sounds (2006). If the neurotransmitters are altered, our experience alters and our ability to learn changes.
Recent research has shown that the body-based practices of yoga directly alter production of specific neurotransmitters. There is a slowly growing body of evidence that

Yoga has the potential to positively shift our embodied experience, making it more receptive to learning. While some of the neurotransmitters listed in figure 3 may not initially seem significant to the learning process, their intimate relationship with other aspects of learning makes them essential. For example, increased melatonin (which promotes sleep) from yoga practice may not seem extremely significant – but reduced sleep impairs contextual learning (Ruskin & LaHoste, 2008), if students are sleeping better, they are learning better.

An interesting finding is that yoga decreases cortisol levels. Coritsol is produced under stress and high levels are implicated in higher blood pressure, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. As stress above a certain levels is detrimental to the learning process (a moderate level of stress actually improves learning (Hodes & Shors, 2007; Joais, Pu, Wiegert, Oitzl, & Krugers, 2006; Leuner & Shors, 2006), teachers who could introduce mindful embodied practices to students who experience extreme stress under exams or to ameliorate the effects of stressful living situations would be bringing a great service to the students in their classes (Malathi & Damodaran, 1999).
In one study, yoga was found to be more effective than active forms of exercises such as African dance; this rigorous activity was shown to increase cortisol levels (West et al., 2004). This finding indicates that slow, mindful embodied practices may be an effective adjunct to the existing physical fitness programs in our schools. This indication is supported by recent research on mindfulness which shows that slow movements, done with attention, compassion, and awareness increase ability to sustain attention over long periods of time, increase a sense of well-being, calmness, relaxation, improved sleep, less reactivity, increased self-care, self-awareness, and a sense of interconnection with others (Siegel, 2007; Wall, 2005).

Neural Plasticity and Learning.

The ability for neurotransmitters to shift and change is part of neural plasticity. Neural plasticity refers to changes in the actual organization of the brain due to involvement in different activities or experiences and/or structural damage of the brain due to seizures, surgery, tumors et cetera. For example, children who have a surgical procedure that removes half of the brain (hemispherectomy) are able to “rewire” their brain so that most of the functions of learning are not lost (Johnston, 2004) – this rewiring is neural plasticity. According to the theory of neural plasticity, thinking, learning, and acting also change the brain's functional anatomy (Zull et al., 2006). For example in brain imaging studies of musicians it has been demonstrated that the sensorimotor cortical representations change in musicians (this is assumed to be the result of the development of the complex skills associated with learning to play an instrument); the improved sensiormotor skills lead to an increased ability to learn in other areas as well (Meyer, Elmer, Baumann, & Jancke, 2007; Munte, Altenmuller, & Jancke, 2002; Ragert, Schmidt, Altenmuller, & Dinse, 2004). This research suggests that we can organize curriculum around activities that encourage plastic reorganization which will enhance the student’s ability to learn.
Neural plasticity is improved through movement and exercise (Ding, Vaynman, Souda, Whitelegge, & Gomez-Pinilla, 2006; Gabriel, Kamen, & Frost, 2006; Mueller, 2007; Ploughman, Attwood, White, Dor, & Corbett, 2007). No studies have been done on how the somatic practices of yoga change our neuroplasticity. Studies on meditation, however, have found that it creates shifts in the brain which make it easier to concentrate (Brefczynski-Lewis, Lutz, Schaefer, Levinson, & Davidson, 2007; Pagnoni & Cekic, 2007). These results imply the importance of integrating mindful body based practices, which include meditation into the curriculum.
One of the primary ways that brain structures change in response to the environment is through stress. While a certain level of intensity or arousal is optimum for learning, high levels of stress negatively affecting the ability to learn (Zull et al., 2006). During extreme stress “high order functions [of the brain] are bypassed as the survival response kicks in” making learning exceedingly difficult (Caine and Caine in Zull et al., 2006, p. 57 ). Stress has been shown to be increasing for children in America, with programs created to deal with stress having positive effects (Romano & Miller, 1996; Wall, 2005). What makes yoga a particularly valuable embodied way of knowing is that it has been shown (when preformed mindfully) to be very effective at dealing with stress (V. V. Agte & Chiplonkar, 2008; Brownstein & Dembert, 1989; Khasky & Smith, 1999; Malathi & Damodaran, 1999; Michalsen et al., 2005; Monnazzi, Leri, Guizzardi, Mattioli, & Patacchioli, 2002; Schell et al., 1994). Additionally, yoga counteracts our fast paced lives – which some educators believe is negatively effecting our visual perception, short-term memory and decision making (Merriam et al., 2007).

A Sensorimotor Approach to Learning

“Sensory integration can be viewed as a process approach…Process approaches are based on the belief that the functioning of specific neurologic system(i.e. those responsible for sensory processing, motor coordination, and sustain attention) was required for adequate cognitive development” (Bundy, Lane, & Murray, 2002, p. 398).

Central to sensory integration is the idea that learning is heavily dependent on “the ability of normal individuals to take in sensory information derived from the environment and from movement of their bodies, to process and integrate these sensory inputs within the central nervous system, and to use this sensory information to plan and organize behavior” (Fischer, Murray, & Bundy, 1991, p. 4). Sensorimotor approaches to learning challenge the idea that the brain is the only part of us that gathers and processes information. Bodily sensations are now known to influence our cognitive decision making and thought processes (Damasio, 1999; Ogden, Minton, & Pain, 2006).

Interoceptive Learning. We learn about ourselves through movement not only of the body, but in the body. When we come in contact with our environment the interior of the body is constantly changing: hormonal shifts, digestion, movement of fluids or ligament and bone. These sensations are the result of “interoceptors” or sensory nerve receptors “that receive and transmit sensations from stimuli originating in the interior of the body” (Ogden et al., 2006, p. 15). For example, in a yoga class information is received by the brain from the muscles and joints (called proprioception) as a result of sensory receptors that are sensitive to stretch or pressure in the tissue that surrounds them (Bundy et al., 2002). Yoga instructors attempt to help students understand and interpret the different sensations they are experiencing by giving verbal cues as to what may be transpiring in the body. This type of learning is called interoceptive.

Neuroscientists now recognize that we can improve our perceptual and motor skills as well as our knowledge of interoceptive stimuli (Kaas in Babu et al., 2002; Bundy et al., 2002, p. 359; Damasio, 1999). Knowledge of interoceptive experiences has been shown to play a potential role in anxiety management (Wald & Taylor, 2008), prevention of panic attacks (Goldberg, 2001; Meuret, Ritz, Wilhelm, & Roth, 2005) and the prevention of substance abuse (Otto, Safren, & Pollack, 2004). Despite the promising potential interoceptive learning has as a therapeutic modality, research is needed to explore its effects on learning for normal children and adults.
One way that interoceptive learning is promoted is through the yogic practice of meditation. In meditation an individual turns his or her attention toward the internal state. Practitioners may experience the impulses to “do something” but are encouraged to experience these impulses without acting on them. Meditation has been shown to decrease cortisol (a stress hormone) (Jevning, Wilson, & Davidson, 1978), predict higher level of perceptual-motor activity (Jedrczak, Toomey, & Clements, 1986; S. Telles, Hanumanthaiah, Nagarathna, & Nagendra, 1994), reduce stress in students (Janowiak & Hackman, 1994), increase academic performance (Hall, 1999), and increases the ability to sleep (Tooley et al., 2000). How does awareness of our internal world have so many positive effects? In the Neuroscience of Meditation the author hypothesizes that meditation is an efficient management of attention (Deshmukh, 2006). Yoga teachers hypothesize that we are overusing our senses and that this overuse leads to fatigue, poor health, and poor concentration (Sivananda, 2001). In the Mindful Brain Daniel Siegel explains how he believes perception of sensation changes the prefrontal region of the brain:

“With mindful awareness we have more than just awareness of sensation: If we say we are observing ourselves having the sensory experience, that observational stance embeds meta-awareness that includes more of the brain than posterior perceptual columns and side prefrontal region. Metacognition is correlated with middle prefrontal activiation, as is self observation. In this way mindful awareness has been shown to activate middle prefrontal regions to a greater than forms of meditation in which sustained focus on one target (internal word or external object) is the task” (Siegel, 2007, p. 108).

