Dear HEALers:
We considered at our last meeting how pedagogical relationality can carry a strong sense of 'vitality.' Having looked now at some features of 'vitality,' we can regard helpful, caring relationships as ones that are animated, health-inducing, and sustaining of oneself and others in physical, psychological, emotional and wider energetic ways. Our lived experiences of vitality with others involve, in other words, physical, emotional and world-connecting intensities. For example, we were relaxed and somatically-opened-up by a massage, moved by another's story of betrayal, and engaged with serious matters of social inequity through drama exercises. Short-hand words for this are 'flow' and 'play,' although such words tend to apply too often just to personal and psychological intensities. Our ongoing task is to keep looking for words that approximate the fuller, relational vitality of health education, health promotion and health care.
A. We discussed, last time, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's articulation of the psychology of flow. A less dry talk than the one we heard and saw is on the site Insphyre: What is Flow? (This talk may also help explain why I choose certain kinds of activity breaks in our classes.)
http://www.insphyre.com/flow-arts/
Rebecca Lloyd and I have taken the notion of 'interactive flow' and incorporated it within the practice of fitness classes and personal training. Again, this is just one example of experiencing 'flow' as one of the essentially lived meanings of health education and active living.
B. Now, consider how the relational dynamics and the energy registers of interactive flow are evident in your own HEAL practices. Consider how they are apparent, to a greater or lesser extent, in the narrative pieces you've written in your major assignment drafts. My purpose in selecting 'The Mane Event' as our Saturday field trip on the 26th is for you to observe the sheer physicality of interactive flow in a context that will be foreign to some of you. I say 'sheer physicality' because horses don't talk (in human words at least) and so the interaction with them is all about body language and the energy and vitality resonances that can be created through receptive posturing, positioning, gesturing, and expressing clear intentions.
You already have the article I wrote on "Becoming horse in the duration of the moment: The trainer's challenge" which is, as you will now come to expect, a rather philosophical treatment of human-horse pedagogy.
A companion piece is by Karen LaRochelle who wrote her paper as a course assignment in another of our MEd programs. Karen describes one of the practical horse communication sessions I ran for teachers and how it connected to her sense of being with others and being part of a more-than-human world. Her piece, which she gave permission for me to share with you, is called "Interbeing and interspecies communication."
The third piece is a book chapter by Gala Argent titled "Toward a privileging of the nonverbal: Communication, corporeal synchrony, and transcendence in humans and horses."
I trust these writings will give you some entry points for the observation of the human-horse connectivity we'll observe at 'The Mane Event.'
The overriding consideration, however, is not about human-horse connections but about the ones we create in our various workplaces and professional practices.
a. What understandings of non-verbal communication do you gain? What boundary-setting is necessary and desirable? How do proximity and distance figure in the communication? How is attention gained and kept? What intentional postures, positions, gestures and expressions convey particular meaning?
b. What are the kinesthetic dynamics of connection, responsiveness and even 'entrainment'? How do breathing, balance, timing (rhythm) and touch figure in the relationship-building process?
c. What are the energy affordances of effective communication? How do instructing, directing, leading, guiding, facilitating and following look and feel as different energetic communications?
d. On what 'empirical' basis do you judge certain relational dynamics as positive or negative? What feels right and wrong to you?
C. Writings about the physical (and active living) aspects of interacting with others (of a more-than-human kind) touch on a theme that ecological and environmental writers take up, which is about 'sustainability' and even 'flourishing.' I mention David Abram's work as being particularly influential in this regard. I'd like to pick up on some of his work, and that of other eco-phenomenologists and eco-pedagogues, as we consider the broad reaches of the vitality of our pedagogical relations with others. We'll see if and how our field trip prompts some thinking in that direction. Again, for the moment, you can get the gist of David Abram's environmental work and writings on the internet. I suggest the following Youtube talk:
David Abram at the SEED Language of Spirit Conference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrLxEKgTGZ4
D. And now to practical matters. The schedule of 'The Mane Event' is not quite to my liking, however I think we can still gain much from observing 'the trainers challenge' through the Saturday morning and early afternoon. You can download the full schedule from the website of 'The Mane Event' at:
http://maneeventexpo.com/Chilliwack/
We'll talk more about expectations and such when next we meet. But, generally-speaking, I imagine us committing to the three Trainers' Challenges from 10:00 until 2:00. There is an evening show that is well worth seeing and much to absorb around the sessions indicated. But I am mindful of family time and the fact that horses aren't everyone's favorite animal! So we'll limit our time to the above sessions.
E. Don't forget the reading of Part Four of the Raphael text on "Food and Shelter" (Chapter 13-16). Our seminars, based on this text, have been extremely rich to date and so I look forward to our next one, which we'll have on the Friday evening.
I trust you are all having a relaxing and rejuvenating weekend.
Regards,
Stephen.
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Readings:
Smith, Stephen J. (2011). Becoming horse in the duration of the moment: The trainer’s challenge, Phenomenology and Practice, 5 (1), 7-26.
Argent, Gala (2012) Toward a privileging of the nonverbal: Communication, corporeal synchrony, and transcendence in humans and horses, Experiencing Animal Minds, Julia A. Smith and Robert W. Mitchell (Eds.). New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 111-128.
LaRochelle, Karen (2010). Interbeing and inter-species communication. Unpublished M.Ed. paper.
Raphael: Social Determinants, Part Three: Foundations of lifelong health: Education.
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