The true martial artist aims for mind-body unity – not to defeat the opponent – but to meet and become as he is so that the hearts of both may be transformed. The heart is where we lead and are lead from, but it is also a risky, difficult and dangerous place. We learn to hide and protect ourselves from the pain of being seen and going unseen for what is at the centre of our being. Entering into the heart puts us in touch with the conditioned judgments we carry. How can we lead from and with the heart when we wish to close off so that creative and generative ways of being can emerge? This workshop is an inquiry into the bodily, sensory experience of interpersonal encounter and the value of mind-body practices for working with varying states of consciousness in leadership contexts.

(c) Sean Park, 2001

The Yurt

I taught the second term of a small undergraduate course called Environmental Inquiry at McMaster University in Winter 2010.  We took an afternoon field trip to visit David Masters in his off-grid yurt.  David, a Toronto Bay Street broker for 10 years, sold it all and moved back onto the land he grew up on in the rural Southern Ontario area of St. George.  The illness and death of his father and a disillusion with a fast life focused on material wealth prompted an awakening of sorts for David that lead to building an off-grid yurt on the family land.  Rekindling his early dream to be an outdoor educator, he decided to integrate the experience of sustainable living with educating people of all ages about being in more intimate contact with nature, reducing our footprint, and engaging in new ways of living, whether one lived in a rural setting as David did, or in the city.

His invitation for the day was for us to learn a bit about one person’s attempt to live more sustainably through the yurt, to walk the land and spend some time in contemplative connection with it, and to reflect on relating the experience back to our day-to-day life at home.

David showed us how it’s possible to have a modern lifestyle off the energy grid.  Rainwater is collected from the roof of the yurt into large rain barrels and is used for drinking, cooking and bathing water.  A wood stove, television, wireless internet and computer, a fully functioning kitchen with gas stove and fridge, shower, composting toilet and a tastefully decorated space filled with natural light gave the impression of a comfortable set up.  He explained how energy is conserved in the yurt and pointed to a meter that indicates how many Watts he is drawing from his small wind/solar energy station.

A student asked about the possibility of generating more power so that he can use more energy in the yurt and not worry about power as much.   He explained that he could get more power from the unit and even expand it by adding extra generators and batteries, but he is cautious about doing this because part of his intention is to develop good habits of awareness about how much energy he is using and what is essential – a ‘good enough’ limit forces him to be conscious of what is required to make our human inventions work.

On the walk David told us how the thin yurt walls let him hear the land speak to him at night as he sleeps.  The sounds of animals, wind, and the movement of water seep into his consciousness and bring dreams, questions, ideas, and guidance about how to work with the land.  There is an energy to the landscape that is palpable, and for him very specific and real because he has lived on this land and paid attention to it for much of his life^[1].  In this spirit, he then invited us to spend some time in silence, each of us in a different ‘sit’ spot on the land.  We would just stand still, settle down our movement and listen.  Walking in a line along a path, he tapped the shoulder of the last person in the line to stop.  Waiting until the group has walked just out of sight of this person, the next person is tapped until all of us have a spot alone and out of view of the others.

Immediately, as I am left alone I become aware of my body.  I could feel feet standing on the snow.  The boots, pants, sweater, jacket, gloves and hat hugged my body, keeping me warm as the air of a setting sun and light wind nipped at my nose.  Thoughts drifted through the mindscape “what am I supposed to do here?”, “how many minutes have passed?”, “I wonder what the other students are experiencing”, “is this a good educational experience for them?”.  I let the thoughts and associated emotions arise and pass as I paid attention to the very spot I stood in.  I saw the silhouettes of trees bending to the wind, creaking in response to the shifts in weight.  Distant dogs barked.  My lungs being breathed, drawing in cool crisp air and expelling warm, moist mist.  I felt the sense of my body as whole standing there, receiving the place as it was.  The sun was now set and the onset of darkness brought about a feeling of emptiness, of emptying, of letting go.  Questions about how I want to live my life emerged, a feeling of possibilities that start always HERE and NOW.

David walked a loop, tapped each person along the path and the group reformed. We walked in silence until we returned back to the teaching yurt.  David asked us to say one word that embodies our experience with the sit: calm, connected, peaceful, disconnected, happy, relaxed, and subtle are some of the words I remember.  We spoke for a bit about going home and what shifts might be prompted from coming here.  David unscrewed the lightbulbs as we left, back to the city.

Empathic Know-How

This trip happened nearly 10 months ago.

In remembering it, here in a café overlooking Commercial Drive, I feel moved to pay attention to my immediate environment.  Keys pitting about on slick netbooks.  Coffee grinders.  Kids with snotty noses and crayons.  A 16 o.z. Americano, sitting coldly in equilibrium with the surrounding air.  Living in the heart of Toronto, and now Vancouver, and being caught up in academic studies, the yurt trip is a reminder to pay attention to my relationship to the biosphere vis-a-vis my insertion into this eclectic, energy-intensive cosmopolitan life.

The memory of the trip came to mind as I was reading Rifkin’s (2009) The Empathic Civilization.  I am resonating with his articulation of empathy as the recognition that human and other-than-human life is precious and that it’s tough to be alive.  Empathy as grounded in an acknowledgement of death, celebration of life, and a solidarity with all beings to flourish.  Empathy as the opposite of utopia.  There is no empathy in utopia because there is no mortality, no suffering.  Homo empathicus.

It’s not feasible for me to go back to the yurt trip or recreate that experience here in this café, but walking the land, standing in the snow, and David’s stories of lying down at night listening to the land point to attuned states of awareness about self and relationship to others, human and more-than-human.  More specifically, I saw moments of empathic connection and concern for myself, the land, and my students at the centre of the awareness I had that day.  The trip was a one-off experience and I wonder if a heightened sense of self, other and Nature are limited to special peak experiences, or if they can also become traits, embodied into how we naturally perceive ourselves and the world?

There are a few reasons why developing empathic relationships is important for students and educators.  Bai (2009), for example, feels that many in our society are experiencing a kind of psychic numbing, an inability to feel the suffering and pain of others. She asks us to consider if the current ecocide, the mass degradation and death of species on our planet, is due in part to a failure to see we are our relationships to human and non-human species (which is different from viewing ourselves as separate entities having relationships).

Others point to the growing segment of students in North American education experiencing a range of social and emotional challenges that are negatively impacting interpersonal relationships, academic achievement, and the development of productive citizens (e.g. Greenberg et al, 2001).  Approximately one in five children and adolescents are experiencing mental health problems severe enough to quality their need for mental health services. (Romano et al, 2001).  In response to the problem, as it is framed in these diagnostic terms, the development of social and emotional literacy has become and important focus in educational research in recent years (Napoli et al, 2005).  Skills aimed at reducing stress and developing emotional regulation and empathy are supported by empirical evidence that these skills can be taught through classroom interventions (e.g. Riggs et al, 2006).

One intervention, Roots of Empathy is gaining a lot of interest.  Roots of Empathy, which focuses on developing skills for working with emotions in interpersonal relationships in middle school children, invites and infant and the mother and/or father into the classroom once a month for an entire school year.  Sitting in a circle around the infant, the facilitator engages the children (and the teacher) in a dialogue about the behaviours and emotions of the infant.  Children learn how to take different perspectives (a cognitive component of empathy), appreciate the difficulties of being a parent, feel and label different emotions in themselves and others, and comfort a crying baby.  Research on the program shows significant reductions in relational aggression (i.e. gossiping) and proactive aggression (i.e. bullying) and increases in academic achievement and empathy (in both students and teachers) (Schonert-Reichl & Scott, 2009).

