5.1: Habits of Thinking and Being- Openness

At the beginning of every semester, I revisit worries about the risks I take as a young faculty member engaging in pedagogy that attempts to teach writing in novel ways, ways some may deem strange because of their unfamiliarity. But the professoriate worries me much less than the student body. The bulk of my fear stems from the risks I take in the classroom, in front of students who I always imagine to be less interested in alternative ways of knowing than they turn out to be. Rather than allow these fears to mindlessly rule my teaching choices, however, I pursue them with the same mindfulness I advance in my application of contemplative pedagogy and practice as a yogi. These fears teach me that the value of taking risks as a teacher is that I might model for students what a contemplative process of learning looks like. They also remind me of what Ellen Langer claims is key to a mindful education, the “process of stepping back from both perceived problems and perceived solutions to view situations as novel” (1997, p. 110). Through Langer, I recognize that my understanding of appropriate pedagogical action in my writing class is shaped by what was modeled to me as a student and by the accounts of successful teaching I studied as part of my graduate education. Both the lore and the theory I inherited. But when I see each class as a novel way to explore what writing feels like to me as a writer and where my own mindful explorations of the creative process have led me, I allow openness to dictate my teaching and not only tradition.

Similarly, perhaps the most obvious benefit to an integrated practice of yoga and writing in the classroom is how it establishes a learning atmosphere of openness to various ways of thinking and being in the world at large, beyond that with which students may feel the most comfortable, because it is habituated and known. My self-coined “yoga for writers” practices—or other contemplative practices for that matter—are not standard fare in first-year writing classes at my university. Introducing my writing students to yoga is so different, in fact, that my first challenge lies in helping them piece it into the larger learning puzzle that college presents. While students enrolled in my courses are encouraged to open up the ways they think about writing and practice it, none of their friends or roommates are going through the same experiences in their composition classes, marking my classes and my students.

Despite the challenges that novelty brings, I have continued to use these practices and have taken even more steps to more fully integrate yoga and writing in my classes—utilizing a practice of pranayama to start our sessions as I outline in the next interchapter, for instance. I have not simply charged onward as a pedagogue committed to contemplative writing who has found an integrated approach to yoga and writing theoretically-fulfilling: yoga has indeed become a means of literally embodying the writing process and teaching students to think of themselves more holistically than is typically encouraged in secularized school settings. This thrills me as a contemplative practitioner and a feminist teacher. Yet, as much as I love theory, my classrooms recursively inform the theoretical side of my pedagogy just as much as the reverse is true. I’ve continued to mark myself and my classes in these ways because I have found this integrated approach so meaningful to students that they practice yoga everywhere they write, even in between the library stacks—close to the cubbies in the library at which they type their drafts on laptops—defying normative social codes and risking embarrassment for the sake of a better writing process. I’ve simply never had students take so many learning risks nor reap so much understanding about the writing process before. If my students are willing to do yoga in the library, I am committed to keeping this pedagogical practice available to them.

My students’ appreciation of contemplative writing practice takes time, however; their openness to a new writing experience is limited by the immediate academic demands (“Will this get me an A?”) and social pressures they face (“Will this make me look stupid?”). Because I respect their concerns and want them to know I do, I pointedly tell students of our intentions from the very first day of class. I explain that I am interested in what changes when we think of the writing process as making both physical and mental demands on us and how we might construct a writing life¹⁵ that connects the writing process to our persons as wholes and not just our need to fill pages for assignments. I talk to them about how yoga is being used in K-12 classes and teacher-training programs.¹⁶ I also discuss with them the ways mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR)¹⁷ has proven to help students learn better and feel less stressed by the incredibly high demands of college life and academics. These are issues they relate to because they’ve been forewarned of these demands and begin to feel them from the moment they begin their college careers. Even so, I invite students to come talk to me about their reservations and/ or excitement and ask them to bring me questions or concerns immediately. While our practices are optional, I tell them I’m going to encourage them to try yoga, to take a risk with the hopes that it will pay off big for their growth as writers. By the end of the semester, most will have participated and will agree that it was a worthwhile risk. Taking risks is an essential element of developing an open-minded approach to learning.

Before we do yoga together, a process I narrate in my preface and conclusion, my students and I talk about it a lot and connect it to a larger discussion about writing as a physical process of creating meaning. This gives us a reason to investigate writing as a topic onto itself in our classroom, keeping us grounded in that even as we may explore additional themes within our units. Thinking about the writing process as physically-demanding is new for students, as I explore in my first interchapter. As I detail there, we work through what writing has meant to us, how we’ve approached the process, and how we’ve often ignored our physical writing habits. We begin to pay more attention to those. Do we listen to music when we write? Should we? What are the benefits of sitting up straight or writing in lounge chairs? What changes when writing at desk chairs or while lying on beds? How do our physical locations impact what we write about or how we write? These are all questions my students first grapple with as they learn to pay attention to their writing bodies.

