Genuinely stretched my creativity.
I touched parts of my talent I was not able to reach before.
Ron Seybold
Not very long ago many Americans associated Yoga with wiry old flexible men dressed in white loincloth who could wrap their legs around their heads. Today, everyone from professional athletes, talk show hosts, and the average Joe, is flourishing with excitement about yoga. Yoga with its emphasis on relaxation, breathing and deliberate movements, is a miraculous fitness workout as well as being incredible for relaxation and meditation states. Therefore, with so many different types and forms of yoga, most people can find classes specific for their needs: Hatha, Astanga, Iyengar, Bikriam, Raja, Bhakti, Karma, Jnana, Japa, Hot, Flow, Power, and more. Hatha Yoga’s fundamental object is for individuals to transcend their consciousness and to realize their true self in a state of divine reality. Meditation helps increase awareness of one’s self being centered in the world. Being one with yourself and creating a reality of honesty and realization of the world helps decrease stress, promote happiness, and encourage balance in life. Simultaneously, composition is similar to meditation because composition allows people the freedom to write from their hearts. English composition forces people to open up their minds and write their own ideas. Mixing Hatha Yoga with English Composition would allow students not only to open their minds during yoga class but allow students to incorporate meditation and writing into the yoga classroom. Many people dread writing because of the tedious work and hours of composing. Ernest Hemingway states writing as, “There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly: sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.” A Yoga classroom should have writing elements which could be an alternative to mediation.
The historic and technical terms of Hatha Yoga are as follows: Hatha is made up for Ha + Tha, the Ha means Pingala Nadi, or sun principle and Tha means Ida Nadi, or moon principle. (Mandilk) Mandilk describes the Nadi as, “psychic passage of energy which can be compared with nerves in physical body” (Mandilk). Essentially, Nadi refers to our nervous system. Hatha Yoga is a balance between Ida and Pingala Nadis, the balancing of mental and physical energy within our bodies. Hence, Hatha Yoga focuses on harmonizing the nervous system, mind and body, physical and mental energy.
The Disciplines of Hatha Yoga are designed to help manifest the ultimate reality in the finite human body and mind. Hatha Yoga expresses the ideal of Tantra, which is for every individual to live in a world out of the fullness of self-realization rather than for the individual to withdraw from life in order to gain enlightenment. (Feuerstein) Within Hatha Yoga there are different poses which are called asanas. Thus, the purpose of asanas is for strengthening, opening, and cleansing the body of impurities which cause individuals to lose sight of being one with the world. There are eight limbs of Hatha yoga that Feuerstein describes: The first deals with universal ethics and morals (Yama), while, the second limb deals with personal conduct (Niyama). In addition, the third and fourth limbs are positions (Asanas) and breath control (Pranayama). Feuerstein goes on to explain that the fifth, sixth, and seventh limbs deal with controlling senses, concentration, and meditation, (Pratyahara, Dharana, and Dhyana). Finally, Feuerstein illustrates the eighth limb (Samadhi) as a, “culminate with experience of super-consciousness” (Feuerstein). Hatha Yoga focuses on maintaining balance between all eight limbs to create a balanced reality in one’s life.
Regrettably, in today’s society people seem to push meditation to the side because they are too busy to stop, breathe, and relax. People, who talk about how meditation is the key to an environment free of stress and tension, only push others further away from the practice of mediation. People know being stress-free completely is nearly impossible, so why many refuse to try it. N.D. Srivastava defines meditation as, “a state of ‘mental silence’ characterized by the elimination of unnecessary thought, effortless attention on the present and alert awareness” (Srivastava). Meditation requires the individuals to listen to their breathe, or detach their mind from thought process to focuses attention and bring self awareness to themselves. A huge part of Hatha Yoga mediation is “continued or extended thought; reflection; contemplation” (Meditation). The act of becoming one with yourself is the continued goal for yogis. Hatha Yoga focuses on body’s breath in order to gain total control of pure meditation for each individual. The art of meditation is to form a coherent view of one’s own life and purpose for the world. Author of many books on meditation, Sri Swami Venkatesananda explains that, “Happiness in life comes not by manipulating what you want to achieve but by paying attention to something seemingly totally unconnected with it” (Venkatesananda). Meditation is not a goal to reach but yet instead it is a state of mind to achieve.