One explanation for why the trip and these interventions are compelling to me is that they support experiential ways of knowing ourselves more deeply, which in turn enables us to know others.  As Rifkin (2009) puts it:

“The awakening sense of selfhood…is crucial to the development and extension of empathy.  The more individualized and developed the self is, the greater is our sense of our own unique, mortal existence, as well as our existential aloneness and the many challenges we face in the struggle to be and to flourish.  It is these very feelings in ourselves that allow us to empathize with similar existential feelings in others.” (Rifkin, 2009, pg. 24)

As transformative as field trips and working with infants is for helping students to understand and develop compassionate self-awareness that can be extended to others, I want to expand the scope of inquiry.  I am weary, however, of thinking that we can tether our sense of selfhood to interventions, prescriptions, and programmed activities.  One reason is that by limiting the cultivation of self-knowledge to formalized practices and particular settings, we create an impression that it is the interventions, existing outside of the participants, are what cause the effects.  We need to keep in mind that all educational interventions only ’work’ to the extent that people participate in them and have the power to make them work (or not).  It is actually this whole notion of intervention that troubles me for it implies that what is of worth or power lies outside the relationships that constitute our sense of self.  A second, and very related reason to the first, has to do with know-how and know-what.  Dewey (1922), in Human Nature and Conduct makes a useful distinction:

“We may be said to know how by means of our habits… We walk and read aloud, we get off and on street cars, we dress and undress, and do a thousand useful acts without thinking of them…. [If[ we choose to call [this] knowledge… then other things also called knowledge, knowledge of and about things, knowledge that things are thus and so, knowledge that involved reflection and conscious appreciation, remains of a different sort”. (pg. 177)

I can have knowledge about myself, others, and the planet.  I can also have knowledge about practices and methods that cultivate this knowledge.  But this knowledge is different from the actions and relationships that constitute what gets defined as “me, mine, and I”.  Much of what constitutes the ‘consensus reality‘ of mainstream Western thought is a dichotomy and privileging of knowledge over knowing and having over being (Osberg, Biesta & Cilliers, 2008; Fromm, 1976). Knowledge/knowing and having/being are related in that both are distinctions between the imminent, gross, surface, and still very real part of learning and transformation from the deeper and subtler aspects. Knowledge may, in one sense, be thought of as the outcome or product of an inquiry, whereas knowing, as I am defining it, is a process by which one arrived at or grew from the outcome. Having, as in ‘having knowledge,‘ requires that something outside of yourself can be acquired, owned, changed, and even transmitted or given to others. Being constitutes the embodied and lived integration of experiences within and between persons.

Order and Chaos

Moving beyond (but still including) yurt field trips and infants, I think a broader perspective that honours the being dimension in the cultivation of self-knowledge and empathy in education is required.  Such a perspective is already hinted at by the very neuroscience and developmental psychology research that programs like Roots of Empathy are based in.  Daniel Siegel (2010), cited widely by educators for his research into empathy and brain, suggests that complexity theory and the dynamics of complex adaptive systems (such as immune systems, cities, ecosystems, evolution etc.) offers a framework for understanding how integration between order and chaos is vital for the healthy functioning of a complex adaptive system such as the human bodymind.  Integration concerns the degree to which individually differentiated parts of a system are connected in relationship with each other.

When the relationships are rigid, the system is highly ordered yet is stuck and unable to adapt.  When the relationships are weak and chaotic, it is very difficult for organization and complexity to build in the system – gains cannot be consolidated.  Somewhere between enough constraints and connections and a unencumbered free flow, is a zone where complex systems are flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized and stable (Siegel uses FACES as a mnemonic for these five qualities of an integrated complex system).

Empathy, the capacity to feel with and for another, depends critically on relationships that find a middle path between the two extremes of order and chaos.  John Bowlby, whose work on Attachment Theory has been foundational to understanding how empathy develops from infancy, said that a good parental figure is able to provide a child “with a secure base” and “encourage[s] him to explore from it” (Bowlby, 1979, p. 136).  A dependable sense of trust, warmth and security balanced with encouragement of playful, independent exploration (i.e. engaging in meaningful relationships with others) is critical to the development of the self through relationships.  A strong bond between child and parent (or secure attachment as it is called) can be thought of as being on the order side of the spectrum.  The expansion, experimentation, and playing out into the unknown can be thought of as being on the chaos side of the spectrum.  The manner in which each side is differentially supported and integrated over our early years shapes strongly how we understand ourselves in relationships to others.

Developmentally speaking, most adults are different than children and infants because they have an established self-awareness that enables them to both support and be supported by numerous relationships (not just with mom). The development of consciousness, however, does not need to stop here (does it stop?).  In complex system terms, a system that rides the edge between order and chaos can continue to evolve and increase in complexity.  I believe that, as adult learners, we can continue to develop empathy far beyond our early years by developing and holding a space for the flux of order as absolute ground and chaos as uncertainty and relativity.

Standing (sitting, lying down, walking and the transitions between)

This space between order and chaos is something that I want to explore as an embodied experience[i].  A being-oriented know-how is connected to how our bodies move in balance with the extremes of order and chaos, which can allow us, as my friend Jeff Brown describes, ‘to ascend with two feet on the ground‘ (Brown, 2009).  Jeff’s feet metaphor is not lost on me (or him either).

I am curious as to how knowing and aligning ourselves in four simple acts (sitting, standing, lying down and walking) can be worked with as foundations for empathic know-how.  If, as Montaigne (1580) put it, “the conduct of our lives is the true mirror of our doctrine”, how can the conduct of our standing or walking be mirrors of what we stand for, of our capacity to develop empathy?  I choose these four modes because at least two of them are universal (sitting, lying down) and most of us cover all four on a daily basis.

I focus on standing in this paper and will write about the others in later works.  I consider standing not as another formal practice, but as an always present and readily accessible site of inquiry that presents and generates opportunities for knowing ourselves and cultivating empathy.  These opportunities, which exist within the practicality of lived, ready-at-hand experience of the four modes, can be worked with as a foundation for ethical training and action.  I start to flesh out some thoughts I am having about ‘engaging ground, touching sky’ as a way of developing structural integrity for body and mind.  Drawing from Daoist philosophy and practice, particularly my Nei Gong training and the work of Francisco Varela, I discuss this integrity in relationship to witnessing, presence, intelligent awareness, and ethical action.  I conclude with a consideration of writing as a practice of empathy and how structurally integral standing is valuable to this process.

Nei-Gong Standing

“I feel like my transport should be an extension of my personality. And this is like my little window to the world… and every minute’s a different show. I may not understand it. I may not even necessarily agree with it. But I’ll tell you what I’ve accepted: just sort of glide along. You want to keep things on an even key, this is what I’m saying. You want to go with the flow. The sea refuses no river. The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving. It saves on introductions and goodbyes. The ride does not require explanation – just occupance.” (Bill Wise, driving a boat on wheels, in Linklater’s film Waking Life (2001))

This past October, along with Heesoon Bai and others, I started working with Lou Crockett, a Nei-Gong teacher in Coquitlam.  Nei Gong (內功) means ‘inner work’ or ‘internal skill’ in Chinese and is the structural and energetic foundation for many of the Chinese martial arts such as Tai Chi and BaguaZhang.  We are presently learning how to co-ordinate breath and movement as we stand, walk up and down stairs, open and close doors.  Lou tells us that most of us have picked up bad habits since childhood.  We tend to move from the head and not our centre of gravity.  Our shoulders are tight and hunched over from too much time in front of computer monitors.  Humans are naturally bipedal, walking creatures and we can best learn how to use our structure in the way it has evolved.