Using their physical writing habits as a bridge, I explain to students that our yoga practice will be a common language for us to have conversations about the physicality of writing and the ways we create meaning through experience. Some students remain a bit apprehensive about using yoga to help develop their skills as writers, even if they are catching on to the idea of contemplative writing and beginning to think of themselves as writing bodies—a first step in developing the flexibility of a writing yogi. Jimmy represented this common reaction of surprise in a blog post. Explaining that he discussed our planned but yet untested use of yoga for writing with friends, Jimmy notes that it is “a little unusual that we would do yoga in an English class, and everyone I told was like, ‘Yoga in English? What?’” The incredulity represented here is usually a result of students’ ignorance about contemplative practices and their general uneasiness to do anything that seems “weird” or out of the ordinary. Important to his testimony is Jimmy’s record of sharing our upcoming yoga practice with friends outside the course. Because there isn’t much in the way of a contemplative educational community outside the bounds of our class at my university, Jimmy’s peers have no way of understanding our mission and only Jimmy, for whom the process is new and untested, can explain. For Jimmy, in particular, this was a major concern because he was an incredibly social male who often repeated his desire to pledge a fraternity on campus as soon as he was able. With difference sometimes seen as deviance, Jimmy was likely concerned that our practices would mark him in undesirable ways and provide him experiences to which his peers would not be able to easily relate.

The other reaction I most commonly receive is excitement, although not necessarily for the yoga practice itself. In many cases, my students are excited for a break from the standard, college class routine. The fact that we won’t be having a traditional class and will be doing something out of the ordinary is thrilling to students who hear and see classmates and teachers go through the same motions day after day. Sharing in this spirit, Jimmy’s classmate, Tori, remarks, “No matter what, at least we get a break from sitting in the classroom.” It’s the same thrill of change that motivates another student response: “My first day of class I was told that we were going to be doing yoga to help us with the writing process. ‘YOGA?!’ I thought. I guess so, why not try something new? After all, college is about new experiences and adventures.” Because this craving for something completely novel isn’t captured by our normal classroom activities, it can create new excitement for learning and passion for writing.

Aside from benign skepticism or interest in a new adventure, every semester there are a handful of students who have practiced yoga on their own and are committed to our integration of yoga and writing because of their appreciation of contemplative practice. These students, who often self-describe as athletes, often note how their bodies crave movement, even or especially when learning: “I always move my legs when writing. I have a hard time learning, listening to anything if I’m not moving. I learned to read while spinning in a circle. It just helps me,” says Gwen. This craving for movement characterized Gwen, for as long as I knew her, as she was always coming or going to an intermural practice on campus. Gwen even dabbled in yoga before entering in my class because prior athletic coaches encouraged the practice and cited its many benefits for athletes. I’ve found this last group of students to be the minority, even if they are also the fastest-growing segment in my classes. Every semester I see more students who’ve voluntarily practiced yoga, sometimes inside and often outside of the classroom, prior to their experiences in my course. These students help to sway some of the more resistant simply by their positive presence and willingness to bring these two worlds together.

Despite initial apprehension, many students develop an embodied understanding of yoga after practicing it. For instance, Jimmy, who was reluctant at first because of fears of being criticized by friends, notes that after our first practice of yoga,

explaining [to inquiring friends] the reasons why we did yoga actually opened my eyes to the connection my professor was trying to make between the body, mind, and writing. Yoga required physical flexibility and strength …. Writing is somewhat the same way …. One can’t get frustrated with how their first draft ends or how there are errors throughout the writing process.

Jimmy’s comment mirrors research that learning new skills is best prompted by the adoption of a learning mindset geared toward openness and not closed, ruminative judgment. Openness can minimize the negative effect of stress, enhance feelings of calm and regulate negative emotions like frustration (Roeser & Peck, 2009, p. 129; Holzel et al., 2011, pp. 542-544). Jimmy has a felt understanding of this link between yoga and writing after just one practice. His comments testify to what happens when writers practice mindfulness, which yoga forwards as attention that suspends immediate judgment: they remain calm in the face of “error” and become more open to progressive development. Openness also provides writers the mental and physical support Jimmy’s classmate, the very active Gwen, details in her reflection: “[Yoga] does fit in with the rest of the classes so far. Yoga is about being in the moment, which is what you have to do when you write. If your body is loose but awake, your mind will be too …. Yoga can help us write because it helps us focus our mind and body on the task at hand and be open to actually doing it.” Being open to the body’s intelligence and recognizing its impact on their attentiveness are common themes among these student reactions.