The thought of adding writing to yoga makes me stop and ponder of all the possibilities that could help broaden and intensify a yoga classroom. Not only would adding writing to a classroom help with mediation, writing in a yoga classroom would also encourage individuals to practice personal writing. Unfortunately, many people find writing boring, difficult, un-connecting, or confusing. James Berlin describes the pedagogical theories of writing courses as, “grounded in rhetorical theories, and rhetorical theories do not differ in the simple undue emphasis of writer or audience or reality or language or some combination of these” (J. A. Berlin). Yoga and writing can be intertwined to form a unique relationship, from which many individuals would benefit. To demonstrate, Peter Elbow came up with a theory of writing called Expressivism. Expressivism can be defined as, “the view that creating text involves exploring personal experience and voice” (Stephen and Lucille). Expressivists believe that writing should be an individual’s expression of thoughts and feelings. Subsequently, “Expressionist” textbooks refer to the ‘truth’ as, “… conceived as the result of a private vision that must be constantly consulted in writing” (J. A. Berlin). With this in mind, all writing is personal, whether it is an abstract paper or personal letter. These truths that Expressivism emphasizes are, “[writers] must be true to the feelings and experiences” (J. A. Berlin).
Furthermore, individuals, according to Peter Elbow, create their own ideas of ‘good writing’ depending on their level of self-expression. In addition, Berlin discusses Peter Elbow’s work as, “It is, after all, only the individual acting alone and apart from others, who can determine the existent, the good, and the possible” (Stephen and Lucille). Expressionists view writing as “the way that writer, reality, audience, and language are defined and related so as to form a distinct world construct with distinct rules for discovering and communicating knowledge” (J. A. Berlin). Unfortunately, Expressivism began to die out in the mid 1990s and constructivism emerged. Constructionism incorporates, “the views that good writers must master and accepted practices of a discourse community” (Stephen and Lucille). Expressivists hoped that through self-writing and exploration of personal ideas writing would allow people to connect on new levels. Yoga teachers should incorporate Peter Elbow’s idea of Expressivism in their yoga classrooms by having students do creative self-exploration of writing as a form of mediation. Writing is not supposed to focus only on perfection. Yet, writing is about exploration. Berlin describes writing as a path to a greater understanding. (J. Berlin)
Now that I have established exactly what Hatha Yoga focuses on, I would like to explain how yoga has been incorporated in Physical Therapy sessions, people dealing with Multiple Sclerosis, and children with ADHD. If yoga is used beneficially in these three different fields, then it stands to reason that the inclusion of writing in a yoga classroom will broaden with these challenges understanding of English composition by students.
To demonstrate, integrating yoga with physical therapy sessions has shown many benefits for patients. Physical Therapist, Laurence Picker talks about his experience with yoga being a PT, “I have been an advocate for Yoga since I was a teenager and recently intergrading yoga positions with my patients have proven to be a huge benefactor. My patients have shown tremendous improvement in flexibility and movements” (Picker) Matt Taylor author of Yoga Therapeutics: An Ancient Practice in a 21st Century Setting expresses, “Yoga slows people down an ask them to look, observe, and see their movements are related to what they’re thinking and feeling and vice versa. It’s the mind-body connection” (Wojciechowski).
In addition, Yoga has shown tremendous benefits for people with MS, “Yoga really can reduce stress, which makes a major contribution to coping with MS” (Crotzer). My yoga instructor Susan Howard has Multiple Sclerosis, after talking with her about her disease and why she does Yoga she explained, “Yoga has decreased my joint pain and stiffness which has helped me relax and improve my balance. I started Yoga eleven years ago when I was diagnosed with MS because my doctor told me the great benefits and luckily the disease has slowed down tremendously because of yoga” (Howard). Today yoga is extremely popular among people with MS. In fact, “Various surveys suggest that 10-30% of people with MS have used yoga” (Bowling and Stewart).
Furthermore, Yoga has also shown benefits for children with ADHD. Today, there are many concerns with children taking prescribed medicines for symptoms of ADHD, such as, possible over-prescription and all the side effects of methylphenidate. (Harrison, Manocha and Rubia) Many parents are seeking alternatives to treat ADHD and many are looking towards meditation and yoga. Meditation and Yoga help, “to relax the sympathetic nervous system by activating parasympathetic-limbic pathways that relax body and mind” (Harrison, Manocha and Rubia). Yoga has helped many children struggling with ADHD and over the past decade has become increasingly more popular as a treatment for people struggling with ADHD.