I stand in one spot as Lou checks my posture.  He tells me to drop my pelvis, relax my shoulders, and tuck my chin slightly.  I think I relaxed my shoulders enough, but his steady hand tells me I can release even more.  Hidden tension is suddenly released.  I now feel my weight stack up in a straight line that balances with a subtle wavering between my two feet.  I feel a sense of rebound from the earth.   As I allow the weight of my body to push against the ground, the force somehow bounces back up through my entire body.  There is a sense of being lighter.

We experiment with coiling and uncoiling the small muscles around the bones in our legs.  Engaging the left leg, then the right.  Lou has us feel his legs, resisting an urge to over conceptualize what is happening.  He places his hands on my legs as I try to translate what I’ve heard and felt.  When I ’get it’, Lou tells me to remember the sensation.  With the weight of our upper body held directly above our centres, we practice walking up and down stairs while trying to maintain a sense of being stretched from above and below our centre.

I am currently obsessed with engaging my centre, the ground and sky while I go pee, open the fridge, walk up and down stairs, open up jars, crouch down to put food in the compost, face people in a conversation, and ride the SkyTrain without holding on to the bars.  Engaging the ground down from my core and out through the legs activates and sharpens my awareness of how I am oriented in space.  Extending upwards through my spine and head from my core keeps me alert to what I’m seeing and hearing.  I feel a greater sensitivity to where I put extraneous exertion on my body and find my way into the most easeful posture.  I am learning how to ‘suspend’ myself as if being held by a string above my head and ‘sit’ on the ground through my core and legs to stabilize the rest of my body.

Standing is helping me to establish a kind of ‘right inward measure’, something Jon Kabat-Zinn (1990) discusses in context of the connection between the words meditation and medicine.

“…the words medicine and meditation come from the Latin mederi, which means “to cure”.  Mederi itself derives from an earlier Indo-European root meaning “to measure”.  Now what might the concept of measure have to do with either meditation or medicine?  Nothing, if we are thinking of measure in the usual way, as the process of comparing the dimensions of an object to an external standard.  But the concept of “measure” has another, more Platonic meaning.  This is the notion that all things have, in Bohm’s words, their own “right inward measure” that makes them what they are, that gives them their properties.  “Medicine,” seen in this light, is basically the means by which right inward measure is restored when it is disturbed by disease or illness or injury.  “Meditation,” by the same token, is the process of perceiving directly the right inward measure of one’s own being through careful, non-judgmental self-observation.” (p. 163)

Standing with hyperawareness in relation to the ground and sky and objects is a dynamic act, a continuous inward rebalancing.  Heesoon and I have been talking with Lou about this balancing as a way of creating structural integrity.  Structural integrity as an awareness of the feeling of the structure of the skeleton, striation of muscles, binding of tendons, sheathing of fascia, and the pumping of blood and breath being worked with in minutely co-ordinated ways.

My reading of Taoist texts such as Chuang-Tzu’s Cultivating Stillness (Wong, 1992) tells me that skillfully integrating heaven and earth, yin and yang unites us with the Tao, the undifferentiated and ultimate measure and source of all things.

“When heaven and earth, when inside and outside of the body resonate with each other and are guided by the same master, the breath of heaven and the breath of earth will return to the origin.  If there is no guide, then the breath of heaven and earth in our body will flow out of us.  Not only can we not achieve union with the Tao, but the Tao will be damaged.” (Wong, 1992, p. 30)

One way of reading this is my understanding of Daoist alchemy from a Daoist teacher of mine (Sifu Dylan Kirk).  Heaven is kineasethically expressed as the downward force of gravity (Yang – from sky to earth) and earth as the upward rebound of forces applied to earth (Yin – from earth to sky).  Looking at the above statement from the perspective of my Nei-Gong training, there is nothing esoteric or simple about it.  There is direct feeling and sensation of the minute and subtle shifts that come with engaging the ground and experiencing it’s rebound.  Figuring out how to balance the body standing is also a lot of work.

Standing as Witnessing

I wonder what it means for both heaven and earth to be guided by the same master? My friend Jake and I wanted to see how far we could walk in one day.  Early one morning this past June we left from Parkdale in Toronto with small packs and brimming enthusiasm.  We wanted to see what it would be like to walk all day, to strip down what we think we needed to transport ourselves, and to be in each other’s company.  We wanted to see the contrasts of wealth and poverty in our region, to see the lake, to know that we could leave the city by foot if we needed to.  I remember going over a footbridge going over the Queen Elizabeth Way as the morning rush plowed its way into the city.  The sheer force of sound coming up at us called us to stop.  Behind us was a hazy smog pierced by the CN Tower and, as we looked over the bridge, we could see the faces of drivers, boxed-in urban warriors ready for another day of battle in the roads and Bay street offices.

In our standing silence, I looked into people’s faces and imagined myself as part of the traffic.  At first, there was a sense of pride that I was free from ‘that’ ridiculous kind of existence.  Guilt followed shortly thereafter.  Here we were with a free day to just go for a walk while all these people were ‘contributing to society’ and had this struggle – bills to pay, kids to feed.  As I continued to feel my internal landscape with each passing car, I reflected on my ignorance and the ways in which I contributed and was affected by the internal/external ebb and flow.  A sense of purpose then emerged; I felt called to dedicate my walk to understanding this complicated dynamic and to these commuters, who by their own choice and by the constraints of the society we’re living in, brave one of the world’s longest commutes.

I see a connection between this experience on the bridge and the master with Eppert’s (2008) notion of witnessing as part of a curriculum that searches for, engages with, and communicates “an inner and outer experience that is intimately linked with larger struggles for fuller connection and with the question of how to live (and die) in the world” (p. 59).  Such a search or witnessing involves the challenges of:

1. Learning one’s relationships to the experience of the suffering of self, others, and environment.

2. Negotiating what is knowable with what is unknowable.

3. Experiencing and working through difficult and conflicting emotions.

4. Critically interrogating the personal and the political.

5. Opening oneself to the pedagogical possibility for deep transformational insight, one that potentially threatens the very psychological coherence of the I witness. (Eppert, 2008, p. 59)

One of Eppert’s interests is in practices that contribute to understanding and transforming the fears that obscure us from seeing our interconnectedness and the impermanent nature of all existence, self, identity.  A curriculum and pedagogy that skillfully attends to the resistance, discomfort, and difficult emotions, thoughts, and images arising within us, is connected to understanding and transforming the various crises in the outer world through ‘embodied cognizance’, the “becoming aware of, self-present to, and responsive to something/someone beyond oneself (Simon and Eppert, 1997, p. 183 in Eppert, 2008).

Part of the curriculum (Latin for race course) of the day presented itself unexpectedly on the bridge.  But the insights I had about the internal and external aspects of situation seemed to require my witnessing presence and awareness.  Standing on the bridge and looking at the traffic as the same old shit would likely not have afforded me an opportunity to see through first thoughts and surface appearances.  Standing in one place supported an active embodiment of presencing, something Hart (2008) describes as involving a “nondefensive openness, flexibility of thought, curiosity and questioning, a sense of wonder, suspension of disbelief” (p. 236).

Intelligent Awareness

Standing in solidarity with the ground and sky creates a conduit for cultivating this embodied cognizance. In one moment I sense my own position and separateness from the world around me, yet as I continue to pay attention to what animates my awareness of this position (thoughts, sensations, feelings, silences, re-orientation to internal and external shifts), the stiff boundaries begin to dissolve into new, unfamiliar and unknown things beyond.  A presenced, witnessing relationality with the Other is one way of thinking through the structure through which the master shows up.  This structure requires a notion of intelligent awareness that balances know-how and know-what.