Teaching students the practices of mindfulness has direct neurobiological implications that are hard to ignore.

Exteroceptive Learning.

Exteroceptive learning is the process of taking in sensory information, through the five senses, from the external environment. All learning depends on our ability to make sense of this material. The brain “must select, enhance, inhibit, compare, and associate the sensory information in a flexible, constantly changing pattern” (Ayres in Ogden et al., 2006, p. 17 ). In the process of learning, sensory material is immediately categorized and linked with meaning making - our ideas about the external environment. Almost all of these associations happen unconsciously (Damasio, 1999). These unconscious associations are adaptive; if we perceived each stimulus as novel it would be exceedingly difficult to build on previous learning (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Langer, 1997; Siegel, 2007). Exteroceptive learning is a complex process by which sensory information is directly affected by our thoughts/psychology and the functioning of our central nervous system. Each of these aspects of self needs to be in “good condition” for learning to take place. Figure 4 outlines the relationship between these different aspects of the self.

The process of learning can be disrupted by our psychological states (stress, anxiety), the central nervous system (difficulty processing sensory information, problems with the brain) and the environment (exposure to a traumatic event). Similarly, the process of learning can be enhanced by our psychological state (positive outlook, beliefs), the central nervous system (through good diet, breathing) and the environment (relaxation, exercise and positive sensory input). The practice of yoga has a number of methods by which it attempts to integrate our sensory experiences.

The mechanisms as to how yoga and mindfulness practices “interact with somato-neuro-endocrine mechanism affecting metabolic and autonomic functions remains to be worked out”(Singh, Malhotra, Singh, Madhu, & Tandon, 2004, p. 203). Current thinking shows that one way in which awareness practices assist the human to learn is that is takes us out of the repetitive, unconscious mechanisms of “rote learning” (Langer, 1997; Siegel, 2007).

Cognition, Abstract Knowledge, Metaphor and the Body.

Sensorimotor approaches to learning directly affect our cognitive processing ability. Cognitive processing refers to the qualities associated with reasoning, meaning-making, problem solving, decision-making and discrimination between ideas. The circuits of the brain that are used for cognition are the same ones that we used for physical action. For example, if we learn a new movement in yoga the neural pathways created to execute this new movement can be used for new patterns of thinking. There are even speculations that motor neurons “drive our sense of self-awareness” (Ogden et al., 2006, p. 9).

Cognition depends on having a body and perceiving through the senses, but these sensory motor experiences are linked to abstract concept through language (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). It is the triune of sensory information, abstract concepts and metaphorical language that is the foundation of learning (see figure 6). For example, our brain’s perception of “wet” is actually a combination of the sensory motor experience of pressure and temperature. This sensory motor experience is given the abstract concept of “wet,” even though there is no actual physiological sensation of wetness. It is our ability to use metaphorical thought and language that interprets the pressure and temperature shift as “wet.” The author Swerdlow states, “when I shower or wash my hands, I now realize, my skin feels pressure and temperature – it’s my brain that says I feel wet” (2002, p. 42). It is abstract concepts that allow us to reason about the relationship between the information we are receiving from our senses and the actual characteristics of the objects. Learning takes place using all three of these overlapping concepts.

In a very real and visceral way the body shapes our thoughts. “Narrative begins as a non-linguistic process (Damasio, 1999) and appears to be embedded in the brain’s inherent inclination to sort, select, and assemble the myriad representations within its vast neural network. Long before words, our brains are creating nonverbal narratives, assemblies of selected neural network firing patterns that then serve to order our sense of the world. Even perception, at its most fundamental level, is an assembled process” (Siegel, 2007, p. 143).

Educator Peter McLaren states that “the problem with schools is not that they ignore bodies, their pleasures, and the suffering of the flesh (although admittedly this is part of the problem) but that they undervalue language and representation as a constitutive factor in the shaping of the body/subject as the bearer of meaning, history and race” (McLaren in Shapiro, 1999, pp., p. 25). Teachers with their strong background in adapting pedagogical tools to changing contexts may be the most effective individuals to integrate embodied knowledge into the curriculum.
Teachers understand the types of relevant experience that are necessary for students to make the connection between sensory material, language and abstract thought. They can chose to scaffold these layers of learning by first introducing an experience, then new vocabulary and finally abstractions. “For the shift in perception to occur as people make sense of things, they have to have an adequate amount of relevant experience. People learn from experience in a way that is simply not possible from instruction or information delivery alone. The reason is that a perceptual shift requires more than intellectual understanding. The shift needs to be embodied because the psychophysiological system as a whole is what gets it”(Caine and Caine in Zull et al., 2006, p. 54). For example, to make sense of a “reading” in a composition book, the student must have an actual experience for the full meaning of a passage to be known. If a student lacks this experience a teacher can help to create a situation either in the classroom (through theater exercises, music, embodied explorations) or outside the classroom (through communication to parents or field trips). In this model lectures and information are still essential to the learning process, however, “far more effective are instructional strategies that build on prior experiences, engage learners in activities that enable them to extend their consciousness to novel situations beyond the realm of their prior experience, add layers of tacit knowledge, and enrich their consciousness with a range of experiences”(Scheckley and Bell in Zull et al., 2006, p. 50).

Psychology and Learning

“Education is not so much a matter of working on particular emotions or movements, but of recognizing or retraining habits of feeling and movement and habits of conduct to which feeling and movement contribute” (Shusterman in Peters et al., 2004, p. 57)

Some of the most useful theories about learning through the body have come from psychology. Clinicians have used neuroscience to gradually expand their understanding of the body’s role in processing extreme experiences like trauma (Hopper, Frewen, van der Kolk, & Lanius, 2007; van der Kolk, 2002; van der Kolk & Pelcovitz, 1996). This work has led to embodied forms of psychotherapy (often called somatics) that have been profoundly effective and influential (Macnaughton, 2004; Ogden et al., 2006; Rothschild, 2000). Neuroscience and clinicians have come to a detailed understanding of how we learn and do not learn based on social setting, fear, and level of attachment.

Social Learning.

Learning is inherently a social phenomenon. In fact many educators now understand learning to be the complex interpretation of facial and bodily expressions, physical contact, and eye gaze that heavily contribute to “better, more meaningful learning” (Zull et al., 2006, p. 13). Researchers of other primates have found that neuron’s are fired not only when the primate engages in an activity, but when he or she watches someone else engage in the activity. This has led to the discovery that humans not only learn from watching others, but we learn from our attempts to try and understand connections between actions and potential thoughts of others. Dr. Siegel explains, “At a neural level, we embed in our brains not just what we physically see, but the mental intention we imagine is going on in someone else’s mind. This is big news: Mirror neurons demonstrate the profoundly social nature of our brains (Siegel, 2007, p. 166 ).
What teachers and students are learning by being in a class room together is much more than content. The brain is constantly judging and evaluating the minute actions of those in the classroom to develop a “motor plan” of action, “meaning that the brain anticipates what the sensory changes will be based on the motoric movement of the organism being observed” (Siegel, 2007, p. 173 ). These finding have immense consideration for education. The social nature of learning sheds light on the resistance to online learning that confronts educators and students.

