7.3: Working Toward Emotional Flexibility

Encouraging students to approach their writing processes as embodied through the practice of pranayama, known to target the subtle body of emotions in yoga, helps them attend to their physical and emotional responses to writing. Mindfulness starts, after all, with the practice of paying close attention, a skill we deem necessary for successful writing. While we already insist writers apply such attentiveness to their subject matter, using the skills of close reading and analysis, we might also include increased awareness of the feeling body as the writing subject and the material origin of meaning. One way to respect the body as an epistemic origin is to become more aware of and responsive to our feelings as writers—“gut”/ ideational, psychological and physiological.³⁰ Pranayama asks writers to develop this corporeal orientation and trains them to attend to feeling via the breath.

Flexibility is literally the ability to bend without breaking; similarly, when applied to our emotions it is the ability to balance the weight of our emotional response and the need to accommodate others’. Yogis can only stretch as far as they can maintain balance; stretching without minding our own positioning will cause us to fall over. Likewise, I previously qualified emotional flexibility by insisting it included two complementary skills that encouraged equal application of reaching within and without in order to maintain harmony between balance and stretching. Here, I argue that the practice of mindful breathing engages student writers in and brings them through the paired skills of emotional flexibility, extension and expansion, which I developed in my last chapter. In Light on Life, Iyengar explains that extension requires attending to our inner space, or our center, and expansion requires reaching out from our center toward others and the unknown. The literal core of both acts is the center; extension moves inward to the center and expansion moves outward from the center (Iyengar, 2005, pp. 33-34).

These acts of emotional flexibility, needed to engage in an embodied rhetorical process, share much with what feminist Nira Yuval-Davis has recently called the “rooting” and “shifting” functions of transversal politics. Yuval-Davis credits feminists in Bologna, Italy for the cultivation of this democratic, feminist political practice based on three interlocking concepts: standpoint theory’s reminder that because differing viewpoints produce varying bodies of knowledge, any one body of knowledge is essentially unfinished; that even those who are positioned similarly may not share the same values or identifications; and that notions of equality need not be replaced by respect for difference but can be used to encompass difference (Yuval-Davis, 1999, pp. 1-2). What I like about Yuval-Davis’ terms, “rooting” and “shifting” is their bent toward movement and their reflection of the skills of flexibility and awareness I approach from a yogic mindset. From Italian feminists Yuval-Davis introduces the concept of rooting as a reflexive knowledge of [one’s] own positioning and identity” and shifting as “put[ing] [ourselves] in the situation of those with whom [we] are in dialogue and who are different” (Yuval-Davis, 1999, p. 3). Extension and expansion are the writing yogi’s terms for rooting and shifting; flexibility is only achieved when we can practice both self/inner- and other/outer- directedness. That these acts are recursive and complementary insists on the importance of first understanding ourselves by locating our center so that an acceptance of where we are at any given moment is necessary to reach out toward the new.

This kind of centering isn’t solipsistic since the very process of rooting in our center teaches us to shift toward an outside world of which we recognize we are a part, connected by our very materiality. This is because yoga sees all matter, prakrti, including that which makes up the body and the mind, as connected, exchanging dualities between body/ mind and self/other for a much more complicated understanding of intersubjectivity and connected beingness. From this viewpoint, acts of both extension and expansion are situated within a personal body but teach this body to be simultaneously inner-directed and outer-directed as it becomes aware of its connected nature by drawing within and reaching without. The emotional flexibility created by honing the skills of extension and expansion realize Haraway’s behest that “[w]e need to learn in our bodies … to name where we are and are not, in dimensions of mental and physical space we hardly know how to name” (1991c, p. 190) and may begin to name these spaces. These terms are also reflective of feminist themes of empowerment in ways a traditional vocabulary of emotions in education are not.