Francisco Varela thought that we could use deliberate willed action to shape our behaviour, but it is our ‘immediate coping’, our mere occupancy in life, that shapes most of what we actually do (Varela, 1999).  We get up in the morning and put our socks on without thought given to how to do it because we have done it so many times – this is our embodied know-how.  Immediate coping is the real ‘hard work’ of cognition as it took the longest evolutionary time to develop; rational analysis is a relatively new addition.

Drawing from cognitive science, Buddhism and Daoism, Varela believes that our responses to everyday situations form spontaneously from the repertoire of past experience and create a readiness-for-action or microidentity in response to each situation or microworld we experience. It is the embodied immediacy of each microworld that spontaneously brings forth microidentities. There is no way of completely stopping and removing ourselves from immediacy to make an evaluation of an act’s intent and consequences so that we may then go into action. We are constantly transitioning between microworlds and microidentities, continually arising and passing away, moment to moment.  Life, Death, Life…

Some transitions, like walking from the kitchen into the bedroom, are barely perceptible whereas winning the lottery will represent an overwhelming transition.  Varela called these transitions breakdowns, “the hinges that articulate microworlds” (ibid, p.11) and are a source of ethical action.

Varela makes a useful interpretation of Mencius, an early Confucian, suggesting that we can cultivate virtuous dispositions at the moment of these breakdowns through what Mencius referred to as extension (t‘ui or ta), attention (ssu) and intelligent awareness (chih).  Mencius uses the example of seeing a young child on the verge of falling into a well to state that acting ethically in this situation will not be motivated by or come from deliberating the pros and cons of saving the child – most of us are simply moved to act, we know how to just reach out and grab the child.  Extension involves applying right action (skilful and compassionate) in ‘simple’ cases like the falling child to more complex situations that are less clear cut.  Extension is dependent upon our ability to see clearly the concrete details of a microworld.  Failures to attend clearly to the most detailed awareness of a situation result in ‘epistemological errors’ (Burris, 2005; Dell 1982). These are errors are either passive (failures to acknowledge microworlds) or active (attempts to conform a microworld to a microidentity).  They are a result of habitual responses, using rules and principles and reducing situations into categories.  As A.N. Whitehead (1911, p. 61) observed:

“It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all…eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing.  The precise opposite is the case…Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in battle – they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and they must only be made at decisive moments”

Intelligent awareness is finding the balance between apprehending the situation clearly enough and using conscious thinking and analysis as an ’internalized coach’ that gives advice about what we can do and attend to at critical moments (Claxton, 1990).  This advice can “interrupt an unfolding habit and remind us of an alternative way of proceeding, or an alternative source of feedback to attend to, that is not yet automated in our system” (ibid, pg. 49).  Like the coach, our conscious deliberation and know-what are at best reminders of the different ways we might extend and attend to microworld breakdowns (cavalry charges limited in number).  Virtuosity in know-how is only achieved through a long process of learning, through embodied experience and with the help of conscious reflection, how extension can be cultivated to spontaneously arise to meet the truest description of a situation[ii].

[End note: Intelligent awareness is not exactly a skill, but a way of being that is neither consumed by or falls into the Other (the uncertain and ever changing micro world; chaos) nor driven by self-identity and conscious thought (mircoidentity; order).  It is, to use Varela’s phrase a very specific kind of “readiness-for-action”.

Readiness-for-Action in the Creative Process

I am starting to feel this readiness-for-action when I practice Nei-Gong standing.   I experience moments where I am neither rigidly, self-absorbed with my own thoughts nor unaware of my own body as I take in and am taken in by the world.  Awareness floats across the space of self, other and in-between.

Engaging the ground is a way letting go of the struggle for conscious comprehension, a way of preparing my body for receiving new ideas and questions.  Standing with an inner ear to feeling what ‘right inward measure’ is good in a present moment disrupts ideas of what will or should happen next and encourages participating in the happening, of being the occupant.  I am curious as to how the lessons I am learning through standing can connect to empathic know-how. How can empathy be extended through my immediate coping with the world?  How can engaging the ground give rise to ethical action?

Fear and doubt are occasional visitors in my experience with writing, albeit a mostly subtle presence.  I sometimes avoid writing to escape fears of not being a good enough writer, of not having anything valuable to say (the tyranny of the internal editor).  Nathalie Goldberg’s (2005) Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within offers me some perspective on writing as Zen meditation:

“As writers we are always seeking support.  First we should notice that we are already supported every moment.  There is the earth below our feet and there is the air, filling our lungs and emptying them…believe the floor will hold you up, the chair will let you sit”. (Goldberg, 2005, p. 63)

As I write these words, I readjust my posture in this hardseated 1950’s kitchen chair.  My back straight, chin slightly tucked, shoulders relaxed.  I feel the structure of the skeleton holding the body up, letting go of extraneous efforts to sit.  It’s now easier to breath and my nervous system feels both more at ease and more sensitive.  This ease and sensitivity makes it easier to pay attention to what’s happening right now.  Ohh, I see I have a number of windows open on my computer.  Google search, facebook, funk radio broadcasts, gmail.  I feel pulled into attending to these virtual players of my identity, to see if there’s an update that can offer me a sense of fulfillment.  I bring my awareness back to just sitting here.  Hands and wrists relaxing with the keyboard.  Letting the tension in the shoulders drop away, again.  The impulse to shift awareness to another window, has, in the two minutes it took for me to get to this word, subsided.  I read this paragraph over and wonder if you the reader felt called to readjust your posture.  If you did, I wonder how this affected your experience of reading these words?

A commitment to engaging the ground within the act of writing holds a space for my fingers to keep on typing or the pen moving.  I acknowledge the fear, but I also have more room to receive the creative muse that occasionally shows up.  Establishing inward measure is intelligent awareness, a preparedness to attend to the microworld of thoughts, sensations, feelings that the writing can give expression to and just enough coaching to pay attention in certain ways to help what wants to be expressed actually make it to the paper (“don‘t answer that phone call, keep writing“).  Paying attention to the press of the sit bones on the chair, the back propped up by the chair, and feet on the ground (the structural integrity) re-minds/re-embodies my awareness of the enduring presence of this support.  There is always solidarity with the ground and standing is a training for cultivating an awareness of this solidarity so that it can breakthrough during challenging moments.

Future Directions: The Creative Cycle

I ‘end’ this paper with some thoughts about where these ideas about standing (and more undisclosed thoughts about sitting, lying down, and walking) may lead me.  If empathy is an embodied acknowledgement and celebration of life, death and our relationship with, for and through other beings, the development of empathic know-how at the edge of chaos is a creative act that can be understood as corresponsive with the seasonal cycles of nature.

In their article on integral transformative education, Jorge Ferrer, Marina Romero, and Ramon Albareda (2005) discussed the four seasons and their relationship to the body, vitals, heart, and mind.  The four seasons of the creative cycle serves not as a strictly paradigmatic framework, but a rough guide for thinking through the dynamics and integration of various phases that arise in the creative process.  These cycles can be thought of as existing across a project, and even as subcycles within projects:

1. Autumn represents the body, planting and action, a time for preparing the soil to be a suitable container for the germination of new seeds that will gestate over the winter, emerge in spring and be harvested in the summer.  Academically we enroll in courses, review the body of literature, and remain open to new information and possibilities.  To make room for creative insights later on, we let go of old thought structures, and suspend expectations about what the final outcome of an inquiry will look like.  We attend to the physical dimensions of reality and the body by preparing the spaces and materials for the process.