With this in mind, a yoga classroom should have writing elements: as an alternative to traditional mediation, students should write. In the 1970s Peter Elbow came up with the idea of freewriting, “the most effective way I know to improve your writing is to do freewriting exercises regularly” (Elbow, Writing Without Teachers). Freewriting is sometimes called automatic writing or babbling exercises. The basic idea is to simply write for ten minutes straight without ever lifting your pen or crossing anything out because of a mistake. Freewriting emphasis on ideas and thoughts instead of mistakes and grammar even in nothing comes to your mind never lift your pen instead just write, ‘ I can’t think of anything so say so I will keep repeating this’ and eventually thoughts will cross your mind and you will begin to write them down without even noticing it. In today’s public education system, “schooling makes students obsessed with the “mistakes” we make in writing” (Elbow, Writing Without Teachers). The practice of freewriting allows students to write with emotions and self-exploration of their own creativity. Through the practice of freewriting, over time writing skills increase and lead “the quickest way to get into good writing,” according to Elbow (Elbow, Writing Without Teachers). Subsequently, if yoga classrooms incorporate writing into the classroom setting freewriting could be a great option for students to explore. Since yoga focuses on exploring self, freewriting is a superb way for yoga students to write because the basis of freewriting is a journey of thoughts, not grammar and mistakes.
The question arises as how will yoga classrooms include writing into their sessions. Since Hatha yoga focuses on harmonizing the nervous system, mind and body, physical energy and mental energy and maintaining balance between all eight limbs to create a central reality in one’s life, then adding writing to the yoga classroom would benefit most students. Meditation has proven to help decrease stress and allow individuals to increase their awareness of the mind and body becoming one. Writing could take the place of mental meditation in the classroom. As soon as the yoga session has completed students could do freewriting, as Peter Elbow describes or personal journaling. Elbow also illustrates writing as a path for individuals to find greater understanding about one’s self. (Elbow, Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience) Yoga is also a path for greater understanding; therefore, combining writing and yoga will benefit the student. Even if the student feels they are a ‘bad writer’ or they claim they do not know where to begin, the students could express on paper how their yoga sessions went and the feelings that yoga brings to them after a session. Combining yoga and writing in a classroom can benefit students by allowing the students to express verbally how they feel about yoga, life, and how this meditation state increase awareness of one’s self becomes visual. Yoga classrooms can bring back Expressivism by communicating freedom into writing. According to Berlin, “truth is not brought to man, but man to the truth. A striking corollary of this view is that ultimate truth can be discovered by the individual, but cannot be communicated. Truth can be learned but not taught” (J. A. Berlin). Expressionists believe that interaction in a classroom encourages students to have dialogue with other members who have opposing views. This increases students to learn different perspectives and causes awareness of writing and its elements. This is the same in a yoga classroom while the students are not necessarily discussing in traditional dialogue they are communicating through self understanding and harmonizing their minds and bodies. Writing is something that students must feel in their souls, and that is the same with yoga. To illustrate this idea Berlin describes writing as, “conceives of writing as an unteachable act, a kind of behavior that can be learned but not taught” (J. A. Berlin). Yoga and writing can teach students to be open with their minds, not closed.
If students learn to write through dialect, according to Berlin, then in a yoga classroom students learn to write through opening their minds and soul to emotions and the idea that writing must be felt not necessarily only in thought. In Yoga classrooms when dialogue with others is removed, “It is up to the individual to discover ultimate knowledge” (J. A. Berlin). Ann E. Berthoff agrees that, “The relationship between thought and language is dialectical: ideas are conceived by language; language is generated by thought. Rather than truth being prior to language, language is prior to truth and determines what shapes truth can take” (J. A. Berlin). This is interesting because language and dialect do play an important role in the writing process. However, incorporating writing in a yoga classroom can be just as effective because it gets students to use meditation as a form of writing and expressing their own ideas and beliefs. Yoga allows students to form their own worlds in their mind and the amount of creativity that forms during these meditative states of mind can be enormous.
Overall, I submit that, yoga classrooms should have writing elements as an alternative to traditional mediation. Since Hatha yoga focuses on balancing the nervous system, mind and body, physical energy and mental energy and maintaining equilibrium between all eight limbs to create a central reality in one’s life, then adding writing to the yoga classroom would only benefit students. Mixing Hatha Yoga with English Composition would compel students not only open their minds during yoga class but allow students to incorporate meditation and writing into one element. Having students do freewriting as Peter Elbow describes as the, “creative edge” (Elbow, Writing Without Teachers) this allows students to practice new ways of meditation and writing through creative paths and new alternatives for exploration.
Works Cited
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