Those teachers who are skilled at reading, responding to and teaching the social markers of learning may be better equipped at keeping students engaged. In The Power of Mindful Learning (1997) Ellen Langer identifies five ways in which learning is engaged:

1) Openness to novelty
2) Alertness to distinction
3) Sensitivity to different contexts
4) Awareness of multiple perspectives
5) Orientation in the present

These qualities can be engaged most effectively when a teacher is able to interpret the social meaning of body based signals. For example, a teacher may be introducing the concept of “social capital” (content based material). As the teacher introduces this concept she is reading the physical responses of the students: eyes open and alert but relaxed, head nods of approval/disapproval, eyes small and body tense. Interpretation of these responses guides how the ideas of social capital are being accepted (teacher’s orientation to the present/openness to novelty). The teacher may have prepared a lecture on social capital, but after reading that the bodily signals of her students are mixed (indicating agreement and disagreement), she might decide to actively solicit different student view points to teach awareness of different perspectives. Once the teacher “reads” that students can accept differing perspectives of social capital she might then open the exploration to show how these perspectives are grounded in different contexts. This type of learning happens when we are in relationship with our students, responding to the needs they express nonverbally through their bodies.

Emotions and Learning.

Because we are social learners emotions matter in education. Neuroscientist Antonio Damascio distinguishes emotions as the visceral, embodied and neurochemical reaction to our experiences and thoughts; feelings are one’s private thoughts about these visceral reactions (Damasio, 1999). Emotional reactions to the content of our classes is continually happening in the form of heart rate increases at exciting or terrifying ideas, sweaty palms, tears at disturbing images or ideas, red checks at embarrassment, laughter when happy or to dissipate tension. Teachers who can help their students to understand how their visceral reaction to “content” evokes specific thoughts have gone a long way in teaching students the different type of information we use to create our judgments and opinions.

Can the discrimination between visceral reactions and the thoughts related to these internal experiences be taught? Yes. Most mindfulness based practices from yoga, mindfulness based stress reduction, and meditation teach exactly this skill. Learning to discriminate between our experiences and thoughts has been shown to help in teaching about oppression (Orr, 2002), writing (Moffett, 1982) in learning and regulating emotions (Arch, Craske, & Michelle, 2006), and relieving stress in students (Beddoe & Murphy, 2004; Janowiak & Hackman, 1994). Educator, Kegan believes that when we can separate ourselves from our thoughts (turned them in to objects that we can work with) that we have achieved a higher level of cognition.
Integrating Yoga asana and breathing practices into a public school

New research has shown that as social learners our first priority in any situation is to establish safety or lack thereof; “our nervous system evaluates the state of threat or safety of a situation and activates the brainstem’s vagal and autonomic nervous system to respond with either a sense of open receptivity with “safety” or with two aspect of “threat” [fight-flight or freeze] (Siegel, 2007, p. 129). It is not surprising that fear inhibits learning and concentration. Fear has been shown to create physiological changes that render the individual “less capable of concentrating, more anxious, and more attentive to nonverbal cues such as tone of voice, body posture, and facial expressions – and may, in fact, misinterpret such cues because of anxiety-induce hypervigilance” (Zull et al., 2006, p. 24). As many students come to class with previously negative experiences in school and/or have experienced trauma there is an imperative for learning to happen within a structured, predictable, safe environment. “By accurately attending to the learner’s internal state, an effective educator can identify where the learner is on the alarm-arousal continuum. A creative and respectful educator can create safety by making the learning environment more familiar, structured, and predictable (Zull et al., 2006).

Curriculum and Body Based Learning.

“A pedagogy concerned with human liberation must insist upon a sensual language and practice for education, which may evoke among our students a passion for love, justice, and the sense of what it might mean to live purposeful lives” (Shapiro, 1999, p. xxiii).

While current research tends to focus on bringing in “experts” to design short term or afterschool programs in schools, it is perhaps more effective to train teachers as part of mainstream pedagogical practices to integrate embodied methods of learning. The basics of what needs to be understood regarding the body in education could be taught in a 3 credit course for teachers. This could be expanded upon with additional courses, certificate programs or in graduate schools for those teachers who are interested in deepening their understanding of the body in education. This approach not only gives the tools to those who will use them the most (the teachers). It also keeps costs for schools at a minimum, as they will not need to hire external consultants, yoga teachers, or mindfulness experts – nor will they need to offer special programming after school unless it is desired. Our teacher training programs need to address the issue of the body and train teachers in new ways to incorporate the body in the classroom. “Learning to see the student body in our classrooms requires making a significant shift in our conception of knowledge, academic habits, traditions and vocabularies” (Ross in Peters et al., 2004, p. 170 ). By learning to see the body of the students, teachers can assist the student to understand how their emotional and intellectual impulses are deeply connected to embodiment.
Despite new knowledge from neuroscience and psychology the body remains, for the most part, in the department of physical education or dance - perhaps if a school is “lucky” they are able to offer extracurricular activity in martial arts or yoga. This way of integrating the body into the curriculum is deeply rooted in the dichotomy of the body and mind. Educators are searching for new paradigms. Paradigms that support our cultural interest in science and materialism, while being respectful of the religiously plural community that is inevitably present within our classes.
The body in education is a cultural concern. To truly integrate the body into education teachers need to understand exactly why the body is significant in education. They need to understand this not only for themselves and so their students receive the best education – they need to understand this so that they can succinctly and clearly explain the shift in pedagogy to parents and family members who will be new to and (rightfully) questioning of ways in which the body may be integrated into the curriculum. Politicians and administrators will also have concerns that need to be assessed and addressed.

There still remains many questions as to what constitutes embodied learning, how and when it should be taught and how the practices can be adapted to our culture’s preferences for secular education (mindfulness, meditation and yoga are still terms and practices that are offensive to many). 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)

What this statement points to is that we need to find a way to express and integrate embodied education in a way that respects the multiplicity of ways in which the body is experienced; we need to acknowledge and work with the fact that Christians, atheists, Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims all think of and work with the body in unique ways. Embodied learning is clearly relevant to the extent that it corroborates with contemporary models of cognition and learning – what is not so clear is how embodied ways of knowing clash with existing religious beliefs around the body. For example, yoga is often chosen as it has a well established methodology for working with the body (Aurobindo, 1997; Sarawati, 1990); however, the historical context of Hinduism disturbs some Christians who have developed “Christian yoga” (Cullen, 2005; "Holy Yoga: Exercise for the Christian Body and Soul," 2007; Zaleski, 2007); to complicate matters many Hindu’s find this adaptation disrespectful. One of the challenges for educators is to find an embodied education that does not create or foster unnecessary skirmishes. More research is needed on embodied approaches to learning. We need to understand whether there is any difference between yoga based models and other forms of mindfulness, and whether teachers and students benefit from studying body based models.

Resources for Educators

Association for Mindfulness in Education http://www.mindfuleducation.org/

Mindfulness in Education Network http://www.mindfuled.org/

The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society http://www.contemplativemind.org/programs/academic/

Yoga Ed Program http://www.yogaed.org/

YogaKids Program http://www.yogakids.com/

While it is true that embodied education has a long and well developed history within the tradition of yoga; Western philosophers and educators have also developed theories around the body that perhaps Americans would feel more comfortable with. Philosophers like Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty and Foucault all have well developed ideas about the body. Additionally there are embodied program’s such as Mind-Body Centering and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction that have secular explanations and understandings of the value of mindful and embodied practices of learning. This approach does not negate an individual from understanding and studying yoga on its own terms, or within the context of Hinduism – what it does do is try to find a secular approach to embodied education that appeals to our cultural values. The alternative is to not integrate the body at all – and this is no longer scientifically sound.