2.  Winter represents the vitals, rooting and gestation.  We wait in darkness and silence for the planted seeds to do their own work in the soil.  “In the same way that a germinated seed first grows towards the darkness of the soil to be nourished and develop roots that are the necessary base for the upward growth of the plant toward the light, in the human being an activated vital seed first plunges into the depth of the personal and collective unconscious” (p. 315).  At this point we stop reading and trying to incorporate new theories and ideas.  We patiently trust that the creative work of gestation is going on under the surface of conscious awareness and resist urge to control the process by pulling up the seeds to see what is happening.

3.  Spring is a time of the heart, blooming and diversity.  The intensity of the budding of sprouts and blossom of flowers is a period where fresh creative energy surfaces.  Listening to the affective world, the heart, requires modes of expression that facilitate the bringing forth of emotion and feeling.  At attitude of genuine openness and curiosity prevents previous ideas and theories from putting emergent contents into categories and predetermining their value.  Working with others in a non-judgemental environment supports cross-fertilization of ideas.

4.  Summer is a season of the mind, harvest and celebration.  Ideas and expressions are selected, refined and elaborated with clarity and precision, a process helped along by others.  Fruits ripen, ready to be shared in a spirit of gratitude.  Ferrer et al. (2005) described this shared gratitude as passionate humbleness; passionate because the ideas are grounded in body, vitals and heart; humble because of an awareness of the personal and transpersonal elements required to come together.

In context of writing this paper, I feel that what is written here is part of two seasonal cycles.  The first cycle is this paper as a product emerging out of 12 weeks of inquiry that, because of the constraints of a course, can now start being refined.  The second cycle is that the ideas in this paper are actually the seeds that I have sown to gestate over the winter.

Reflection on these seasonal cycles leads me to see sitting, walking, standing and lying down as metaphors and physical embodiments of the stages of life.  We sit on the ground as infants and are closely connected to the earth and our mothers.  We learn to walk and move about in the world as children and adolescents, a time of great discovery and expansion.  As adults, most of us figure out where we stand in life, what we take stands on, etc.   We finally bring the whole show to a supine rest at death.  I also see these four modes as allowing for different epistemologies and modes of consciousness.  Lying down, I dream, make love, sleep, and break/breath through difficult emotions.  Sitting in meditation, I can be fully awake and receptive to experience as it is.  Sitting with a person, a text, or creative work enables a space for intimate contact.  Walking and movement more generally supports creative and emotional expression and enlivens the senses.  Standing affords me opportunities to examine my bodily orientation in space, play with visual perception and focusing, to breath in ways that feel as if I am filling and emptying everything.

Works Cited:

Bai, H. (2009). Re-animating the universe: Environmental education and philosophical animism. In M. McKenzie, H. Bai, P. Hart, & B. J. (Eds.), Fields of green: Restorying Culture, Environment, and Education. New Jersey: Hampton Press.

Bowlby, J. (1979). The Making and Breaking of Affectional Bonds.  New York: Brunner-Routledge.

Brown, J. (2009).  Soulshaping: A Journey of Self-Creation.  Berkeley:  North Altantic Books.

Burris, E. (2005). Classrooms Can Use Therapy, Too. Complicity: International Journal of Complexity and Education, 2(1). pp. 5-17.

Carmody, J., & Baer, R. (2008). Relationships between mindfulness practice and levels of mindfulness, medical and psychological symptoms and well-being in a mindfulness-based stress reducation program. Journal of Behavioural Medicine , 31 (1), 23-33.

Claxton, G. (2006). Beyond cleverness: how to be smart without thinking. In J Henry (ed), Creative Management and Development, London: Sage. pp. 47-63.

Dell, P.F. (1982). Beyond Homeostasis: Toward a concept of coherence. Family Process, 21. pp. 21-41.

Dewey, J. (1922).  Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology. London: Allen and Ulwin.

Eppert, C. (2008). Fear, (Educational) Fictions of Character, and Buddhist Insights for an Arts-Based Writing Curriculum. In C. Eppert, & H. (. Wang, Cross-Cultural Studies in Curriculum (pp. 55-108). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Ferrer, J., Romero, M., & Albareda, R. (2005). Integral transformative education: A participatory proposal. Journal of Transformative Education , 3, 306–330.

Goldberg, N. (2005).  Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within.  Boston: Shambhala.

Greenberg, M. T., Domitrovich, C., & Bumbarger, B. (2001). The prevention of mental disorders in school-aged children: current state of the field. Prevention & Treatment, 4, 1–62.

Hart, T. (2008). Interiorty and Education. Journal of Transformative Education , 6 (4), 235-250.

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1990). Full Catastrophe Living. New York: Bantam Dell.

Napoli, M., Kretch, P., & Holley, L. (2005). Mindfulness Training for Elementary School Students: The Attention Academy. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 21(1), 14-22.

Osberg, D., Biesta, G., & Cilliers, P. (2008).  From Representation to Emergence: Complexity’s challenge to the epistemology of schooling.  Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40(1), pp. 213-227.

Rifkin, J. (2009).  The Empathic Civilization. New York: Penguin.

Riggs, N. R., Greenberg, M. T., Kushe, C. A., & Pentz, M. (2006). The mediational role of neurocognition in behavioral outcomes of a social–emotional prevention program in elementary school students: effects of the PATHS curriculum. Prevention Science, 7, 91–102.

Rolheiser, C., and Wallace, D. (2005) The Roots of Empathy Program as a Strategy for Increasing Social and Emotional Learning.

Romano, E., Tremblay, R. E., Vitaro, F., Zoccolillo, M., & Pagani, L. (2001). Prevalence of psychiatric diagnosis and the role of perceived impairment: findings from an adolescent community sample. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42, 451– 461.

Schonert-Reichl, K. A., & Scott, F. (2009). Effectiveness of “The Roots of Empathy” program in promoting children’s emotional and social competence:  A summary of research findings. In M. Gordon, The Roots of Empathy: Changing the world child by child (pp. 239-252). Toronto, Ontario: Thomas Allen Publishers.

Siegel, D. (2010).  Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation.  New York: Bantam.

Siegel, D. (2007). The Mindful Brain. New York: WW Norton.

Simon, R., & Eppert, C. (1997). Remembering Obligation: pedagogy and the witnessing of testimony of historical trauma. Canadian Journal of Education, 22 (2), 175-191.

Varela, F. (1999). Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom and Cognition. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Whitehead, A.N. (1911). An Introduction to Mathematics.  Retrieved November 20^th, 2010 from: http://www.archive.org/stream/introductiontoma00whitiala#page/n0/mode/2up

Wong, E. (1992).  Cultivating Stillness: A Taoist Manual for Transforming Body and Mind.  Boston: Shambhala.

Reflecting on Jane Roland Martin’s 1981 article about the privileging of patriarchal/productive values over matriarchal/reproductive values in the philosophy of education, I wondered what the success of the Roots of Empathy program suggests about how far we’ve come in education more broadly.  Governments, school boards, and educators across Canada are slowly coming to embrace social and emotional literacy as a legitimate and much needed area of development that complements and even improves academic literacy.  Why is this embrace happening?  Is it because there is strong evidence that emotional regulation skills, for example, can be developed with school-based interventions?  Is it because of the neuroscience that shows a neurological basis for empathy?  Or because it’s a cost-effective way of reducing violent behavior at schools and increasing achievement scores?