Mindfulness of and concentration on the breathing process can teach students valuable, practical lessons they can immediately apply to their writing. As we breathe, my students and I become more balanced in body and heart as well as in mind. Equanimity within the paradigm of mindfulness is best understood as a compassionate and balanced response, a meeting of extension and expansion, not an absence of feeling. Mindful breathing teaches students to embody this process of rooting in the center and shifting from the center, creating within them emotional flexibility they can apply to their writing. Receptivity and rootedness, like inhalation and exhalation, are parts of a whole process, necessary in equal measure for balance. Mindfulness of and concentration on the breathing process can teach students valuable, practical lessons they can immediately apply to their writing. In particular, students learn through our breathing exercises that effective writing sessions begin with responsiveness to their current feelings, which may position them as more self- or other-centered at any given moment. Only they can target which of our breaths will balance their emotional states, which is why the choice of breath documented at the start of this essay is so important. On an immediate and instrumental level, the choice of breath gives students a reason to become aware of their current energy level as well as how this relates to their receptiveness to the writing process. Students realize that they are faced with writing deadlines to begin drafting a new essay regardless of how energized they feel after a full day of classes and welcome ways of revving up their energy levels, no matter how atypical these methods may seem at first. As students begin to embody the lessons learned through mindful breathing to their thinking about writing, this developed equanimity translates into a more open engagement with outside sources and alternate viewpoints.

For instance, when the class I follow in my opening narration first attempted pranayama together, many students assumed that they were anxious simply because they were in class, so they used longer exhalations to calm themselves. They chose their breath based on what they anticipated feeling as opposed to listening to their bodies. As a result of using calming breaths when they were more tired than anxious, some of my students complained of sleepiness after our inaugural pranayama practice. As my student Johnny stated, “I found the breathing calming and relaxing, but almost too much to the point where I was lulled to sleep. I came out of the exercise feeling relaxed, but also with a strong urge to go to sleep.” After a few more attempts, Johnny learned to “check in” with his feelings before choosing a breathing pattern. He noted in his blog that he stopped using long exhalations by default and began, instead, to analyze his feelings and scan his body. Johnny started working with the three-part inhalation to create energy and, therefore, engagement with his environment; after listening to his body, he found that was what he most needed. In navigating the consequences of his choice, Johnny learned two lessons: first, that he needs to pay attention to his body if he hopes to be an effective learner and writer, and second, that understanding and navigating his feelings is part of the work he must complete to this end. His breath became a means for these recognitions.

Johnny’s experiences should also remind us that remaining open to new ideas is a task a peacefully attentive mind can handle with greater acuity than a foggy, sleepy one. Johnny’s classmate, Ryan, reiterated this conclusion in his blog, stating that the three-part energetic breathing, “gives me ideas for writing, or simply refreshes me after hours of writing. After [breathing] breaks, I feel energized and usually have better ideas more readily than before breaks.” Ryan links these “better ideas” to “the positive energy … the deep inhalations did give me …. Now I’m not going to lie to you, it wasn’t a miracle cure. I didn’t suddenly burst out full of energy, ready to conquer the world. But it did help.” While not a “miracle” this “positive energy” was indeed a motivator. Ryan called up energy through his breath, channeling prana to give him the excitement, endurance and ideas he needed for writing.

In his comments, Ryan is likely referring to the effects of physiological coherence, which has been shown to result from contemplative practices like meditative breathing. “Correlates of physiological coherence include a regular heart rhythm, decreased sympathetic nervous system activation and increased parasympathetic activity and increased heart-brain synchronization (the brain’s alpha rhythms become more synchronized to the heartbeat” (Schoner & Kelso, 1988; Tiller, McCraty & Atkinson, 1996; quoted in Hart, 2004, p. 31). In other words, the effects of the physiological coherence brought on by pranayama include the calming energy of focus as opposed to the jittery energy of caffeine since attentive breathing harmonizes the body and drops levels of anxiety. As Ryan’s and Johnny’s testimony highlights, students often begin to appreciate pranayama from an practical orientation rather than a philosophical one; the energy that mindful breathing gives them is a quality of our practice they value immediately—once hooked by practicality, deeper meanings have time to take root.

For instance, as Johnny’s corporeal awareness grew as a result of practicing pranayama, he realized along with Ryan how breathing could not only help him monitor his states of feeling, but how it could also help him reshape those feelings. Johnny began to question the role of his entire body during our breathing exercises and after a few weeks, he relates increasing success in using pranayama as a writing ritual to how receptive he is to his full being and not only his breath while performing it:

As we continued to practice the breathing exercises my goal has been to channel the exercises into becoming relaxed and energized at the same time. While I tried to adhere to all the instructions of the breathing, … I found myself still coming out the exercise more sleepy than I had entered …. With the last two practices I have felt myself become more and more relaxed and at the same time energized during the class exercise. I think I can attribute it to paying particular attention to my posture during the breaths …. Before I think I would allow myself to unintentionally slouch, or relax in the chair, contributing to my continued sleepiness from the morning. While focusing extra on my posture, I think I have been able to gain more from the exercise …. Writing after, I not only felt relaxed, I felt balanced.

