The Lived Experience of Moving Meditation for Findng a Flow in Thinking and Writing

ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: CHANNELING THE CURRENT: THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF MOVING MEDITATION FOR FINDNG A FLOW IN THINKING AND WRITING Sarah Lynn Morris, Doctor of Philosophy, 2013 Professor Francine H. Hultgren Dissertation directed by: Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership This phenomenological study explores lived experience of moving meditation for finding flow in thinking and writing. Moving meditation is intentional practice of mindfulness that brings us deeply into our selves and the world. Connecting to pedagogical implications for teaching composition, this study suggests embodied practices may open a flow of words and ideas for those practicing movement meditation. Grounded in the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and van Manen, this work explores embodiment and lived experience, using human science phenomenology as method. Further grounded in writing process and moving meditation texts, this work connects body movement and writing practices through lived experience. I first turn toward my own experience to examine moving meditation as method of finding flow in my thinking and writing. Next, I explore the phenomenon in a range of traditions to further uncover the lived experience of moving writers. The metaphor of the circuit as descriptive of writing process and body process further illuminates the phenomenon. Initial emergent themes include process, practice, flow, solitude, and nature. Recognizing the intersubjective in the particular, this study focuses on lived experience of four high school English teachers as they make meaning through focused movement. In four sessions of meditative contemplation, these teachers walked in the woods, wrote reflections, and considered personal and pedagogical experiences. Renderings of these teachers' journals and conversations suggest themes including fear, care, wholeness, and transcendence. Drawing from these conversants’ insights, I explore ways in which meditative movement opens a flow in thinking and writing for these teachers, writers themselves in the current of life. Orienting toward pedagogical implications, I engage with lived experience in order to suggest ways in which teachers of writing may create wholeness of experience for classroom communities: taking students outside, seeing students in wholeness, positioning themselves as more experienced writers, focusing on process rather that product, and being bodies themselves. In doing so, they may generate a culture of care that fosters growth of writing and writers—body, mind, and spirit wholeness— with the world as classroom and lived life as text. CHANNELING THE CURRENT: THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF MOVING MEDITATION FOR FINDNG A FLOW IN THINKING AND WRITING by Sarah Lynn Morris Dissertation submitted to the faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2013 Advisory Committee: Dr. Francine H. Hultgren, Chair and Advisor Dr. Joseph McCaleb, Academic Advisor Dr. Gloria Carpeneto Dr. Jennifer Turner Dr. Jing Lin, Dean's Representative © Copyright by Sarah Lynn Morris 2013 ii DEDICATION I dedicate this work to the memory of the first teacher I remember, my grandmother, Mercia, four foot seven inches tall and larger than life, who first brought learning, lunches, and literacy to students in a one room schoolhouse in West Virginia coal country in 1929. Almost 50 years later, she brought to me a hunger for learning and a thirst for words, gave me books and wrote me letters, taught me to cook, and stirred my creativity through laughter, love, song, and story. She was a testament to teaching every day of her life and an inspiration in mine. In honor of the legacy she left me, may I, someday, be the kind of teacher Grandma was. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS So many people have contributed to the development of this document and to my own growth throughout the process, and they deserve more gratitude than I can ever express. I offer my deepest appreciation to Dr. Joseph McCaleb, horseman, teacher, and storyteller extraordinaire, who met me at a conference and planted the seeds for my growth at The University of Maryland. Likewise, I am grateful for Dr. Francine Hultgren, my dissertation chair and phenomenological guide, who is always so giving of time, feedback, and authentic care. Without these two advisors, this work would never have sparked to life. Dr. Jennifer Turner, who graciously gave her time in very short notice to serve on my committee, is much deserving of gratitude, as well. I am also appreciative of the support and time offered by my other committee members: Dr. Gloria Carpeneto and Dr. Jing Lin. I am ever thankful for their thoughtful insights and comments on my work. I also offer thanks to my phenomenological colleagues for intellectual stimulation, philosophical discussions, and always helpful feedback. I also recognize my friends at the National Writing Project at West Virginia University and at The University of Maryland Writing Project for helping me believe that all teachers of writing are themselves writers and subsequently helping me to find the writer in me. The insights of this study are based on the generosity of the amazing teachers who walked and talked with me: Alyx, Annalee, Holly, and Traci—without whom this dissertation would not be possible. Indeed, this work would not have come into being at all without the experiences I had and people I worked with at the school in which these teachers still work: my time there shaped me irreversibly. The people who believed in me—teachers, principals, community, and students—made me a teacher, the best I could iv be. I am grateful, too, for my students, past and future, for always teaching me. Although it is intellectual and collegial support that drives a work like this, it is love that has sustained me through the making of this piece of my life. The love of friendship has given me strength and levity through this process, and many friends have contributed greatly. I am grateful to Kristen for a sunlit space in which to write and plenty of conversation, venting, and processing. To Maggie and Thor, thanks are in order for the many phenomenological discussions, even when (maybe especially when) they deteriorated into ridiculous laughter. I am grateful to Jesse for being first my student, and then my colleague, collaborator, teacher, and friend. MK and Melodie, my dearest friends, believed in me and kept me aloft in the storm of these past few years. New love, too, has given me hope for the future, has sparked inspiration, and has brought joy. I have been blessed with two new loves during the writing of this dissertation. I am thankful for Nat, my sweet niece, who is always teaching me to laugh and that girls really do rule the world, and who inherited both humor and intelligence from her wonderful parents. I am grateful, too, for B, friend, confidant, partner, and companion, who came to me just as I began the hardest part of this work, who has found flow with me over miles run and mountains climbed, and who I am always surprised to find, smiling and with open arms, when I reach the end of the rope. The time in which this work was written has been the most difficult and transformative in my life, and it is old love, the kind that is constant and unwavering, the kind that never leaves, that has enabled me to keep going, even when I wanted to give up. I am thankful for my brother, J, who taught me that siblings can be friends and that everything is funny (especially when it is not), and for Eugenia, the brilliant and beautiful v sister my brother chose for me. Lastly, I am forever indebted to my parents, without whom I would never have begun this—or anything—at all. I am grateful to my father, Frank, who taught me to fish at least a thousand times, and who has helped me learn that silence speaks and teaches just as meaningfully as words do. Yes, Dad, a dissertation is “kind of like a book,” and this is the book, so I hope you will read it. Finally, I owe more than anything to my mother, Linda, outdoors-woman, survivor, role-model, and the toughest lady I know, who never did understand why her child would not go outside and play and put that book down—but who never did make me, even though she wanted to, and so, eventually, I went outside on my own. Thank you, Mom, for always letting me be me. Finally, I would like to thank copyright holders for allowing reprints of material from the following sources: Call Me By My True Names (1999) by Thich Nhat Hanh excerpts are reprinted with permission of Parallax Press, Berkeley, California, www.parallax.org. A poem excerpted from The Zen of Running (1974/1978) is re-printed with permission of the author, Fred Rohe. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: TURNING TOWARD THE PHENOMENON AND RETURNING TO THE SELF: A WRITER IN THE CIRCUIT OF MOVEMENT MEDITATION...................................................................................................................1 Receiving the Charge...........................................................................................................1 The Body Electric: The Experience in Myself...........................................................2 From Blown Fuse to Power Conductor......................................................................7 In the Classroom: Looping Outward........................................................................12 Sparking Wild Words...............................................................................................13

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