Surely these factors play a role in the interest in social and emotional literacy, but I think it confirms what many elementary school teachers (many of whom are females and are mothers themselves) have known all along – attending to the relationships and the emotional life world of children is vital to their development.   However, neither teacher education nor the traditional curriculum (math, science, writing, etc.) has given serious and systematic treatment to this kind of literacy.  And so now here’s a program (Roots of Empathy) that offers a demonstrably sound foundation to the cognitive, affective and social development of children.  It is certainly important to celebrate and support these efforts, but I don’t think Martin would be satisfied here.  There is still a grand, industrial narrative in education that sorts students by age and aims to prepare them for success in a competitive knowledge economy (the productive aims).  Students and schools are evaluated largely on objective measures of math and writing skills.  Surely we owe students the opportunities to skillfully participate and be productive in society, but to take seriously the notion of care and empathy invites us to question how traditional areas of content are being put in service of personal, social and ecological well-being.

The stress and distress of students, families, and the planet is not merely a function of individual behaviours, skills and choices, but also systematic forces that support inequity and massive accumulation of wealth and power.  Teachers bringing social and emotional literacy into the classroom are in a complicated position because they are educating students to go beyond the current failing system, while simultaneously trapping them in the system.  Helping students develop empathy and emotional regulation in one moment, and in the next moment, valuing and evaluating individual acts of intellectual regurgitation, is problematic because there is an “evil [that inheres] in the scarcity of desired places and the dependence on social rewards on educational accomplishment” (Wolff, 1992, pg. 68).  Schooling is not separate from evaluating, sorting and ranking individuals, processes that divide and put people in conflict with each other over these rewards.

The integration of a reproductive ethic into the heart of any philosophy of education would encourage us to find ways to collaboratively engage knowledge and evaluation in service of envisioning and creating ‘desired places’ and ‘social rewards’ that are different from those dependent on patriarchal and consumerist values.  The pedagogical power of perspective-taking and collaborative inter-generational inquiry that underpin the success of programs like Roots of Empathy do not need to be limited to educational add-on interventions.  Resource sharing, mixed-use community planning, and local food production are good examples of topics and activities that have concrete and substantial regenerative rewards.  These activities, which will increasingly become important as we move towards a post-carbon society, also require serious inter/trans/disciplinary knowledge that traditional school curricula could be organized towards.

I am a second year doctoral student in the Curriculum Theory and Implementation Program in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, presently completing the required coursework. In response to the growing concerns about student wellbeing and engagement, my research conceives of a model of holistic education that aims at the creation of a responsive and responsible humanity capable of living resiliently in balance with the natural and social world. In addition to my scholarship in contemplative education, my professional and vocational experience as a community educator, undergraduate instructor, and teacher of mindfulness-based stress reduction provides me with a strong scholarly and experiential background for my research. I will take my doctoral comprehensive examination in the spring of 2012 and commence research and writing my thesis thereafter.

Research Problem: A growing segment of students in North American public education are experiencing a range of social and emotional problems that are negatively impacting interpersonal relationships, academic achievement and the development of capacities for becoming resilient and productive adults (e.g. Greenberg et al, 2001). Approximately one in five children and adolescents are experiencing mental health problems severe enough to qualify their need for mental health services (Romano et al, 2001).  In response to these problems the development of social and emotional literacy has become an important focus in educational research in recent years (Napoli et al, 2005).  Skills aimed at reducing stress and developing emotional regulation and empathy are supported by empirical evidence that these skills can be taught through classroom interventions (e.g. Riggs et al, 2006). I myself taught these skills to my undergraduate students who were struggling to cope with an increasing amount of stress in their academic and personal lives. However, I have come to see that this effort at equipping students to cope and perform better is only half the story.

The other half–the more serious one for educators—is examining how our education system as part of the master narrative of late modernity contributes to creating a world of stress and distress, perpetuating inequity, individual greed and competitiveness, and relentless material progress detrimental to the environment. Mainstream education is complicit. A systemic examination needs to be at the heart of any education we undertake. Moreover, we need to involve our students–the agents of change for a more sustainable future–in authentic inquiries into how the education they receive could be a means of cultivating capacities crucial for personal, social and ecological resilience.

Such inquiries tend to generate complicated and even painful conversations (Pinar, 2004; Boler, 1999). I have been part of such conversations within the context of classes I taught at the undergraduate level.  This complication is connected to the fact that we are trying to educate students to go beyond the current failing system, while simultaneously trapping them in the system (Gatto, 2003; Noddings, 2003; Orr, 1996). I locate my research in this very terrain of complication, and aim at creating a philosophy of education, replete with practices, that are capable of helping our students to not only skillfully navigate the rough terrain but also to transform it.

Theoretical Framework: Mainstream education has compromised human resilience factors by neglecting the development of capacities and intelligences that lie outside the techno-rational paradigm wherein human learners are typically viewed as knowledge producers (Osberg et al, 2008). Fuller and richer development of subjectivity vis-à-vis emotion, empathy, creativity, imagination, intuition, and body-awareness is largely left out of mainstream education that emphasizes objectivity of facts and quantities in the service of industrialized world. The result is a limited and fragmented human intelligence less than fully capable of facing complex challenges.

Many argue that education must develop and integrate the full range of different intelligences or consciousnesses if we are to bring our fullest potential to resiliently responding to personal, social and environmental distress (Bai, 2009; O’Sullivan and Taylor, 2004). I agree. Currently there is a model of scholarship that researches such an integration in teaching and learning, namely integral education research (Esbjörn-Hargens et al, 2010; Gunnlaugson, 2005), and this will be the largest theoretical framework for my thesis. These integral education theorists conceptualize integration of human consciousness and intelligence in terms of three forms of knowledge or knowing: 1^st person (subjective), 2^nd person (intersubjective) & 3^rd person (objective). To note, in the prevailing conception of education, the 1^st (e.g. subjective knowledge of one’s emotions) and 2^nd forms of knowing (e.g. interpersonal relational knowledge) are typically neglected, while the emphasis is excessively put on the 3^rd form (e.g. objective or factual knowledge). A holistic model of education would need to address this imbalance by bringing equal emphasis to both the 1^st and the 2^nd.

I will add, to each of the three forms of knowing, perspectives and materials drawn from contemplative inquiry (Zajonc, 2009; Hart, 2008), dialogue practice (Kramer, 2007) and movement (Snowber & Cancienne 2003), and neuroscience (Siegel, 2010), respectively representing the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd form. Amongst the various practices listed here, of particular interest and service to me is contemplative inquiry and practice because of my long-term personal cultivation and professional application in this mode of knowing. The ultimate goal of my research is to develop a holistic curriculum and pedagogy that can help teachers to balance and integrate the full range of human capacity for intelligence in all three forms of knowing.

Timeline and Methodology: The first phase (current to 2011) of my research will include the completion of coursework and literature review of the framework outlined above.  The second phase (2011-2012) will be devoted to helping to design and offer, in support of the teaching faculty in my home institution, a two-part curriculum to educators interested in holistic-contemplative education. The first part will be an introductory 8-week professional development course in ‘Contemplative Education’ that draws trans-traditionally from a range of methods for building the 1^st and the 2^nd forms of knowing (e.g., awareness training, dialogue, etc.), and also the 3^rd form using texts and articles.  The second part is a practicum for educators who desire to form a community of practice to look more closely at how contemplative practices and research connect to pedagogy, teaching content, and relationships with students.  I will take an integral mixed methods (Esbjörn-Hargens, 2006) approach by using methodologies appropriate to studying the subjective, intersubjective, and objective dimensions of the above curriculum.