My student’s comment about posture is important for the ways it links the breath, body and mind together as they form his states of receptivity and rootedness. In slumped postures that allow the body to turn inward, Johnny found himself feeling so rooted he wanted to distance himself entirely from his environment through sleep. But when he concentrated on opening his body while focusing on breaths that continued this action, he felt energized and more connected to the community of our classroom and receptive to the learning process. These actions can explain why he feels a sense of emotional balance that he can take into the writing process after our practice.

As his teacher, I could see the effects of Johnny’s growing mindfulness taking place in his blogs. Johnny’s blogs at the beginning of the semester, those that correlate with a breathing practice that drew him further inward, were much more focused on pleasing himself as a writer. For instance, he states in these his intention of “getting out [his] true thoughts” as a writer and learning to have “no reservations about what I am writing.” Later, as he attunes himself to his body and learns better emotional balance, Johnny’s blogs contain more interest in audience and state his attempts to make his papers “easier to read for the reader” while still remaining interesting to him. While some of these growing concerns may be attributable to the workshops and peer reviews that were a part of our class, Johnny is also certainly embodying new attitudes about writing that grew as a result of composing with pranayama.

By the conclusion of our course, these lessons of balance and harmony permeated not only students’ practical applications of the breathing exercises but also the ways they thought about the writing process. In a final class reflection, Mark noted that prior to our class he was reticent to open up to others. Mark isn’t referring to shyness but rather a self-confessed inability to deeply listen to his classmates and to reflect on their differing viewpoints. He accounts for the new openness he felt at the conclusion of our course as an effect of his embodied awareness of the writing process developed through breathing exercises that engaged him in the acts of expansion toward others alongside extension toward his center.³¹ Mark notes, “I can sense that in some ways I’ve grown more open …. Yoga and breathing meditation have helped my focus and made me more open. Hopefully both have made me a better, more intelligent person.” The growth my student accounts for is holistic; in learning to balance his writing body and the outside world, he has grown flexible enough to respect his own ideas as well as to remain open to his audience and environment. The flexibility learned through yoga thus “becomes more than a physical attribute; it is transformed into a living metaphor” (Cohen, 2006-2007, p. 15). Mark senses that this growth is a gain for his “intelligence” which would give greater authority to his writing as well as his ethos, making him a “better” person and therefore, we can conclude, a more believable and persuasive writer.

What is interesting in Mark’s reflection is his simultaneous attention to his developed “focus” on the self and the writing task at hand as well as his openness to others and foreign ideas. By noting both together, my student is actualizing the complementariness of extension and expansion. That he goes on to state in the same blogged reflection, “The learning that has occurred so far this semester because of our practice [of yoga and writing] has driven me to not take ideas and experiences at face value,” testifies that he applied the lessons from our breathing practice to his writing. The strongest writing Mark produces, according to his blog, dialogues his “own ways” of being with “new ways of thinking.”

Mark embodied this discovery with his final class paper, which he chose to write about deviance on campus. In his first draft, he argued that while underage drinking was an activity in which many college students participated, students who abstained would not be automatically socially ostracized for their decision. He spoke from his own experience of occasionally abstaining at parties when he had a big test the following day (he drank at other times). In talking with classmates about his ideas however, Mark encountered another student who passionately disagreed with him since she had indeed felt excluded because of her decision to abstain entirely from underage drinking. While Mark entered my class disdaining the practice of peer review because he felt his peers could in no way help him write a better draft, by the end of our class he sought out an interview with the student who disagreed and, without my prompting, used her as a source in his paper. He also asked me if the two of them could peer review with each other (I usually assigned pairs). Mark’s final draft was a powerful mediation between his original arguments and his classmates’ dissenting opinions. In it, he included his classmates’ opinion that he didn’t encounter ostracization when abstaining because he was already accepted as a “drinker” in his social circles: “I discovered that the barrier [between my experience and my classmate’s] … was due to the bond alcohol creates between drinkers.” Led by his breath, Mark didn’t simply learn the power of using experience as evidence in his academic writing; he understood the necessity of analyzing his own experiences and putting them in dialogue with others’ in order to build the most socially- and personally-responsible knowledge, knowledge that respects multiple “ways of being.” As this example illuminates, these acts of emotional flexibility are metacognitive acts, acts of thinking about thinking, about writing and about being in the world.