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Yuille, J. C., & Sereda, L. (1980). Positive effects of meditation: A limited generalization? Journal of Applied Psychology, 65(3), 333-340.
Zaleski, C. (2007). Christian yoga. Christian Century, 124(9), 57-57.
Zull, J., Cozolino, L., Sprokay, S., Perry, B., ross, C., Wolfe, P., et al. (2006). The Neuroscience of Adult Learning. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

[1] Mindful embodied practices are those which are done slow enough to develop awareness of sensation and enable the individual to perceive his or her reactions (in thought and body) to the suggested practice).
[2] For an enjoyable summary of how neurotransmitter’s work the reader is referred to Candace Pert’s The Molecules of Emotion (1999).
[3] For more information on what these yogic practices entail the reader is referred to the following texts BKS Iyengar’s Light on Yoga, Light on Pranayama and Light on Life.

Modern Yoga Research

2010-03-26T10:29:00.000-07:00

Yoga is a subject of renewed interest for many scholars. The study of yoga offers unexpected insights into how scholar’s participation and knowledge of multiple discourses contribute to their thinking about, and exploration of their relationship with pedagogy. The methodology of studying yoga in any setting is complex as there is not only a body based component, but also verbal, mental, historical and philosophical components through which the individual makes meaning of their experiences. Additionally, if the individual is participating in multiple discourses (yoga communities, higher education, popular culture, women’s studies et cetera), it is the nexus of these areas that elicits the meaning of yoga. As academics have become interested in yoga, it has shaped their lives and their scholarship.

The following is a list of my favorite modern yoga research texts. This is more of a starter list for the person new to the study of modern yoga. If you have an interest in the history of yoga, order these texts today, you will enjoy them, even if you don't agree with them.

Alter, J. (2004). Yoga in Modern India. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Alter, J. S. (2000). Gandhi's Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

DeMichelis, E. (2005). A History of Modern Yoga. New York: Continuum.

Michelis, E. D., Alter, J., Strauss, S., Singleton, M., Liberman, K., Nevrin, K., et al. (2008). Yoga in the Modern World: Contemporary Perspectives. New York: Routledge Press.

Singelton, M (2010). Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Postural Yoga. New York: Oxford Press.

Williamson, L. (2010) Transcendent in America: Hindu-Inspired Meditation Movements as New Religion. New York: New York University Press.

Other Resources:

http://www.modernyogaresearch.com/ This website documents current research efforts & has a great publications list for those wanting more research.

Yoga Studies Program at Loyola Marymont University: http://www.lmu.edu/Page12935.aspx

Yoga as Pedagogy in Higher Education

2010-03-24T11:54:00.000-07:00

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:

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

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.

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).
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.
Duff, L. (2003). Spiritual development and education: a contemplative view. International Journal of Children's Spirituality, 8(3), 227-237.
Duvall, M., Mancuso, C., Donnelly, L., Counihan, B., Schmid, T., Shelto-Colangelo, S., et al. (2007). Teaching with joy: Educational practices for the twenty-first century. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. .
Halliburton, M. (2004). Gandhi or Gramsci? The use of authoritative sources in anthropology Anthropological Quarterly, 77(40), 793-817.
Hill, C., Herndon, A. A., & Karpinska, Z. (2006). Contemplative Practices: Educating for Peace and Tolerance. Teachers College Record, 108(9), 1915-1935.
Langer, E. (1989). Mindfulness. Cambridge, Ma: Da Capo Press, Perseus Books.
Langer, E. J. (1993). A Mindful Education. Educational Psychologist, 28(1), 43.
Michelis, E. D., Alter, J., Strauss, S., Singleton, M., Liberman, K., Nevrin, K., et al. (2008). Yoga in the Modern World: Contemporary Perspectives. New York: Routledge Press.
Miller, J., Moore, T., Lemkow, A., Sloan, D., Eisler, R., O'Sullivan, E., et al. (2005). Holistic learning and spirituality in education. Albany, Ny: State University of New York Press.
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.

Neurobiology of Yoga Research at Massachusetts General Hospital

2010-01-13T07:06:00.000-08:00

The study of yoga is being taken seriously. Across North America, Yoga is being studied in departments of religion, anthropology and sociology. It is also being researched by neurobiologists. Massachusetts General Hospital is currently offering a post-doctoral position to study the neurological basis of yoga, which requires that the researcher have a regular practice of yoga.

________________________________________________

Applications are now being accepted for a post-doctoral fellow to conduct research into the Neurobiology of Yoga at Massachusetts General Hospital. The successful candidate will conduct research evaluating the neurobiological basis of yoga, and to assess the impact of yoga on changes in emotion and cognition. The study combines functional and structural MRI measures as well as behavioral and physiological assessments.The lab is located within the MGH Psychiatry Department and the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, both of which have strong research communities offering a wealth of potential collaborations. The lab collaborates closely with the Osher Institute for Complementary and Integrative Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and with several Boston-area researchers working on various aspects of mind-body medicine, allowing for additional potential research collaborations and clinical training in these fields.The start date is flexible, though it is expected that the candidate would begin working in the lab by this summer.Completed graduate training in psychology, neurobiology, or equivalent is required, as well as experience with functional or structural MRI and a regular yoga practice.

There is a competitive salary with excellent benefits. Send a statement of research interests, curriculum vitae, and the names and addresses of 3 references by Jan 30th to:Dr. Sara Lazar PhDMassachusetts General HospitalCharlestown, MA 02129lazar@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/~lazarMGH is an equal opportunity employer. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply.

Kundalini Research on Yoga Conference

2010-01-13T07:03:00.000-08:00

Kundalini Research Network PresentsPerspectives on Kundalini: Clinical, Research and Traditional ViewsSpring Conference:

May 14th-16th, 2010

The Himalayan Institute, Honesdale, PAThis conference will offer participants and presenters the rare opportunityto gather and discuss the powerful impact that yoga and meditationpractices, spiritual emergence, transcendent experiences and thetransformative power of Kundalini have on individuals. Through keynotepresentations and panels of experts we will explore what the processof transformation and change looks like from clinical, research andtraditional spiritual and yogic perspectives.

To register and for more information please visit the website:http://www.kundalininet.org/html/events.html

THE PHYSIOLOGICAL FOUNDATION OF YOGA CHAKRA EXPRESSION.(Report).

2010-01-04T08:56:00.000-08:00

THE PHYSIOLOGICAL FOUNDATION OF YOGA CHAKRA EXPRESSION.

Here is a new article on the chakra system by Richard Maxwell, which seeks to articulate a scientific explanation of the system. A lot of new research on yoga seeks to take the philosophical system of yoga and validate it. Humans are a meaning making species; philosophy and literature untethered from science also offer valid points of view. I think what is interesting is how yoga encourages interdisciplinary study (in this case philosophy, science and yoga studies) in an effort to make meaning of the human experience.

THE PHYSIOLOGICAL FOUNDATION OF YOGA CHAKRA EXPRESSION.(Report). Byline: Richard W. Maxwell (1)

Zygon 44.4 (Dec 2009): p807(18).

Keywords: acupuncture; cakra; chakra; electrical synapse; gap junction; glial syncytium; kundalini; meditation; nervous system development; subtle energy; yoga

Abstract. Chakras are a basic concept of yoga but typically are ignored by scientific research on yoga, probably because descriptions of chakras can appear like a fanciful mythology. Chakras are commonly considered to be centers of concentrated metaphysical energy. Although clear physiological effects exist for yoga practices, no explanation of how chakras influence physiological function has been broadly accepted either in the scientific community or among yoga scholars. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that yoga is based on subjective experience, and practitioners often shun objective descriptions. This essay builds on earlier work hypothesizing that intercellular gap junction connections provide a physiological mechanism underlying subtle energy systems described in yoga as well as other disciplines such as acupuncture. Three physical aspects of chakras are distinguished that are integrated through gap junction mechanisms and are proposed to have arisen during embryological development. Furthermore, electrical conductance associated with a high concentration of gap junctions could generate phenomena that, when subjectively experienced, have the radiant qualities attributed to chakras. This theory provides a scientific rationale for previously unexplained details of chakra theory and offers a new orientation to conceptualizing and studying such subjective phenomena.

