Meet Barbara Sellers-Young
2000 Contemplative Practice Fellow and Professor of Theatre and Dance, UC-Davis
How is the contemplative pedagogy reflected in your work and what do you hope to achieve by incorporating contemplative practices in the classroom?
I have taught courses that incorporate contemplative practice in the undergraduate and graduate performance program of the Department of Theatre and Dance, the Freshman Seminar Program, and for the staff of the Chancellor’s office.
The primary focus in the performance program is a deeper understanding of the performer’s somatic system as an extension of the earthly forces; the basic paradigm is that we, as individuals, are the result of earthly processes from those of evolution to our integration with environment.From a spiritual standpoint, my approach does not advocate any particular tradition, as I use ideas and physical techniques from yoga, t'ai chi, qi gong, zen, insight meditation, lectio divina, and others.These practices provide a 'way' to cultivate a deep appreciation and understanding of the individual for their unique body/mind. Additionally, contemplation becomes a means of developing a multiple level of awareness.Beyond providing a highly skilled soma, I have found this perspective helps a performer to consciously approach their craft with a level of knowledge that is valuable to them as they negotiate rehearsal processes and the demands of a profession in which there is no guaranteed monthly paycheck.
The other two university venues in which I have incorporated contemplative practice the Freshman Seminar and a meditation workshop for the staff of the Chancellor’s office.The Freshman Seminar specifically focuses on meditation as a method of deep reflection.For the Chancellor’s office, I attempted to provide an experience that would help participants to discover the breath, its relationship to the center of their being, and how this discovery could provide both relaxation and concentration in pressured situations.
What value do you find contemplative engagement offers, in general and to your discipline in particular?
In the last twenty years, neuroscience in the work of Antonio Damasio and others has pointed out that the mind/body dualism which has dominated our conception of self, as well as our approach to knowledge, does not correspond to how our bodies actually function.In fact, we have to be trained within our educational system to “think” from a mind vs. body perspective.Maria Julia Carozzi in “Talking Minds: The Scholastic Construction of Incorporeal Discourse” considers this issue from the standpoint of the history of the academy and suggests this perspective is rooted in the medieval period.
This new understanding seems to me to call for a pedagogy that provides a process for students to deepen their access to knowledge through methods that ask them to use the entirety of their somatic self in the process of thinking.Contemplative practice, as a method of self-awareness, provides this pedagogical perspective as it cultivates individual awareness on multiple levels of knowledge from the functioning of their somatic processes to how they incorporate, and or create new knowledge.
The theory of the incorporation of meditation into academic training is that there is a relationship between meditative states, contemplation, and critical thought.I wrote an essay for Consciousness, Literature and the Arts on the topic titled “Breath, Perception, and Action: The Body and Critical Thinking.”In the essay, I argue that
Reflection, as it is related to the ability to critically evaluate material, is one of these intellectual abilities.Learning to attend to the breath in its act of fusing through the internal respiration process teaches students 'the feeling or kinesthetic state' associated with reflection.As the breath is a dynamic process, kinesthetic state of reflection is dynamic, not passive.Analogous to the movement of an idea as it penetrates and releases into the psyche, somatic reflection emerges from awareness of the movement of the breath cycle as it penetrates and releases into the body.Reflection is the beginning of critical analysis, and learning to follow the breath provides a kinesthetic basis for logical thinking.Both skills are indispensable for problem solving and decision making.
My experience is that daily practice provides an opportunity for me to empty myself of previous thoughts in order to explore and discover the possibilities of other ideas or, in some cases, to come to new awareness in the relationships between previous ideas.The response of my students has been that the contemplative techniques -- from meditation to interactive, contemplative explorations with others– provide a similar opportunity for them.The ultimate result seems to be that the personal knowledge of self increases the potential for one’s engagement with "different forms of knowledge" and an enhancement of the analytical and communications skills that are the goals of the academic experience.
What are the specific practices that have been most useful in connecting your discipline to the arena of contemplation?
I have used a variety of contemplative practices from Asian physical disciplines and contemporary understandings of the body, with methods such as Alexander, Feldenkrais, Rolfing, and biofeedback.In general, I begin each practice with a focus on the breath and its relationship to the body in a technique I refer to as “feel, fuse and follow.”This method focuses the individual on a somatic process that is not only related to breath, but to the potential of deep relationship with self, and by extension self and other (e.g. individual, text, idea, or problem).
The technique begins with noting the breath flowing in and out of the body.This awareness is expanded to using your kinesthetic experience of breath to feel the breath as it flows into the body…fuse with the breath at the top of the inhalation…and follow the breath as it leaves the body on the exhalation.
In terms of contemplation, the fusion with the breath at the top of the inhalation acts as a somatic metaphor (or image schemata along the lines of Lakoff and Johnson) for the fusion of the self with the point of focus, which can be the breath, but also specific images, ideas, tasks, etc.In terms of performance training, I have discovered that this technique creates a deeper, more internally based commitment to specific acts of a performance.
In each venue in which I have used contemplative practices, I have tried to determine what forms would be the most valuable for the particular situation.For example, in the Drama 154 course, Asian Drama: Contexts and Forms, I have integrated Zen meditation techniques into a discussion of Noh Theatre as a means of providing a method of understanding the aesthetics of this performance form.In working with scenes in an acting class, I have combined the fluidity of t’ai chi and “push hands” as a method of finding the physical relationship between characters.In a Ph.D. seminar on the body, I have introduced various forms of contemplation and their potential for critical inquiry.Thus far, I do not have a technique that has not worked well in my classroom.
For more from Barbara on practices and theory, refer to:
Sellers-Young, Barbara, Breathing, Movement, Exploration, New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2001.
Sellers-Young, Barbara, "Somatic Processes: Convergence of Theory and Practice."
Theatre Topics - Volume 8, Number 2, September 1998, pp. 173-187
Sellers-Young, Barbara, “Breath, Perception, and Action:The Body and Critical Thinking."Consciousness, Literature, and the Arts, 3/2 (August 2002) 1-15.
Bio:
Barbara Sellers-Young has a BS in Sociology, MS in Dance and a Ph.D. in Theatre from the University of Oregon.Prior to her academic career, she was a dancer/choreographer/director whose work appeared extensively in the Pacific Northwest and at such venues as Mumokan Theatre (Kyoto, Japan) and University Theatre (Manchester, England).She has taught workshops and classes in dance and movement for international organizations such as the Association of Theatre in Higher Education and the International Federation of Theatre Research as well as at universities in England, China , and Australia.Her research projects on the intersections of dance, body, and globalization have taken place in Sudan, Egypt, Nepal, China, England, and Australia. Her articles can be found in The Journal of Popular Culture, Theatre Topics, Asian Theatre Journal, Dance Research Journal and elsewhere. She is the author of three books, with a fourth underway.Her current projects in the area of contemplative practice include presentations on Contemplative Practice and the Academy at the 2nd International Conference on Consciousness, Theatre, Literature and the Arts in Wales and the IFTR conference in South Africa.