Somaesthetics and yoga

ABSTRACT

This study delves into the philosophy, aesthetics, and educational components of somaesthetics to highlight the art of living by practicing body awareness. Specifically, this study focuses on ‘education as a practice in somaesthetics’ by using yoga as a practical example of this new educational model.This paper reconceptualize education from the perspective of somaesthetics by examining the themes of meliorism, to-and-fro motion, transcendence, and philosophical living as self-cultivation. I also examine the significance of yoga as a conscious process of a bodily experience that results in creating self-style. It analyses twenty-two records of yoga practitioners’ experiences and feelings through the method of embodied meta-cognitive verbalisation to illustrate how body awareness plays a critical role in many facets of self-improvement.

KEYWORDS:

• Somaesthetics
• education
• yoga
• meta-cognitive verbalisation
• meliorism

Disclosure statement

There are no conflicts of interest to declare.

Notes

1. Somaesthetics points out that the bodily dimension, which is a critical dimension of self-knowledge and one of the essential concerns of philosophy, has long been excluded from traditional Western philosophy. The somatic self indicates the inevitable nature of the body when considering the self and existence (Shusterman 2012, 68–90).

2. As Shusterman (2012, 321–326) notes, an aesthetic concept of ‘style’ has ambiguous characteristics (e.g. honorific/nonevaluative, generic/personal, conscious/unconscious, voluntary/involuntary, permanent/contextual). By ‘somatic style’, Shusterman is attempting to describe how style is engraved in our bodies (as the etymology of ‘style’ indicates). The main axis supporting style is bodily sensation, and so, to change one’s style is to change oneself.

3. A study that inspired the discussion of this characteristic of knowledge (e.g. embodied knowledge, life knowledge) is The Tacit Dimension, by Michael Polanyi (1983). The tacit dimension of knowledge implies that the human act of knowing occurs not only in the explicit dimension but also in the subconscious dimension.

4. A first-person methodology is a research method that is primarily in the field of consciousness studies; it attempts to approach the subconscious dimension of knowledge. The claims of Varela and Shear (1999) first sparked interest due to this methodology. Unlike traditional scientific methods (e.g. large populations, statistical processing, and objectivity), this method adopts subjectivity and is characterised by an individual or small population. Unlike traditional scientific research, typicality and subjectivity are the first-person methodology’s defining characteristics. As with Suwa’s (2016) study, the accumulation of first-person studies may be interpreted to show patterns in either slumps or improvements. However, it aims to deal with experiences that can only be established by subjectivity. In addition to Suwa’s study, the participatory study (Tojisha Kenkyu) of a special education support programme was conducted in Japan (Kono 2013).

5. I referred to Kuwayama, Koseki, and Suwa (2018) regarding their instructions for attaching point tags.