Author Affiliation: Private practice clinical neuropsychologist and partner in Affiliated Psychological Consultants, PC. His mailing address is 34 Turkey Hill Road, Ithaca, NY 14850; emailrwmaxw@gmail.com.

Merleau-Ponty’s contribution to the Phenomelogical Study of Yoga

2009-12-23T05:51:00.000-08:00

Phenomenological studies on yoga draw on the work of the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty (Merlau-Ponty, 1945; Morley, 2001, 2008; S. Sarukkai, 2002). In Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty articulates the concept of the body-subject, which he sees as giving primacy to the body as our primary tool of perception. The human body, as a perceiving thing, is intertwined and intimately related to the world. He asserted that by understanding ourselves, via our bodies, we have a better understanding of the world (Merleau-Ponty, 1945). The phenomenon that we experience (for example, yoga) is affected by the body and its related sensorimotor functions. Due to the changing nature of the body, our sense of the world and of ourselves is continuously shifting. This implies that every individual has a partial view, and that this partial view is informed by the multiple discourses in which that individual participates. The body (or as Merleau-Ponty calls it in his later work “flesh”) “express[es] the continuity between the surface and depth of the world and that of the body” (Morley, 2001, p. 75).

Psychologist James Morley applied Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to yoga in a 2001 article titled, “Inspiration and expiration: Yoga practice through Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of the body.” In this article Morley highlights how researchers could use yoga to better understand the writings of yoga teacher and author T.K.V. Desikachar. Morley’s goal is not to “impose a Western philosophical framework for an established non-Western tradition…[but show that] yoga is an important resource for phenomenologists undertaking future research in the ongoing project prescribed by Merleau-Ponty: namely to bring Western thought “down to earth” by focusing on the lived human body as philosophical and psychological ground” (Morley, 2001, pp. 79-80). What he does not do in this article is tell the reader specifically how yoga will bring our philosophy down to earth, or what researchers should engage in to make this connection between the body, yoga and phenomenology.

Morley followed up on this perspective in a 2008 article titled "Embodied Consciousness in Tantric Yoga and the Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty" (Morley, 2008). This article makes an important contribution by exploring how class affects both the embodied practice of yoga and how practitioners think about yoga in India. He states that yoga is increasingly popular across the globe, but that contemporary views are predominated by “the new cosmopolitan and media savvy middle classes” who simultaneously view religion with “claustrophobic suspicion” yet “seek contact with the archaic dimension denied them by the alienated lifestyles of industrialized civilization” (Morley, 2008, p. 147). Morley contrasts the way mainstream, middle class Indians see yoga with a Tantric perspective found in the rural settings of India. He clearly shows that while yoga is found throughout India, middle class and rural Indians experience it differently; the meaning they make of yoga is distinct. Morley’s methodological choice to study the way two distinct groups experience yoga, rural and middle class, help him to have a broader view of the way in which yoga is meaningful.[1]

Morley also comments that “Phenomenology needs a somatic methodology that can go beyond academic language” (Morley, 2008, p. 161); the need for a somatic or embodied component to research is echoed by other researchers who will be discussed below. I agree that there is a real and pressing need for a somatic component to research – and to scholarship and academics in general. Yet, this “new” pressing need is also ironic. Most of the literature on neuroscience, psychology, phenomenology and yoga show that there is no separation between mind and body. The dichotomy between mind and body, the Cartesian duality, is understood to be merely illusion (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Merleau-Ponty, 1945). If there is no separation between mind and body, do we need new methodologies? Or do we need to focus our existing methodologies on the embodied experience? As a researcher interested in the intersection of the body with meaning making, I may need a refined understanding of when it is easier to collect and analyze data through methods that start with the “the flesh” and when it is best to start with the “mind.” Yet, I believe that it is important to question whether such approaches are merely fostering my colonialist culture’s love of dichotomies.[2]

Yoga studies scholar Benjamin Smith offers the most complete examination of how to analyze the body in his 2007 article "Body, mind and spirit? Towards an analysis of the practice of yoga." Smith draws strongly on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, but also supplements this approach by drawing on the work of Marcel Mauss who was interested in the “the study of bodily techniques themselves” (Smith, 2007, p. 29). Mauss’ emphasis on the role of imitation in teaching bodily techniques led Smith to develop and refine his collection of data by focusing on how “oral, visual and non-verbal instruction [what he calls tactile interventions]” was used by yoga teachers (Smith, 2007, p. 31). Smith also used his own experience of yoga (in Asthanga Vinyasa Yoga, which he is both studying and practicing) to inform his research. His experience and practice of yoga are part of his data collection. He sees his body as a subject of study and data. His body becomes the ground in which he explores the interplay between embodied habits (what Shusterman calls “somatic norms of a culture”), patterns of daily activity, absence of thought about the body and the way one thinks about the world.

Smith’s approach is to capture the experience of the Asthanga Vinyasa Yoga classes in his work. This makes him prioritize “being there,” having the direct experience of the yoga classes – data that is difficult to get merely by observing or interviewing. He is also interested in both the students and teachers perspectives; how they come together to make a community of practice intent on understanding yoga.

Smith’s primary contribution to the emerging field of “Yoga Studies” is that he sees and (better yet) clearly articulates that yoga is, already, a “mode of self-inquiry and self-encounter” (Smith, 2007, p. 40)[3]. I think that what Smith is pointing to is the way in which yoga practice by the researcher can enhance or be an essential aspect of reflectivity in research. Writing about real lives draws issues of power and vulnerability to the forefront of our struggle to convey observations, and insights to a wider audience. Where and how do we position ourselves? And others? Every decision made unveils our self as a writer, observer, academic and ultimately, human.

References

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenges to Western thought. New York: Basic Books.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945). Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge Classics.
Morley, J. (2001). Inspiration and expiration: Yoga practice through Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of the Body Philosophy East & West, 51(1), 73.
Morley, J. (2008). Embodied Consciousness in Tantric Yoga and the Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty. Religion & the Arts, 12(1-3), 144-163.
Moustakas, C. (1994). Phenomenological Research Methods. London: Sage Publications.
Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the body: A sensorimotor approach to psychotherapy. New York: WW Norton & Company.
Smith, B. R. (2007). Body, mind and spirit? Towards and analysis of the practice of yoga. Body and Society, 13(2), 25-46.

[1] Morley’s work primarily focuses on interpretations of Tantra as understood through rural practitioners of yoga. He is writing to and participating in an audience which is primarily cosmopolitan. Some scholars may argue that it is a stretch to say he is “studying” two groups. I believe his writing shows that he does study contemporary, cosmopolitan perspectives of yoga as well as rural – but this is the subject of a future paper!

[2] My own research interests lie in the intersection of meaning with the body. While I am aware that meaning is not always expressed verbally, especially in the case of traumatic experiences (Ogden, Minton, & Pain, 2006), my interest is in the verbal articulation of meaning that is made about the body.

[3] He attempts to show that Euro-Americans who practice Asthanga Vinyasa Yoga in India are not “mimicking” practices from another culture, but are truly engaged in a form of self-inquiry. What he does not explore (at least not in this limited article), is what they encounter: how or if their practice of yoga is different depending on their culture, religion, gender and socio-economic background. Yet, what yoga “means” to these individuals is not the point of Smith’s study.

