This accessible page is a derivative of https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2951879/3007958 which it is meant to support and not replace.
Video description: Yoga — Animal Poses is a two-minute video, narrated by the author, exploring animal poses in yoga. The author is shown practicing the poses in a studio.
[Text on screen:
Animal Exercise
→
Material Creation
(Movement and Sound)
→
Yoga]
Transcription of the audio from the video:
‘While the use of animal exercises in theatre training are excellent ways to help us engage creatively with physical expression, I started to get curious about how animals have inspired other practices. Luckily, a friend currently training to be a yoga instructor offered to do a class with me focused on animals. After a preparatory exercise called the ‘Lion’s Breath’ [example], she took me through more than 20 poses and variations. These included the ‘cow’ and ‘cat’ — frequently used in combination — and the ‘upward facing’ and ‘downward facing dog’ used regularly in transition and resting poses. But I also tried the: Butterfly, Tortoise, Lizard, Pigeon, Dolphin, Crow, and Eagle. My friend then explained to me how it is also possible to develop a sequence of poses that seamlessly transition from one to another by synchronizing the movement with your breathing. This is called Vinyasa Yoga, or ‘Flow’ yoga — which looks something like this using only animal poses.’
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The reception and (self-)perception of so-called outputs are often central to how artists and academics gauge the success of their careers. As already mentioned, such factors are important and often give us an indication of how things are going, at least in terms of mainstream industry metrics of engagement and reward (views on YouTube, Google Scholar citations, gigs booked, fees paid, articles published, tenure obtained). But focusing too narrowly on any output runs the risk of eliminating the both-and dynamics that may often influence its production.
Neglecting or avoiding discussion of complex underlying processes is common in academic research, which tends to prefer straightforward language with a clear destination. We can see similar methods when one savours a tomato without appreciating the vine, plant, soil, sun, water, labour, and love that went into growing it, or in audiences consuming lavish theatrical performances without giving a second thought to the rehearsal or production processes that preceded them. Alternatively, the main interests of an artist-researcher are frequently the underlying and ongoing processes that exist in one’s practice, especially those related to (self-)training. On closer inspection, these processes are intricately linked with the various annual cycles and their respective outputs discussed earlier. However, they can also involve recurring, iterative processes extending over numerous seasons, if not entire lifetimes. I refer to these as ‘perennial spirals’ but immediately must note that, in practice, these spirals are rarely (as depicted below) so neatly shaped, and rarely grow (also as depicted) at incremental or exponential rates.
Image description: A diagram shows two spirals side by side with overlaid text. The spirals are small at the bottom and gradually expand upwards. The left spiral is titled ‘Other experiences and learning contexts.’ The spiral on the right titled ‘Experiential Learning’. There are added arrows connecting the right spiral to the left (indicating a transferring to/from other experiences to/from experiential learning), and an arrow pointing upward on the right side (suggesting increased sophistication in student questions and deepening of understanding as more turns of the spirals pass).
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There is a growing literature in Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) that highlights a phenomenological [1] interest in how people learn through direct experience. In ELT, learning is defined as ‘the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience’, and ‘[k]nowledge results from the combination of grasping and transforming experience’ (D. Kolb 1984: 41). It is helpful to consider knowledge in this context through Nelson’s model (Fig.) and to also consider the resonances between his iterative process of arts praxis — ‘doing-reflecting-reading-articulating-doing’ (2013: 32) — and ELT.
Experiential learning is a process of constructing knowledge that involves a creative tension among the four learning modes [concrete experience, abstract conceptualization, reflective observation, and active experimentation]. This process is portrayed as an idealized learning cycle or spiral where the learner ‘touches all the bases’ — experiencing, reflecting, thinking, and acting — in a recursive process that is responsive to the learning situation and what is being learned. (A. Kolb and D. Kolb 2009: 298)
Kolb and Kolb characterize experiential learning as a ‘path on the learning way’ that is ultimately dependent on ‘learning about learning’ (2009: 323–24). They refer to this as a ‘meta-cognitive’ [2] approach that has potential resonances with the ‘meta-structure’ of the Pro-Create Cycle (Walker 2015: 13), and indeed the impetus for my recurring use of ‘meta-phor’ throughout this exposition.
Whether thinking in terms of arts praxis or experiential learning, my doctoral project simultaneously relied on both multiplicity and unity in my practice: a multiplicity of both annual cycles and perennial spirals within the singularity or wholeness of my practice. For example, my individual writing outputs each relate to their own annual cycle (metaphorically speaking, of course — my 2021 book review didn’t take a year to write, while my first book took several). These outputs exist as part of at least three concentric [3] writing spirals: my formal writing spiral involving the writing and publishing of academic research for twenty-five years, my artistic research writing spiral of the past decade, and my PhD writing spiral encompassing four years. These examples point to the dynamic relationship between ELT and my methods of writing. Similar time frames and dynamics exist in relation to and within my concentric professional training spirals: as a classical singer (30+ years), singer-dancer (15+ years), and singer-dancer-director-choreographer-teacher (10+ years). Not only is there complexity within these praxical spheres of writing and training themselves, but they also overlap in my writings about training. Moreover, further complexities arise when considering that I am engaged in not only these two spiral trinities but also additional spirals of researching training and developing training through pedagogical theorizing, imagining, constructing, and applying (Skelton 2013, 2019, 2023, 2024).
As the number of intersecting spirals increases, it becomes clear that thinking in terms of ‘multiplicity’ is much less convoluted than employing the ‘both-and’ construct (which, just in the above section, amounts to at least ‘… and … and … and … and … and … and … and … and … and also’). Multiplicity will be discussed again later in connection with the methodology of transdisciplinarity, but making sense of multiplicities in unity — at least through my writing — usually emerges in dedicated moments of pause. Through these, we can also dig deeper into alternative and anti methods and methodologies.
I mentioned earlier that the actual integration of singing, dancing, and breathing is of primary importance … [next page: Intersection]
[1] Phenomenological research focuses on understanding things through the lived experience of individuals. Its methods therefore concentrate more on subjective interpretations than objective observation. ↩︎
[2] Here, ‘metacognition’ refers to awareness and/or understanding of one’s own thinking and learning processes. ↩︎
[3] ‘Concentric’ refers to certain shapes — circles, arcs, and here spirals — that share a centre, the shared centre being myself in these examples. ↩︎