Sharing Breath Sharing Breath Embodied Learning and Decolonization edited by Sheila Batacharya and Yuk-Lin Renita Wong Copyright © 2018 Sheila Batacharya and Yuk-Lin Renita Wong Published by AU Press, Athabasca University 1200, 10011 – 109 Street, Edmonton, AB T5J 3S8 ISBN 978-1-77199-191-9 (pbk.) 9-781-77199-192-6 (PDF) 978-1-77199-193-3 (epub) doi: 10.15215/aupress/9781771991919.01 Chapter 1, by Roxana Ng, originally appeared in Valences of Interdisciplinarity: Theory, Practice, Pedagogy, edited by Raphael Foshay, 343–65 (Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2011). It is reprinted here with minor revisions. Cover image: Still from Lisa Myers, Through Surface Tension (2013) Cover design by Martyn Schmoll Interior design by Sergiy Kozakov Printed and bound in Canada Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Sharing breath : embodied learning and decolonization / edited by Sheila Batacharya and Yuk-Lin Renita Wong. (Cultural dialectics) Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. 1. Critical pedagogy. I. Batacharya, Sheila, 1969-, editor II. Wong, Yuk-Lin Renita, 1962-, editor III. Series: Cultural dialectics LC196.S53 2018 370.11’5 C2017-902956-8 C2017-902957-6 This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities and the assistance provided by the Government of Alberta through the Alberta Media Fund. This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons License, Attribution– Noncommercial–NoDerivative Works 4.0 International: see www.creativecommons. org. The text may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that credit is given to the original author. To obtain permission for uses beyond those outlined in the Creative Commons license, please contact AU Press, Athabasca University, at [email protected]. Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction 3 Sheila Batacharya and Yuk-Lin Renita Wong 1 Decolonizing Teaching and Learning Through Embodied Learning: Toward an Integrated Approach 33 Roxana Ng 2 Embodying Indigenous Resurgence: “All Our Relations” Pedagogy 55 Alannah Young Leon and Denise Nadeau 3 The Journey to You, Baba 83 Devi Dee Mucina 4 Being Moved to Action: Micropolitics, Affect, and Embodied Understanding 111 Randelle Nixon and Katie MacDonald 5 Volatile Bodies and Vulnerable Researchers: Ethical Risks of Embodiment Research 135 Carla Rice 6 Resistance and Remedy Through Embodied Learning: Yoga Cultural Appropriation and Culturally Appropriate Services 161 Sheila Batacharya 7 From Subjugation to Embodied Self-in-Relation: An Indigenous Pedagogy for Decolonization 199 Candace Brunette-Debassige 8 Integrating Body, Mind, and Spirit Through the Yoruba Concept of Ori: Critical Contributions to a Decolonizing Pedagogy 229 Temitope Adefarakan 9 “Please Call Me by My True Names”: A Decolonizing Pedagogy of Mindfulness and Interbeing in Critical Social Work Education 253 Yuk-Lin Renita Wong 10 Poetry: Learning Through Embodied Language 279 Sheila Stewart 11 Patient Stories: Renarrating Illness and Valuing the Rejected Body 307 Wendy Peters 12 Embodied Writing and the Social Production of Pain 323 Susan Ferguson 13 Class and Embodiment: Making Space for Complex Capacity 349 Stephanie Moynagh 14 Fighting Out: Fractious Bodies and Rebel Streets 369 Jamie Magnusson Afterword 389 Sheila Batacharya and Yuk-Lin Renita Wong List of Contributors 393 Acknowledgements We are indebted beyond measure to the contributors to this collection. Thank you for sharing your important scholarship and for your patience with the editorial process. We deeply value your work and have truly enjoyed our collaboration throughout this project. A special thanks to Lisa Myers for her beautiful artwork that graces the cover of the book. Athabasca University Press has provided tremendous support for this book project. We are sincerely grateful to Pamela Holway, senior editor, who championed the collection from the start and who took time to give each chapter of the book the benefits of her editorial expertise and schol- arly training. Her constructively critical attention resulted in significant improvements to the collection as a whole. We also thank Joyce Hildebrand for her reflective engagement with the text during the copyediting process. Our heartfelt thanks as well to Megan Hall and Karyn Wisselink for their collaborative approach to creating the cover design and promoting the book. We were thrilled to receive an Awards to Scholarly Publications Program (ASPP) grant for this book, and we thank the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences for their support. Sheila. Renita, I am grateful for your