Is Yoga Always Good For You?

2009-12-22T06:22:00.000-08:00

When yoga is positioned as a universal panacea people (researchers, educators, yoga teachers) should be suspect. It is not that I doubt that yoga can be an effective healing modality; what I doubt is that yoga can be used prescriptively, by anyone, for everything.

I believe in yoga’s effectiveness in improving cognitive capacities and memory. I believe this from personal experience, but there is a slowly growing body of research showing its effectiveness (Jella & Shannahoff-Khalsa, 1993; Naveen & Nagendra, 1997; Shannahoff-Khalsa, 1999). Studies have emerged that link the practice of yoga with benefits for children with ADD and behavioral problems (Peck, Kehle, Bray, & Theodore, 2005; Powell, Gilchrist, & Stapley, 2008; Stueck & Gloeckner, 2005)and with the alleviation of depression and anxiety in young adults (Platania-Solazzo et al., 1992; Woolery, Myers, Sternlieb, & Zeltzer, 2004). Of course, additional studies are warranted; studies are necessary because much of the research is conducted with relatively small clinical trials and/or had inadequate control groups.

While there are research studies supporting yoga’s efficacy, there simultaneously exists a body of literature circulating in popular magazine’s that position yoga as a cure for everything from dandruff to schizophrenia. The pop cultural understanding of yoga can be translated as “do these ten asanas (yoga postures) and fix _________.” Additional studies are necessary to show when yoga doesn’t work or when it has limited effectiveness. Nothing is a panacea.

Luckily, studies are beginning to emerge that show when yoga causes problems for participants, or has no effect at all. These studies are extremely helpful for the yoga community in defining limitations to their work. These studies are also helpful for clinical directors who are interested in understanding when they should and should not include yoga as an adjunct to existing treatment. By defining the limitations of yoga, we are taking it more seriously; removing yoga from its position as a "mystical" panacea that can not be researched and placing it into the practical world, where everything has its limits.

The following are some studies, letters to editors and general discussion on the limitations of yoga:

Lu, J. S., & Lierre, J. M. (2007). Psychotic Episode Associated With Bikram Yoga, American Journal of Psychiatry (Vol. 164, pp. 1760-1761).

A letter to the editor is presented in response to article concerning psychosis which has been precipitated by Bikram yoga, that was published in the previous issue.

Mitchell, K. S., Mazzeo, S. E., Rausch, S. M., & Cooke, K. L. (2007). Innovative interventions for disordered eating: evaluating dissonance-based and yoga interventions. The International Journal Of Eating Disorders, 40(2), 120-128.

Abstract: Eating-disordered behavior is prevalent among college women. Few interventions have successfully reduced risk factors for these behaviors, however. The most promising interventions are both selective and interactive. This study compared two newer types of interventions that meet these criteria: cognitive dissonance and yoga programs. METHOD: This study advertised programs for women who were dissatisfied with their bodies. Participants (N = 93) were randomly assigned to dissonance, yoga, or control groups. RESULTS: Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that there were no significant post-intervention differences between the yoga and control groups. Dissonance group participants had significantly lower scores than the scores of both other groups on measures of disordered eating, drive for thinness, body dissatisfaction, alexithymia, and anxiety. CONCLUSION: These findings have important implications for interventions on college campuses. In particular, dissonance interventions appear to be an efficient and inexpensive approach to reducing eating disorder risk factors. Additional research regarding the value of yoga interventions is needed.

Pilkington, K., Kirkwood, G., Rampes, H., & Richardson, J. (2005). Yoga for depression: The research evidence. Journal of Affective Disorders, 89(1-3), 13-24.

Abstract: Background Yoga-based interventions may prove to be an attractive option for the treatment of depression. The aim of this study is to systematically review the research evidence on the effectiveness of yoga for this indication.Methods Searches of the major biomedical databases including MEDLINE, EMBASE, ClNAHL, PsycINFO and the Cochrane Library were conducted. Specialist complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and the IndMED databases were also searched and efforts made to identify unpublished and ongoing research. Searches were conducted between January and June 2004. Relevant research was categorised by study type and appraised. Clinical commentaries were obtained for studies reporting clinical outcomes.Results Five randomised controlled trials were located, each of which utilised different forms of yoga interventions and in which the severity of the condition ranged from mild to severe. All trials reported positive findings but methodological details such as method of randomisation, compliance and attrition rates were missing. No adverse effects were reported with the exception of fatigue and breathlessness in participants in one study.Limitations No language restrictions were imposed on the searches conducted but no searches of databases in languages other than English were included.Conclusions Overall, the initial indications are of potentially beneficial effects of yoga interventions on depressive disorders. Variation in interventions, severity and reporting of trial methodology suggests that the findings must be interpreted with caution. Several of the interventions may not be feasible in those with reduced or impaired mobility. Nevertheless, further investigation of yoga as a therapeutic intervention is warranted.

Birdee, G. S., Yeh, G. Y., Wayne, P. M., Phillips, R. S., Davis, R. B., & Gardiner, P. Clinical Applications of Yoga for the Pediatric Population: A Systematic Review. Academic Pediatrics, 9(4), 212-220.e219.

Abstract: Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate the evidence for clinical applications of yoga among the pediatric population.Methods We conducted an electronic literature search including CINAHL, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), EMBASE, Medline, PsycINFO, and manual search of retrieved articles from inception of each database until December 2008. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and nonrandomized controlled trials (NRCTs) were selected that included yoga or yoga-based interventions for individuals aged 0 to 21 years. Data were extracted and articles critically reviewed using a modified Jadad score and descriptive methodological criteria, with summarization in tables.Results Thirty-four controlled studies published from 1979 to 2008 were identified, with 19 RCTS and 15 NRCTs. Many studies were of low methodological quality. Clinical areas for which yoga has been studied include physical fitness, cardiorespiratory effects, motor skills/strength, mental health and psychological disorders, behavior and development, irritable bowel syndrome, and birth outcomes following prenatal yoga. No adverse events were reported in trials reviewed. Although a large majority of studies were positive, methodological limitations such as randomization methods, withdrawal/dropouts, and details of yoga intervention preclude conclusive evidence.Conclusions There are limited data on the clinical applications of yoga among the pediatric population. Most published controlled trials were suggestive of benefit, but results are preliminary based on low quantity and quality of trials. Further research of yoga for children by using a higher standard of methodology and reporting is warranted.

Yorston, G. A. (2001). Mania precipitated by meditation: a case report and literature review. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 4(2), 209-213.

Abstract: Meditation is a popular method of relaxation and dealing with everyday stress. Meditative techniques have been used in the management of a number of psychiatric and physical illnesses. The risk of serious mental illness being precipitated by meditation is less well recognized however. This paper reports a case in which two separate manic episodes arose after meditation using techniques from two different traditions (yoga and zen). Other cases of psychotic illness precipitated by meditation and mystical speculation reported in the literature are discussed.

Yuille, J. C., & Sereda, L. (1980). Positive effects of meditation: A limited generalization? Journal of Applied Psychology, 65(3), 333-340.