Students like Jimmy and Gwen, when read closely, can point us to the ways a “yoga for writers” practice encourages writers to listen to their bodies and to see them as sources of learning and meaning. In other words, my students are beginning to recognize how their bodies are implicated in the processes of knowledge production; they are beginning to see meaning-making in terms of situated knowledge, as explained in Chapter Two, as their bodies are placed centrally in the process of knowing and implicated in their thinking about thinking. As writers start listening, they learn a practice of being open to themselves, of approaching their intelligent bodies with wonder. In other words, students learn a process of self-monitoring, which can be used to better process new information. Mountain pose or Tadasana (see Figure 2), the first standing pose my yoga teacher, Holly, and I teach students as part of our first “yoga for writers” practice, facilitates the development of such self-monitoring. To practice this pose, students stand up straight with their shoulder blades pressed into the back and widened in order to sink them down and create space in the back-body.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Tadasana and Vrksasana

This pose always amazes students because it is as simple as standing up straight, but in ways that make them aware of how engaging such an ordinary action can be when done with awareness of the body. When they concentrate on their bodies in this asana and begin to monitor their movements, students discover that they shift their weight between their feet and sway with the action of standing, something they’ve often not noticed before. When students subsequently learn tree pose, Vrksasana (see Figure 2), an advanced balancing posture that requires them to further direct to these subtle movements, Holly encourages them to accept sway as a constant in yoga practice, movement that must be met. I remind them that the same is true in writing, for without attention to movement, we cannot learn which side we favor, potentially impairing our balance if left unchecked. These corrective actions are less about dominance over the body, which could lead to injury, and more about working with the body, understanding it in order to make adjustments that entail a union of flesh and brain.

In their article on the advantages of adopting contemplative educational practices in traditional learning settings, Robert Roeser and Stephen Peck argue that practices like yoga cultivate conscious awareness of the self within an ethical-relational context because they engage students in these kinds of situated adjustments. That enhanced self-monitoring leads to students’ awareness of how both their bodies and brains are involved in processes of creating meaning is reflected in Ann’s response: “Tree pose … [is] my favorite. It’s my favorite because for some reason I can balance pretty well in it and it represents balance in your life, which I’m working on … personally … and in my writing.” And, as she practices tree pose and others like it, Ann’s ability as a writer to stabilize new information in memory and develop subject matter knowledge while connecting this new information with prior learning improves because of the ways her brain changes during her practice of mindfulness through movement (Baime, 2011, p. 47). From developing her working memory to opening up her perceptions of writing, Ann changes her identity as a writer and the stakes she places on her process because she uses yoga to navigate the physical and mental demands of writing.

Ann’s response also strikes a hopeful note. Her intention of balance testifies to the ways yoga helps develop not only students’ openness to writing but also their receptivity to themselves. In other words, Ann is learning to exercise self-compassion. Compassion applied to the self and others is a goal shared by all mindfulness practices. In their article, Roeser and Peck note that the compassion taught through contemplative practice creates better students because contemplative learners “take a kind, non-judgmental, and understanding attitude toward [themselves] in instances of pain or difficulty rather than being self-critical” (Roeser & Peck, 2009, p. 129). Essentially, mindfulness training “facilitates an emergence of a compassionate awareness and a change in the emphasis of the experienced sense of self” (Tirch, 2010, p. 119). Given that so many of my students describe the writing process as painful and that we often use dissonance to talk about learning, such an attitude is essential in our composition classrooms. As Ann balances in tree pose, she cultivates mindful awareness of how the body sways despite her best attempts to stay perfectly balanced. She learns that there is no such thing as perfect balance and that balancing is a matter of moving with the sway of her body and not staying rigidly still, which is impossible. This teaches her that stability isn’t a fixed quality and that she must be plastic in her approach to strength.

As Ann does, all students can translate this plasticity to the writing process as a lesson in working with their bodies rather than overpowering them. From there, it is a short leap to also accept the fluctuations of the world and our environments in our writing habits so that incorporating “sway” as opposed to rigidly sticking to one idea to the utter exclusion of other points of view is not a sign of failure. The embodied lessons of balancing poses like Tadasana or Vrksasana serve as living metaphors for how yoga practice can serve writers, reminding my students to approach their and other bodies with openness, listening to all sides before hastily making a movement in their writing. The poses also serve an immediate, material function for students, opening them to the intelligence of their writing bodies.