scholarly expertise, administrative finesse, and deep commitment to our project. Your wise guidance through- out Roxana’s illness and death, and then your support during my pregnancy the following year, made it possible for me to continue this work. Thank you for our many conversations about lived experience and being present with body, breath, emotions, and spirit with respect to writing, loss, babies, animals, photography, walks, and, academic work. Editing this collection with you has been an honour and a pleasure. I studied with exceptional OISE/UT scholars at a time when critical race, anticolonial, and decolonizing scholarship faced particular forms of institutional opposition, many of which persist and continue to be resisted. vii sharing breath doi: 10.15215/aupress/9781771991919.01 I am indebted to my teachers Roxana Ng, George J. Sefa Dei, and Sherene Razack and to my peers who have made invaluable contributions to critical scholarship: I write with you all in mind and do my best to keep up! My gratitude to Roxana is multifold. She was a challenging and sup- portive doctoral supervisor and a trusted mentor. She was also a delightful person with whom to collaborate on a book project, and I’m sure that she would be as overjoyed as I am now that it has come to fruition. I remember the two of us sitting in Roxana’s backyard, working together on the book and laughing when she suddenly exclaimed, “This is fun!” Working with Roxana was fun: she approached her scholarly and community work with meticu- lous concentration as well as enthusiasm and curiosity. I miss her dearly. Soraya, thank you for writing and phone tea. Prasad, Soumil, and Rushil: love and thanks every day. Renita. My deep gratitude goes to Roxana Ng for her support, mentorship, and friendship throughout my doctoral years and subsequent academic career. Her move to reclaim Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), a system of knowledge from her (and my own) cultural roots, affirmed my way of being and of knowing, which likewise insists on the fundamental integra- tion of the body-heart-mind-spirit. Her courage in bringing TCM from the margins into the academy and placing it at the centre of her teaching and scholarship inspired me to push the boundaries of critical scholarship as I pursued my research into mindfulness as a decolonizing embodied pedagogy rooted in Buddhist onto-epistemology. Sheila, my heartfelt thanks to you for inviting me to join this book pro- ject following Roxana’s untimely passing. Your thorough knowledge of the literature on embodiment and your vigorous engagement with Indigenous scholarship have brought my own work in these areas to a new level. At every stage of this project, your insightful input always moved the book toward greater depth and complexity, while your thoughtful idea of gath- ering the contributors together in conversation made the process of editing this book a concrete experience of embodiment in relations. A lotus bow and hugs to my dharma-sister, Marisela Gomez, for our sharing in heart and spirit over the years about our mindfulness practice in social justice work. Thank you for your clear observation in your reading of my chapter in this book. My gratitude and love to Mino and Mudita, my viii Acknowledgements doi: 10.15215/aupress/9781771991919.01 sharing breath feline family, for their calming companionship and for showing me the power of being grounded in the body and the grace of life in unison with nature, a state from which we humans have grown distant and to which we must return. Acknowledgements ix sharing breath doi: 10.15215/aupress/9781771991919.01 Sharing Breath Introduction Sheila Batacharya and Yuk-Lin Renita Wong This volume considers embodiment and embodied learning in relationship to pedagogical and decolonization theories and practices. Writing from a variety of experiential standpoints, the contributors participate in an ongoing critique of Western liberal education and colonialism by investigat- ing how to develop and use embodied and decolonizing ways of learning and teaching. Contemporary theories of embodiment and embodied learning foreground the relationship between sentient and social lived experience— how we experience ourselves and the world around us in terms of material and discursive aspects of mind-body-spirit and social relations of power. Attention to the material aspects of pedagogy and decolonization coincides with a key concern in embodiment scholarship: that is, the importance of addressing more than solely discursive approaches to experience and know- ledge production. Just as knowing and learning involves