Abstract: Examined the effects of 2 types of meditation on a variety of cognitive measures. An attempt was made to overcome methodological weaknesses common to research on meditation by employing random assignment of Ss to conditions and including a pseudomeditation control condition. 136 18-32 yr old Ss were given pretests and posttests of short- and long-term memory and attention, the Nelson-Denny Reading Test, and Raven's Progressive Matrices. After the pretest, each S (except controls) was given individual training in transcendental meditation, savasana yoga, or pseudomeditation and was asked to practice the meditation twice a day. Individual diaries monitored their practice. Control Ss were given no special treatment. Results indicate that the practice of meditation had no systematic effect on the variables assessed. In each group, fewer than 60% of the Ss completed the practice of meditation; ANOVA indicated that the dropouts were significantly younger than those who completed the study. Findings cast doubt on previous findings as to the cognitive effects of training in meditation. (22 ref)

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2009-12-18T08:20:00.000-08:00

Yoga as subject: A compilation of references on yoga

I have collected these references over the last three years. Several individuals have asked me if I would mind sharing my references and this is the result of their inquiry! I hope that by sharing the efforts of my work over the last three years that others will not have to duplicate this work.

I also offer this work in an effort to contribute to a community of individuals who interested in and support each other’s dedication to yoga studies.

The references are organized alphabetically. The references listed consist only of articles that have the word “yoga” in the title (a serious limitation). If you know of articles that are not listed below, please forward them to me!

Anonymous Articles

Yoga: How to stretch away stress. (1995). Consumer Reports on Health, 7(3), 30.

Yoga Benefits the Mind and the Body. (1999). Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter, 17(8), 8.

Yoga Class Sparks Trouble In Colorado Public School. (2002). Church & State, 55(9), 21.

Tara's Yoga for kids. (2004). Hinduism Today, April-June, 53-55.

Torah Yoga: Experiencing Jewish Wisdom Through Classic Postures (Book). (2004). Publishers Weekly, 251(10), 69-70.

Strength Training or Yoga for AN Patients? (2005). Eating Disorders Review, 16(2), 8-8.

World Briefing Asia: India: Yoga In The Schools. (2006). New York Times, 10.

Holy Yoga: Exercise for the Christian Body and Soul. (2007). Publishers Weekly, 254(22), 51-51.

Yoga Education Controversial but Worthwhile. (2007). Curriculum Review, 46(8), 11-11.

N.Y. High School to Offer Students Program in 'Relaxation,' Not Yoga. (2008). Education Week, 28(9), 5-5.

New York Community Debates Yoga In Public School. (2008). Church & State, 61(10), 22-22.

Yoga at school causes stress among some: Ties to Hinduism questioned by parents, religious leaders in N.Y. [Electronic. (2008). Version]. US News http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27008935/#storyContinued retrieved October 27008933, 27002008,

Yoga therapy research: An interview with Sat, Bir Khalsa, PhD. (2008). Integral Yoga Magazine.

A

Yoga for anxiety and depression. (2009). Harvard Mental Health Letter, 25(10), 4-5.
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Aurobindo, S. (1997). Yoga and education. Pondicherry, India: Sri Aurobindo Press.

B

Balslev, A. N. (1991). The Notion of Klesa and Its Bearing on the Yoga Analysis of Mind. Philosophy East and West, 41(1), 77-88.
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C

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da Silva, T. L., Ravindran, L. N., & Ravindran, A. V. (2009). Yoga in the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders: A review. Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 2(1), 6-16.
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Is Yoga Hindu?

2009-12-18T07:11:00.000-08:00

Is Yoga Hindu?

Source: blogs.abc.net.au

MELBOURNE, December 12, 2009 (By Margaret Coffey)

At the Parliament of the World’s Religions’s Hindu Convocation, the host of the forthcoming International Yoga Festival, Swami Chidanand Saraswati, urged the taking up of yoga. For the good of our health, Swami Saraswati said. He wasn’t the only one advocating the merits of yoga at the Parliament: so were yoga practitioners who described themselves as ’spiritual’ rather than Hindu. All of which gives rise to some interesting questions: what is the fate of a practice when it is detached from its source tradition? The Hindu American Foundation is interested in having yoga (as practiced in the West) recognised as a spiritual practice of the Hindu tradition. It sponsored a PWR panel session called “Practising Yoga: Covert Conversion to Hinduism or the Key to Mind-Body Wellness for All.” In Malaysia the National Fatwa Council thinks it is the former: in November 2008 it issued advice that yoga is inherently Hindu, so Muslims should not do it. However, the PWR panel included Dr Amir Farid Isahak, a medical practitioner and the Chairman of Interfaith Spiritual Fellowship Malaysia: he said there was no problem, provided a Muslim understood what they were getting into. His Holiness Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami (publisher of Hinduism Today) remarked that if you have the root of Hinduism, then the stem is Hinduism, and the flower is Hinduism. Another panellist, Professor Christopher Key Chapple, explained that in his view yoga had traces of Jain and Buddhist elements in it too. The Moderator of this session, Rev Ellen Grace O’Brian, runs the Centre for Spiritual Enlightenment in San Jose, California. Rev O’Brian said that yes, yoga had Vedic origins, and she certainly draws on the Patanjali Sutra, though at her centre they taught it as a spiritual practice for people of all religious backgrounds.

_____________________________________________________

Comments. By Laura Douglass

While yoga is emphatically not a religion (Feurstein, 2003), the complex truth is that some Hindus do practice yoga as a vital and interconnected aspect of their religious identity. It is understandable that many individuals want to keep the practice of yoga linked to the cultural context from which it is rooted – Hinduism. Colonialist societies have a tendency to take “practices” from cultures independent of the context (historical and religious). I believe that educators and scholars need to make the decision to remove yoga from its context consciously; asking themselves “what is lost in this process?” and “what is gained?” To other scholars, however, yoga is “transcultural” (Hauschild, 2007; Michelis et al., 2008; Strauss, 2005); the very concept of yoga is influenced by a confluence of personal, historical, political and religious ideologies.

While yoga emerged from a Hindu context, it is also true that Jains, Sikhs, Christians, and Jews practice yoga as an important part of their lived spiritual expression (Sri. Aurobindo, 1997; Sri Aurobindo & Mother, 2006; Cullen, 2005; "Holy Yoga: Exercise for the Christian Body and Soul," 2007; "Torah Yoga: Experiencing Jewish Wisdom Through Classic Postures (Book)," 2004; Zaleski, 2007). An example of yoga’s complex ties to multiple ethnicities and religions can be found in the example of an Elementary School in Aspen, Colorado that integrated the Yoga Ed program as part of an attempt to increase exercise and reduce stress for students. A parent and local pastor demanded the removal of yoga from the curriculum citing connections between Hinduism and yoga. The yoga teacher, Agai Akal Singh Khalsa, is not Hindu, but an American Sikh (Breitman, 2006). Yoga reflects the diversity of ways in which individuals in the United States approach their identity; including the largest proportion of yoga practitioners, who see it as a secular practice that improves health and aids in cognition (Castillo, 2008; Hannon, 1994).

Yoga’s exclusive ties to Hinduism is usually promulgated by a small subset of the population with a political agenda. For example, a few vocal Christian leaders in America have also positioned yoga as the exclusive domain of the “Hindu tradition.” This positioning may have a conscious or unconscious political agenda. Rev. Craig Branch of Alabama, who actively participated in passing a law making yoga in the schools of Alabama illegal, sees yoga’s inclusion in the school as part of the “diminishing influence of Christian worldviews” (Breitman, 2006, p. paragraph 16). The popularity of yoga by individual's from diverse religious religious traditions, is a reminder that one's own religious identity is one among many.

References

Aurobindo, S. (1997). Yoga and education. Pondicherry, India: Sri Aurobindo Press.

Aurobindo, S., & Mother, T. (2006). On Education. Twin Lakes, WI: Lotus Press

Breitman, R. (2006). Parents getting bent out of shape over yoga in schools. why? [Electronic Version]. Columbia New Service, www.//jscms.jrn.columbia.edu/cns/2006-04-04/breitman-yogainschools, retrieved 11/11/2002.

