Yoga Teachers — on and off the Mat: Transdisciplinary Perspectives

• In Event: 34.077 - Impacting Teachers Lives: The Place of Mindfulness and Contemplative Practices in Learning and Teaching

Abstract

In a time of change there appears to be a loss of credibility and a flow on to loss of confidence in teaching in higher educational contexts. In the university, lecturers are used to dwindling class numbers even in programmes where the pedagogical relationship is a key professional interest. In this research, yoga teachers, who are paid for each class and who often have a devoted following, were asked about their strategies and approaches to teaching. A number of teachers were interviewed and their practices examined by thinking through transdisciplinarity (Bernstein, 2015). Links were made between mindfulness and commitment and the notion of ‘finding your teacher’ was explored.

There are multiple layers to this research that seeks to inhabit a creative space and to find out something new from a long established teaching practice that is not usually ‘counted’ in education. As teaching becomes deterritorialised (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) and increasingly inhabits a virtual space this inquiry asks what is powerful about working with the body and movement as a means to reclaim the pedagogical space, or territory?

This paper presents research that rethinks what might be desired by the learner and tries to identify inspirational pedagogical practices as a way of affirming holistic relationships, ‘special bonds’ (hooks, 1994), and agentic participation, in a space that appears to be changing, and has never been what Derrida, in his critique of the university to come, called a ‘neutral utopia’ (Simmons & Worth, 2000). In this sense, the work presented here will acknowledge that learning can come from diverse and surprising places.

Author

• Jane Elizabeth Bone, Monash University