learn from the neck down

Question: Where have I learned and lived in 2011? In my head, in my body, or both? What would living more fully in my body in 2012 bring to me? How can I embody life and learning as I move through this liminal space between now and next? How can I more fully learn from the neck down in 2012?

After a couple of years of living (mostly) in my body, I’d say I’ve shifted back the other direction again. Two years ago, I was pregnant for the first time, which was definitely a whole body experience (that could NOT be ignored), and part of the spiritual journey of that time was coming to terms with the obligatory change that comes of giving up certainty over the self to accommodate the growing of a new life. I never knew how much I had taken for granted…the limitations of the body were imposed on me for the first time in my young life. For once, the body had power over the mind. For once, I did not matter what I wanted, the body was going to have its say. And a pregnant body can definitely clobber the mind into submission.

After my son was born, and as my body gradually returned to a more normal state, the realities of caring for an infant meant that the body still had dominion over the mind. No intellectual activity was going to take place in that state of sleep deprivation! I was also in the midst of the long process of trying to regain some of the strength and stamina I once possessed. If nothing else, I was on a quest to fit back into my regular wardrobe. None of these things could be accomplished through intellectual meandering—only through the power of the body.

A year later, and in a sense, how easy it is to lose sight of the lessons learned. As a teacher, I live and work in a world that is very much dominated by the mind and its pursuits.

Education, especially in this day and age has the tendency to compartmentalize and disembody experience, isolating it into purely intellectual tasks. As valuable as book learning can be, it does have the tendency to discount direct experience, disembody knowledge into facts, and divide up the world into “subjects” with a host of “facts” that should be memorized and regurgitated on a test. Combined with the greater use of technology, it adds a dimension of passivity to the whole process of education that was unheard of fifteen years ago.

I do not think the standardized testing movement would be possible without the growth in technology, just as I often wonder if the loss of hands-on-learning and PE are also casualties of the greater reliance on technology (this is why I find the Wii vaguely disturbing)…ironic thoughts given where I am sitting and what I am doing…
Thousands of years of experience as humans, and I do not think we are really psychologically ready to let computers take the place of our bodily functions. We are designed to breathe, and move, and feel pain and joy. Modern life makes it very difficult to trust the instincts we’ve evolved with. We now need “experts” to tell us the very things our bodies are trying to communicate to us. That the world is out of balance. That our food and water are poisons. That we are deprived of things that we don’t even know we needed in the first place (fresh air and natural light).

As a teacher of at-risk youth, first and foremost, I want my students to learn to trust themselves, to develop the sense of self they will need to be in charge of their own lives (even with the decks stacked heavily against them). Sometimes this requires certain intellectual skills that need polishing. The classroom could be a good place for that. But some of these lessons can only come through direct hands-on experience, in settings where the body, not just the brain, “do the thinking”.

I think we all could benefit from more time spent “grappling” with experience, not just words, and as much as I am in the business of training minds, I cannot neglect the training of bodies. I am in a unique position to do this work, so in order to do it well, I need to be mindful of the lessons of the body in my own life. I need to not get so wrapped up in the intellectual nature of my profession, but rather take the time and space to ensure I am not ignoring the needs of the body—and teaching my students to do the same.