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1: Introduction- From the Sticky Mat to the Classroom- Toward Contemplative Writing Pedagogy

  • Page ID
    56689
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    What we cannot imagine cannot come into being

    —bell hooks, All About Love

    The intelligence of the body is a fact. It is real. The intelligence of the brain is only imagination. So the imagination has to be made real. The brain may dream of doing a difficult backbend today, but it cannot force the impossible even on to a willing body. We are always trying to progress, but inner cooperation is essential.

    —BKS Iyengar, Light on Life


    I move from kneeling on all fours into Adho Mukha Svanasana, or downward-facing dog, lifting and straightening my knees and elbows. I exhale along with the rest of my class and try to send this energy down into my hands, pushing each palm evenly onto my mat and pressing the tops of my thighs back in order to descend my heels as close to the floor as possible. Even as I move quietly, my thoughts create a loud frenzy inside my head, destroying the peace for which my sadhana, or my practice, aims. This pose frustrates me. I know I’m weak in it, so I begin to question my alignment. As I push my hips back and up, I wonder if my spine is scooping instead of creating a long line. My mind orders my spine to go long, and I think about shifting more weight into my heels. As a result, I forget about my hands and they begin to slide forward, inching their way up to the top of my sticky mat. I wonder with bitterness how terrible my pose looks. This is a genuine concern: with my head down and my eyes staring at my toes, I can’t see myself. I begin to wish I could view myself as my teacher and classmates can in order to confirm my fears that I’m doing this pose all wrong. I suppress a sigh and, with no better alternative, begin a silent prayer for the pose to be called to an end.

    Instead, I feel hands grab my hips and pull them back. With this action, I feel my heels settle firmly onto my mat. At the same time that she moves me, my yoga instructor, Holly, enjoins me to lift my sitting bones and direct them toward the back of the room.

    “Oh. Sorry. I ….” Thoughts racing forward, I fumble to explain my ineptitude.

    Holly cuts me off to reply, “No. You need to stop thinking and feel.”

    Because Holly knows me well, she understands I need to be reminded of this. I know hers isn’t a command never to think when doing an asana, or pose, like Adho Mukha Svanasana. Instead, it’s a reminder to let my brain and body work together in the pose.

    This kind of integration is frankly something to which I am not accustomed as an academic and a compositionist. Jane Tompkins may have written Me and My Shadow decades ago, singling out the professional discourse community of composition studies and indicting its propensity to separate our personal, material realities from our professional voices, but hers is a reality I share years later. Nevertheless as a yogi and increasingly as a feminist and a writing teacher, claiming my body is a move I know I need to make for growth. The above example from my yoga practice makes this lesson clear. Rather than trying to force my body into confused compliance as I was in my frustration with downward-facing dog, Holly’s message was that I needed to listen to it. When I could feel my hips shift back and down, when I could find a balance between the agency of my body and the directives of my mind, I would have little need for my earlier outof-body desire to see myself; instead, I could use these embodied, critical feelings to work toward a better pose and, therein, a more holistic sense of self, a contemplative awareness of my subjectivity. But to achieve this end, I first must relax my habit of trying to control my body with my mind and, through awareness, learn to work with my physical body’s organic intelligence and to respect it as a site of knowledge. When I can do this, I will improve my mindfulness of how knowledge is created and embodied in both processes around which I structure so much of my life: yoga and writing.


    This page titled 1: Introduction- From the Sticky Mat to the Classroom- Toward Contemplative Writing Pedagogy is shared under a CC BY-NC-ND license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Christy I. Wenger (WAC Clearinghouse) .

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