Guided by embodied autoethnography (Spry, 2001) and phenomenology (Moustakas, 1994; van Manen, 1990), my lived experience of designing and facilitating this curriculum will be captured by written reflections and narratives to illustrate how thoughts, bodily awareness, emotions, and intuitions arise in conscious awareness.  As a tool for shaping experience and promoting reflection on one’s practice, narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, 1996) will be used with participants to create thick descriptions of the contexts and dialogical landscapes of how teaching and learning are impacted by contemplative practices, as well as to offer a mapping of the development of the community.  Using video recordings, a comparative pre/post assessment of participant’s performance during a collaborative exercise will be analyzed to examine how participants changed over the course with respect to a defined ‘contemplative skill set’.  I will complete my thesis writing by Fall 2013.

Contribution and Dissemination: My work will contribute to the fields of philosophy of education, curriculum theory, transformative learning, and teacher education.  My intention is to write a ‘manuscript’ style dissertation whereby each chapter will be written as a publishable journal article and book chapter. Throughout my doctoral studies I will present my work to local school boards and at such conferences as the American Education Research Association and the Canadian Society of Studies in Education. My doctoral research is supervised by Dr. Heesoon Bai in Philosophy of Education, and my supervisory committee is in the process of being formed.

Works Cited:

Bai, H. (2009). Re-animating the universe: Environmental education and philosophical animism. In M. McKenzie, H. Bai, P. Hart, & B. J. (Eds.), Fields of green: Restorying Culture, Environment, and Education. New Jersey: Hampton Press.

Boler, M. (1999).  Feeling Power: Emotions and Education.  New York: Routledge.

Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (1996). Teachers’ professional knowledge landscapes. Educational Researcher, 25(3), 24–30.

Esbjörn-Hargens, S., Reams, J., & Gunnlaugson, O. (2010). Integral Education: New Directions for Higher Learning.  Albany: SUNY Press.

Esbjörn-Hargens, S. (2006).  Integral Research: A multi-method approach to investigating phenomena. Constructivism in the Human Sciences, 11(1), 79-107.

Gatto, J.T. (2003).  The Underground History of American Education.  Oxford: Oxford Village Press.

Greenberg, M. T., Domitrovich, C., & Bumbarger, B. (2001). The prevention of mental disorders in school-aged children: current state of the field. Prevention & Treatment, 4, 1–62.

Gunnlaugson, O. (2005). Toward Integrally Informed Theories of Transformative Learning. Journal of Transformative Education, 3(4), 331-353

Hart, T. (2008). Interiorty and Education. Journal of Transformative Education, 6 (4), 235-250.

Kramer, G. (2007).  Insight Dialogue.  Boston: Shambhala.

Moustakas, C. (1994). Phenomenological research methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Napoli, M., Kretch, P., & Holley, L. (2005). Mindfulness Training for Elementary School Students: The Attention Academy. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 21(1), 14-22.

Noddings, N. (2003). Happiness and Education. Cambridge: University of Cambridge.

Orr, D. (1996). Earth in mind: On education, environment, and the human prospect. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Osberb, D., Biesta, G. & Cilliers, P. (2008).  From Representation to Emergence:  Complexity’s challenge to the epistemology of schooling.  Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40(1), 213-227.

O’Sullivan, E. V. and Taylor, M. M. (Eds) (2004). Learning Toward an Ecological Consciousness: Selected Transformative Practices. NY: Palgrave MacMillan.

Pinar, W. (2004).  What is Curriculum Theory? New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Riggs, N. R., Greenberg, M. T., Kushe, C. A., & Pentz, M. (2006). The mediational role of neurocognition in behavioral outcomes of a social–emotional prevention program in elementary school students: effects of the PATHS curriculum. Prevention Science, 7, 91–102.

Romano, E., Tremblay, R. E., Vitaro, F., Zoccolillo, M., & Pagani, L. (2001). Prevalence of psychiatric diagnosis and the role of perceived impairment: findings from an adolescent community sample. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42, 451– 461.

Snowber, C.N. & Cancienne, M.B. (2003). Writing rhythm: Movement as method. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(2), 237-253.

Siegel, D. (2010).  Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation.  New York: Bantam.

Spry, T. (2001). Performing Autoethnography: An Embodied Methodological Praxis. Qualitative Inquiry, 7(6), 706-732.

van Manen, M. (1990). Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy. London, ON: University of Western Ontario.

Zajonc, A. (2009). Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry: When Knowing Becomes Love. Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne Books.

http://www.insighted.ca

I am fascinated by the relationship between our ‘inner world’ and the outer world. So much of the culture I live in separates these two worlds and puts emphasis on the physical, observable realities of life to the exclusion of the inner world. Human action for so many is driven by fears and desires about external objects such as status, knowledge, wealth, material goods and power. Fears and desires may be subtle or overpowering, but in either case, if we are neither aware of nor skilled in how to work with them, we inflict tremendous violence upon ourselves, others and the planet.

I cannot escape the knowing that how we relate to the deepest corners of our inner worlds is at the root of how we can either bring about peace, well-being, and resilience or violence, disunity, and suffering. Of course the security and well-being afforded to us by status, knowledge, wealth, material goods and power is essential to healthy lives and communities, but there is clearly all kinds of debilitating and violent imbalance in our lives, communities, and the planet. So many efforts aimed at bringing about peace, wellness and happiness into our lives are directed at distracting and numbing us from the deeper questions and patterns that bubble up to the surface. We cope by trimming the branches at the surface of our experience, yet the rumblings deep down go untouched. Desires and fears can be temporarily clipped off the top with all sorts of tactics – making ourselves look better than someone else, owning the latest toy, putting blame on others for our state of mind, escaping experiences that expose our roots, drowning ourselves in sensuous stimulation. We’ve manufactured whole economies and radically shaped ecologies to support this trimming.

Jeff Brown, a friend of mine wrote as his Facebook status recently: “It always seems to come down to the same question. Craft a better life for yourself, or craft a better self for your life? Ideally, both at the same time, but, in reality, it does seem we have to make priority of the art of self-creation, or it gets lost in the shuffle…”. How do we self-create in ways that bring us out of the debilitating and violent imbalance in our lives, communities, and the planet? Schooling, coaching, facilitating, leading, teaching, mentoring, guiding, parenting, healing, educating and so on – the whole spectrum of relationships, processes, and practices in which there is some kind of intention or the other to shape human experience and development, our inner worlds – are the intersubjective/social means by which we learn to how self-create and to shape our outer worlds. Yet it is by the various ways we’ve gone about these means that has brought about the very suffering and delusion I believe we all truly seek to come out of.

Without self-awareness and the capacity to work with one’s own inner world, those of us who intentionally aim to help others in some or all of the activities listed above can harm both ourselves and those we work with. Blind reactions to our own fears, desires, thoughts, and emotions are thrown onto the other, externalized. The harm may be quite subtle or obvious, intentional or unintentional, surface or deep. At the individual level it can manifest in our verbal and physical actions and socially in the structures and processes of institutions and cultural practices. The harm is also not limited to the individuals harmed but multiplies out in the complex tethering of relationships and actions each individual has with their world.

It is this connection between the inner world of the educator, the inner world of the student, and the social and natural environment that I feel needs to be illuminated. The role of ‘inner work’ and why it is valuable not just in and of itself, but for the well-being of communities and ecosystems, is, I feel missing from conversations in areas such as teacher education, environmental education, and social justice education. Russ Ohrt, an urban farmer who works with leading community gardens in Hamilton, Ontario told me that the work of developing community gardens is 40% about the food and the land and 60% about working with the people engaging in the work. Working with people and his own inner work, he says, involves applying the principles of biodynamic farming, which work with harmonizing all of the human and non-human relationships in a local landscape, to the inner and outer world. Otto Scharmer (2007) writes that, like farming, transforming the social field involves cultivating a dynamic between the visible, top-layer surface elements of the ‘soil’ and the hidden, invisible parts underneath the surface. Only by working from our deepest inner potentials can move beyond deeply entrenched patterns of the past to, as he says, “lead from the future as it emerges” to create resilient communities and organizations.