Of course, for some students learning to take in less from the outside is crucial to their development of balance as writers. These students have overextended themselves in the past by being too receptive, causing them to lose their center as writers. These are the students that plead with us to read their ideas and tell them if they are “right” and ask us to just tell them “what we want” because they’ll do whatever it takes to get an “A,” if we could simply quantify that for them. In the past, I’ve found such students to be simultaneously some of my best writers and the hardest to teach because what I “want” is for them to take risks and to uncover their own views in their writing and not to regurgitate what they think mine are. Such unquestioning receptivity is a common problem for students used to echoing the thoughts of others and not investing the time to work through their own ideas either because they haven’t prioritized their own thinking in fear of risking a “good” grade (preferring instead the “safe” essay) or because they are afraid their thoughts won’t be merited against those of their teachers’ or those espoused by other “experts.” Writing that embodies the risky business of seriously considering another’s ideas by taking them in and testing them against personal experiences and feelings is normally avoided. But, breathing exercises can help cultivate a mind more perceptive of the need for balance and can support a pedagogy that asks students to engage with their experiences. Mark’s classmate, Megan explained that her balance directly resulted from what she learned from our breathing exercises and how she felt about her writing produced after these exercises: “Emotionally, I’m much more attached to what I write. I give very personal essays now in a way that I never did beforehand. I give essays that while reading back on [them], I don’t feel alienated by [them]. I feel like they a part of me.” Writing has become a means of developing self-awareness for this student.

Unlike Mark, Megan worried almost exclusively about her imagined audience. In early blogs, Megan wrote that it would be a sign of growth if she could begin to incorporate her own experiences and ideas in her writing and worry less about pleasing others and accommodating anticipated criticisms from her audience. After a semester of using pranayama to motivate and sustain her writing and increase her mindfulness, Megan did learn to become more responsive to her own concerns as a writer, according to her final, blogged reflection on her changed attitudes toward the writing process:

This semester, my views on what it means to grow as a writer have drastically changed. Prior to [our class], writing was about pleasing an audience. Now, I have been searching more for what I care about and WANT to write about. I’ve also been focusing a lot more on my writing for exactly what it is. There’s less comparison to the writing of those authors we read in class, and more comparison between my old writing style and new style. I think this is perhaps my greatest realization, because to grow as a writer means not to grow in the world as a writer, but to improve upon oneself and climb your own ladder … I think that emotionally, I’ve got[ten] a lot more relaxed about writing through breathing, and that is growth.

Indeed, Megan’s mid-semester writing marked a transition point for her as she found a link between the breaths she used to give her calm and confidence for her composing process and the voices she incorporated within her writing. For a mid-semester revision assignment, she wrote a triple-voiced narrative instead of a traditional, claim-driven argument because she felt it better represented her ideas, even if it risked shocking her audience—including me, her teacher. The essay that resulted was an extremely powerful one that narrated the extreme pressure female athletes face to stay thin and yet remain strong, a paradox my student explored with an academic researcher’s voice and intermittently spoke back to with two additional voices: her own personal voice, which examined the changing thought process and confusions of a growing teenager, and the voice of popular culture as depicted by singer Rhianna’s song, “Question Existing.” The song both asks and genders the question of what it means to be judged for performance and image and champions living for oneself. The paper Megan produced thus embodied for her a lesson of claiming an authoritative voice so that I’d argue that while my student might not be able to write a multi-voiced narrative in her biology class, what she will have learned about rhetorical flexibility and the link between form and content will transfer to other classes, making her writing stronger there as well.

Every new language gives us new ways of thinking, and yoga does this for my students who are able to revisit and “re-see” the writing process as embodied by framing it within the terms of their bodies, emotions, movements and breaths. But what they gain isn’t simply a new language, and what we gain as teachers isn’t simply some Sanskrit to include in our professional writing; instead, these acts help us to talk with students in new ways about what it means to develop a writing practice, and how they might cultivate awareness of themselves as writers and meaning-makers and what the physical process of composing entails. That is, the embodied practice of pranayama urges students to plan generative, body-conscious methods of approaching writing and learning tasks, gives them a method of monitoring themselves as they move through their writing and provides a supportive system of stop-point evaluation more interested in intrinsic growth than extrinsic success, particularly in the form of grades. This shouldn’t be surprising since pranayama is a means of metacognition itself, as it engages writers in learning to develop a conscious relationship to cognitive and emotional states that allows them to reflect on and to redirect their patterns of thought and feeling.