Sharing Breath Embodied Learning and Decolonization

Treating bodies as more than discursive in social research can feel out of place in academia. As a result, embodiment studies remain on the outside of academic knowledge construction and critical scholarship. However, embodiment scholars suggest that investigations into the profound division created by privileging the mind-intellect over the body-spirit are integral to the project of decolonization.

The field of embodiment theorizes bodies as knowledgeable in ways that include but are not solely cognitive. The contributors to this collection suggest developing embodied ways of teaching, learning, and knowing through embodied experiences such as yoga, mindfulness, illness, and trauma. Although the contributors challenge Western educational frameworks from within and beyond academic settings, they also acknowledge and draw attention to the incommensurability between decolonization and aspects of social justice projects in education. By addressing this tension ethically and deliberately, the contributors engage thoughtfully with decolonization and make a substantial, and sometimes unsettling, contribution to critical studies in education.

An extremely refreshing book in what is considered curriculum studies. […] Squarely situated in a Canadian context where the decolonization struggles of Indigenous people in Canada is the primary source of political, social, economic, and cultural injustice, the book is nonetheless theoretically and empirically rich enough to inform studies of embodiment in North America more broadly.

Wayne Yang, University of California San Diego

About the Editors

Sheila Batacharya completed her doctoral studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. She has taught education, women’s and gender studies, criminology and sociology courses at several colleges and universities in southern Ontario. Sheila’s scholarship in embodiment and embodied learning is fueled by her experiences teaching yoga and her curiosity and concern with articulating and practicing attunement to social-sentient embodied experiences in formal education and community contexts. Yuk-Lin Renita Wong is an associate professor at the School of Social Work at York University. Her scholarship and teaching aim at deconstructing the colonial, racial, and gender power relations in the knowledge production and discursive practices of social work, and in re-centering marginalized ways of knowing and being. Mindfulness and social justice are inseparable in Renita’s practice in and outside of the academy.

With contributions by Temitope Adefarakan, Candace Brunette-Debassige, Susan Ferguson, Katie MacDonald, Jamie Magnusson, Stephanie Moynagh, Devi Dee Mucina, Denise Nadeau, Roxana Ng, Randelle Nixon, Wendy Peters, Carla Rice, Sheila Stewart, and Alannah Young.

Reviews

I commend Sheila Batacharya and Yuk-Lin Renita Wong on seamlessly compiling fourteen chapters with unique voices and messages to contribute to the main goal of addressing embodiment and embodied learning as an integral, counter-hegemonic aspect of decolonization and critical pedagogy.

Jacquelynne Anne Boivin, Journal of Contemplative Inquiry

Through diverse perspectives, there is an opening of possibilities under the diversity and complexity of the work being done. In each new approach, a subjective worldview shows us the ways our differences allow us to be bound up in and with one another. The varieties of expression and understanding present an underlying thread of dignity and care. The volume offers evidence that in our struggles, our pain, and our triumphs, human beings have the ability to come together in solidarity for a common cause, linked by an embodied yearning for freedom, honesty, authenticity, and the ability to dwell in the imperfect expression of each of these.

Iowyth Hezel Ulthiin, McGill Journal of Education

This book offers insight into embodiment practices that may infuse the academy and society itself with explorations that will enable interconnectedness of heart, mind, and spirit within, between, and beyond, addressing the pandemic of supremacy. It invites a uniquely integrated exploration of scholarly activity beyond the intellect.

Dawn P. MacDonald, Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work: Social Thought

This volume serves as a budding, dynamic site of convergence where practices of embodiment, pedagogy, and decolonization integrate politically as well as ethically to reorient bodily relations, effectively opening up space for conversations and actions focused on creating non-normative and non-dominant ways of knowing and being.

Heidi Zhang, Intersectionalities

Table of Contents

1. Acknowledgements
2. Introduction
3. 1. Decolonizing Teaching and Learning Through Embodied Learning: Toward an Integrated Approach / Roxana Ng
4. 2. Embodying Indigenous Resurgence: “All Our Relations” Pedagogy / Alannah Young and Denise Nadeau
5. 3. The Journey to You, Baba / Devi Dee Mucina
6. 4. Being Moved to Action: Micropolitics, Affect, and Embodied Understanding / Randelle Nixon and Katie MacDonald
7. 5. Volatile Bodies and Vulnerable Researchers: Ethical Risks of Embodiment Research / Carla Rice
8. 6. Resistance and Remedy Through Embodied Learning: Yoga Cultural Appropriation and Culturally Appropriate Services / Sheila Batacharya
9. 7. From Subjugation to Embodied Self-in-Relation: An Indigenous Pedagogy for Decolonization / Candace Brunette-Debassige
10. 8. Integrating Body, Mind, and Spirit Through the Yoruba Concept of Ori: Critical Contributions to a Decolonizing Pedagogy / Temitope Adefarakan
11. 9. “Please Call Me by My True Names”: A Decolonizing Pedagogy of Mindfulness and Interbeing in Critical Social Work Education / Yuk-Lin Renita Wong
12. 10. Poetry: Learning Through Embodied Language / Sheila Stewart
13. 11. Patient Stories: Renarrating Illness and Valuing the Rejected Body / Wendy Peters
14. 12. Embodied Writing and the Social Production of Pain / Susan Ferguson
15. 13. Class and Embodiment: Making Space for Complex Capacity / Stephanie Moynagh
16. 14. Fighting Out: Fractious Bodies and Rebel Streets / Jamie Magnusson
17. Afterword / Sheila Batacharya and Yuk-Lin Renita Wong

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that the original author is credited.