Sharing Breath

Embodied Learning and Decolonization

Sheila Batacharya, Yuk-Lin Renita Wong

• Publisher: AU Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN:
  9781771991933
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

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.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Decolonizing Teaching and Learning Through Embodied Learning: Toward an Integrated Approach
• 2. Embodying Indigenous Resurgence: “All Our Relations” Pedagogy
• 3. The Journey to You, Baba
• 4. Being Moved to Action: Micropolitics, Affect, and Embodied Understanding
• 5. Volatile Bodies and Vulnerable Researchers: Ethical Risks of Embodiment Research
• 6. Resistance and Remedy Through Embodied Learning: Yoga Cultural Appropriation and Culturally Appropriate Services
• 7. From Subjugation to Embodied Self-in-Relation: An Indigenous Pedagogy for Decolonization
• 8. Integrating Body, Mind, and Spirit Through the Yoruba Concept of Ori: Critical Contributions to a Decolonizing Pedagogy
• 9. “Please Call Me by My True Names”: A Decolonizing Pedagogy of Mindfulness and Interbeing in Critical Social Work Education
• 10. Poetry: Learning Through Embodied Language
• 11. Patient Stories: Renarrating Illness and Valuing the Rejected Body
• 12. Embodied Writing and the Social Production of Pain
• 13. Class and Embodiment: Making Space for Complex Capacity
• 14. Fighting Out: Fractious Bodies and Rebel Streets
• Afterword
• List of Contributors