The Proposal

Avraham Cohen, an educator, therapist and personal friend wrote that:

“The term inner work refers to reflective practices conducted under the gaze of consciousness, which depends on a developed capacity to self-observe, to witness experience. This type of awareness is not something teacher education address nor is it a part of the culture that most of us inhabit, yet it is the critical and central key to personal inner work that will facilitate the narrowing of the … gap between outer presentation of self and inner experience. Inner work is a way of working on and with perceptions, sensations, memories, and cognitions, all of which constitute a person’s experience. Inner life consist of inner awareness and inner reflections on thoughts, feelings, images, dreams, reactions, ruminations, and processes that can be either internally generated or generated in response to an external event. Central to these ideas is that there are internal, private processes occurring all the time within educators in response to experiences, both internal and external, and that these internal experiences are recognizable by that person” (Cohen, 2009, p. 31)

In context of a book/text of some kind, I would like to bring together a number of voices, the voices of educators (broadly defined) who intentionally do inner work for the transformation of the inner, social and natural world. I feel drawn to highlighting the inner work element as central. My two questions for you are:

1. What are your process, practices, stories, experiences, and examples of inner work?
2. How does inner work connect, in your engagement with others, to the transformation of self, other and environment?

I do not and really cannot be more specific about what I want this to look like out of a concern for creating an open space for individuals to envision their own articulation of the relationships, questions, and thoughts that arise out what this prompts. My intentions are to assemble a number of chapters into an edited book that would be taken to publication somewhere, somehow. We need to get our front line inner stories out into the world.

Is there something you have in mind you’d like to propose?

much love,

sp

With the money we had, we bought some basic bicycle repair tools, tubes, and other equipment.  We sold memberships for $5 to students, staff, and members of the community.  A few friends with good experience as bicycle mechanics volunteered a few ours a week in the space.  The idea was rather simple – come in with your bicycle and we’ll teach you how to fix it.  The first winter was slow as there are but a few brave souls who commute in the frigid temperatures, but come spring, the shop was so busy, people were lined up out the door.

An old record player with Otis Redding, Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones was brought in.  Artists painted the walls.  Spare parts were donated by cyclists who know they could be put to use for others.  Eventually the city of Hamilton allowed us to take bicycles from the city dump and with a little work, restore them to rideable condition and sell them for $40.

I remember the look on the face of those that came expecting to drop off their bicycle and return a few days later.  We would put an apron on them, hand them a wrench and guide them through the process of assessing and fixing their bicycle.  Many complained about knowing nothing about tools or machines, but after the first few sessions it was common to see people returning.  They would put the bike up on the sand and dive right in, occasionally, asking the mechanics for help.  The shop is now the hub for many cyclists at McMaster, a community that brings together cyclists who ride for fitness, economical transportation, the environment, fashion/style and so on.

I spent two years with the shop before I graduated and it is only now that I can glimmer and understanding of what spirit means.  It has nothing to do with moral codes, going to church, or meditating.  Like the wrenches on the bike shop wall, repair guides, and ball bearing lubricant, they are only tools.  Spirit has something to do with how these tools are used with others, for the benefit of others.  And so the question for me has now become, how does the energy of the intellect, emotion, and body become integrated and focused so as to take up this kind of service for others?

(Early Days of Macycle Co-op – Bart (left), Sean with sideburns (right) )

One of the goals of push-hands is to move your partner off-balance with as little effort as possible by working with, and not resisting, the force exerted on you by your partner.  The concept is rather simple but the practice is often extremely frustrating because our natural tendency is to meet oncoming forces with equal resistance.  I have been fascinated with yielding and responding to an incoming push by my partner.   It is possible to yield to the the incoming force by guiding this force into an empty space away from my centre.  In the yielding, my partner attempts to push on my arms and through my centre and as I sink slightly down and back into a deeper posture, I rotate my hips, torso and arms in such a way that my partners force is redirected away from my centre.  The sinking and rotating motion of my body directs my partners force in a circular motion and it is the energy condensed into the structure of my body that I can powerfully recoil back out with very little effort.

Push hands is an inquiry of love for me.  It begins with bowing, with respect for the other, his position, his strengths and weaknesses, the teacher and student that lies in each of us.  We smile towards each other.  As we begin to push with each other, we do so gently and sensitively.  We feel the subtle movement of energy where our wrists, hands and elbows connect as we shift back and forth with our entire bodies.  Going slowly at first, we can establish connection to our breath and to the earth.

An intimate dance starts to form and we are ready to play the game.  With as little movement and energy as possible, we attempt to push through the others centre, to put them off balance without coming off balance ourselves.  If you push too far, you become easily uprooted.  If you resist being pushed, your resistance can be used as a vector that, when wisely yielded to, can quickly be used against you.  I can close my eyes and often feel like my entire body is in a matrix that includes the earth and my partner.  I sometimes experience my movements as part of this matrix as spontaneous, novel responses to slight pushes and pulls of my partner, not forethoughts about “oh, maybe I should push here next”.  When these thoughts arise and I do not remain with the sensuous contact of my body in contact with the earth and my partner, my attention shifts to analyzing the thought and away from my partner, who by now may have already moved in on me!

Sometimes I feel like I am cooking inside.  Tension and heat build in my body and my breathing and mental state becomes agitated.  I start to judge my performance.  This imbalance in the mind echoes through the body and I either overextend myself or lock-up.  If my partner is aware of this, he softly pushes me off my footing.  At other times, I can keep focused and calm the game transforms to a growing edge where we can both see our cracks and weak spots and practice different ways of moving our arms, our whole body and energy through them.  After much practice, insight and ‘reciprocal relevation’(Hart, 2008) can emerge – both players become one as the pusher becomes the pushed and the pushed becomes the pusher.  Even with practice, there is always the potential to cause harm to myself or my partner in this exercise, as soft and simple as it appears.  Our vulnerabilities, often quite different, become exposed.  We observe and feel for patterns and openings in the other’s posture and make attempts to push through the cracks.  It has only been the times where I’ve pushed too hard on or resisted feeling the contours of these cracks and used a rigid and aggressive attempt to win, that I have hurt myself or my partner, although the injuries were never serious.

a weightedness upon my hearing that warbles the sound of my feel plying the hallways of mdcl

the body is tired and as much as my mind wants this to be a busy, productive day i offer little resistance to what the body has to say

ahhhhh……i breathe, or wait, i’m always already breathing, but i notice breathe and i fell an immediate dropping of tense armour, held imperceptably by muscles, ligaments, tendons…

an actual dropping away from resisting this body. all i feel my body saying today is feed me well.  hot oats with sesame seeds, honey, sunflower seeds, poppy seeds and almond milk at the breakfast table, no rush to eat, some warm chickory tea.

on the way into westdale, hungry for lunch.  some ideas of what will attack this void propose themselves without hesitation; burritos, pizza, pita, meat.  the body feels uninspired, uninspirited, tired at knowing what it would even take to digest those things.

hot tofu, veggie, rice noodle soup is ordered without hesitation.  the steam raising up from the broad, deep bowl, weaves it’s medicine. there is life in food, perhaps not in all food (products), but shityeah!, there’s life in this bowl, in this moment.