Castillo, A. (2008). Yoga Makes Headway in Business Schools. Business Week Online, 4-4.

Cullen, L. T. (2005). Stretching for Jesus. Time, 166(10), 75-75.

Feurstein, G. (2003). The Deeper Dimensions of Yoga. Boston: Shambala Press.
Hannon, K. (1994). Yoga goes mainstream. (Cover story). U.S. News & World Report, 116(19), 79.

Hauschild, T. (2007). Yoga between Indo-Aryan Nationalism and Multisited Fieldwork. Current Anthropology, 48(3), 463-465.

Holy Yoga: Exercise for the Christian Body and Soul. (2007). Publishers Weekly, 254(22), 51-51.

Michelis, E. D., Alter, J., Strauss, S., Singleton, M., Liberman, K., Nevrin, K., et al. (2008). Yoga in the Modern World: Contemporary Perspectives. New York: Routledge Press.

Strauss, S. (2005). Positioning Yoga: Balancing Acts Across Cultures. New York: Berg Press.

Torah Yoga: Experiencing Jewish Wisdom Through Classic Postures (Book). (2004). Publishers Weekly, 251(10), 69-70.

Zaleski, C. (2007). Christian yoga. Christian Century, 124(9), 57-57.

Hatha Yoga

2009-12-17T10:59:00.000-08:00

Hatha Yoga

When most people think of Yoga, they think of exercises for the physical body. These "exercises" are only one small aspect of traditional Yoga. The branch of Yoga that deals with the physical body is known as Hatha Yoga. Hatha Yoga begins the process of returning to one's original state of balance through the physcial body. The end goal of Hatha Yoga, like all branches of Yoga, is to achieve a state of lasting peace and equanimity.

What most people in America mean when they talk about types of Yoga, are types of Hatha Yoga. "Power," "Iyengar," "Kripalu," and "Asthanga" Yoga are all ways of approaching the science of Hatha Yoga. All of these systems start their students with a system of postures (asanas), breathing exercises (pranayama), and deep relaxation (shavasana or yoga nidra). These preliminary practices serve as the foundation for a deeper Yoga practice.

"Symptoms of old age, such as wrinkles and poor complexion, are caused by poor circulation of the blood, thus leaving a lot of toxins and other waste matter in various parts of the body. Once the blood circulation is enriched, however, this foreign matter is washed out and eliminated, giving the body a young look and feel." Sri Swami Satchidananda

The asanas or Yogic postures are designed to release tension in the physical body and to create strength and balance in the organs,and in the endocrine and nervous system. Physical posture affects every aspect of our health and even precursory work done in the area will benefit an individual's sense of overall wellbeing. A well-balanced series of asanas can serve to balance the physical body by releasing tension, improving flexibility, and maximizing energy flow through the body. The practice of Hatha Yoga results in the body feel light and balanced as well as bestowing the gifts of increased vitality and longevity. However, these are considered side benefits. The real goal is to know one's self.

Selected Readings on Hatha Yoga

Booth-LaForce, C., Thurston, R. C., & Taylor, M. R. (2007). A pilot study of a Hatha yoga treatment for menopausal symptoms. Maturitas, 57(3), 286-295.

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.

Harinath, K., Malhotra, A. S., Pal, K., Prasad, R., Kumar, R., Kain, T. C., et al. (2004). Effects of Hatha yoga and Omkar meditation on cardiorespiratory performance, psychologic profile, and melatonin secretion. Journal Of Alternative And Complementary Medicine (New York, N.Y.), 10(2), 261-268.

Muktibodhananda, S. (1993). Hatha Yoga Pradipika. Bihar, India: Bihar School of Yoga.
Ramacharaka, Y. (1904). Hatha Yoga or The Yogi Philosophy of Physical Well-Being. Chicago: Yogi Publicaton Society.

Schell, F. J., Allolio, B., & Schonecke, O. W. (1994). Physiological and psychological effects of Hatha-Yoga exercise in healthy women. International Journal Of Psychosomatics: Official Publication Of The International Psychosomatics Institute, 41(1-4), 46-52.

Vasu, S. C. (1976). The gheranda samhita: A treatsie on hatha Yoga (3rd ed.). Adyar, India: Theosophoical Publishing House Ltd.

West, J., Otte, C., Geher, K., Johnson, J., & Mohr, D. C. (2004). Effects of Hatha yoga and African dance on perceived stress, affect, and salivary cortisol. Annals Of Behavioral Medicine: A Publication Of The Society Of Behavioral Medicine, 28(2), 114-118.

Anthropological Studies on Yoga

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The primary approach of anthropological work is qualitative in nature. Qualitative research is “an inquiry process of understanding based on distinct methodological traditions of inquiry that explore a social or human problem. The researcher builds a complex, holistic picture, analyzes words, reports detailed views of informants, and conducts the study in a natural setting” (Creswell, 1998, p. 15). The naturalistic focus refers to the fact that the phenomena of study is looked at within the world of our everyday experiences; this leaves the complexity of the phenomena to be studied intact (Husserl et al., 1967). Overtime, patterns eventually emerge that render the complexity meaningful.

Anthropologists largely view yoga as a "trans-cultural" production that is influenced by the global discourse about yoga. That is, scholars in North America or practices in Germany can be as influential in understanding yoga as the historical texts of India. An example of viewing yoga as transcultural can be found in the following statement by anthropologist Joseph Alter, “To understand yoga as it has been practiced in India for the past century it is probably more important to read the works of various late-nineteenth-century German nature cure doctors, along with their counterparts on the United States, than to read Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutras or the Hathayogpradipika, the Shivasamhita, or the Gherandsamhita" (J. S. Alter, 2000, p. 55).

There are a lot of ethnographies being published on yoga right now. Some of them are genuinely insightful and others say more about the researcher than the researched. Here are a few:

Alter, J. (2009). Yoga in Asia - Mimetic History: Problems in the Location of Secret Knowledge. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 29(2), 213-229.

Alter, J. S. (2000). Gandhi's Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Alter, J. (2004). Yoga in Modern India. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Alter, J. S. (1996). Gandhi's Body, Gandhi's Truth: Nonviolence and the Biomoral Imperative of Public Health. The Journal of Asian Studies, 55(2), 301-322.

Hauschild, T. (2007). Yoga between Indo-Aryan Nationalism and Multisited Fieldwork. Current Anthropology, 48(3), 463-465.

Strauss, S. (2005). Positioning Yoga: Balancing Acts Across Cultures. New York: Berg Press.

Phenomenological Studies on Yoga

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Phenomenological studies describe “the meaning of the lived experiences for several individuals about a concept or phenomenon” (Creswell, 1998, p. 51). These studies attempt to understand the meaning of yoga as it is evident in aspects of social interaction such as language, the nature of questioning, conversation patterns, significance of history, and preconceived notions. The meaning of many of our actions is not given to us; we must discern their meaning. This type of research attempts to cultivate insight into the symbolic communication of others by interpreting the meaning of written texts, artifacts and contemporary socio-cultural settings.

The following studies on yoga have used a phenomenological approach to the study of yoga:

Morley, J. (2008). Embodied Consciousness in Tantric Yoga and the Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty. Religion & the Arts, 12(1-3), 144-163.

Morley, J. (2001). Inspiration and expiration: Yoga practice through Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of the Body Philosophy East & West, 51(1), 73.

Persson, A. (2007). Intimate immensity: Phenomenology of place and space in an Australian yoga community. American Ethnologist, 34(1), 44-56.

Puligandla, R. (1970). Phenomenological Reduction and Yogic Meditation. Philosophy East and West, 20(1), 19-33.

Sinari, R. (1965). The Method of Phenomenological Reduction and Yoga. Philosophy East and West, 15(3/4), 217-228.