THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF MOVING MEDITATION FO

366 Pages·2013·1.32 MB·English

by  Sarah Morris

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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
Circling and Cycling: What is Moving Meditation?..........................................................18
Components: Essential Themes................................................................................20
Process: Cycling..............................................................................................21
Practice: Wiring by Design.............................................................................24
Facilitating Flow: Continuous Energy............................................................27
Solitude: A Source unto One's Self.................................................................29
The Circuit................................................................................................................32
Finding the Flow: Why Phenomenology for Me and for This Study?..............................38
Transforming: Conducing Phenomenological Research..........................................40
Grounding: Turning to the Phenomenon.........................................................41
Moving Meditation as Lived Experience........................................................42
Lived Space and Lived Time.................................................................42
Lived Human Relation...........................................................................43
Lived Body.............................................................................................44
Essential Themes.............................................................................................45
Circumnavigation: Writing and Re-writing....................................................47
Directing Energy: Maintaining a Pedagogical Relation to the Phenomenon..48
Parts to Whole, Whole to Parts.................................................................................50
Pedagogical Contributions of the Study...................................................................50

CHAPTER 2: TRANSFORMING THE CURRENT: EXPLORING THE
PHENOMENON..............................................................................................................53

Harnessing the Phenomenon: Process in Practice.............................................................53
The Coursing Current: Moving and Thinking..........................................................54
Tuning in, Tuning out...............................................................................................58
Of Circuits, Cycles, and Spirals.........................................................................................62
The Circuit................................................................................................................63
The Body as Circuit Both Perceptive and Conductive....................................66
The Breath as Circuit that Enables the Circuit of Language...........................68
Reading and Writing as Circuits: Generating Meaning..................................70
The Cycle..................................................................................................................72
Body Cycle: Being and Meaning....................................................................72
Breath Cycle: Deep Breath, Steady Mind.......................................................75
The Spiral.................................................................................................................78
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Purgation, Illumination, Union: The Three Part Path...............................................82
Purgation: Clearing the Way...........................................................................82
Illumination: Insight........................................................................................85
Union: Radiating Out......................................................................................86
Looping Back: Revisiting Essential Themes............................................................88
Process: Releasing, Receiving, Returning.......................................................88
Practice: Pathway to Fluency.........................................................................91
Flow: Unbroken Current.................................................................................94
Solitude: Engaged Disengagement.................................................................97
Nature: The Self in the Circuit of the Universe............................................101
The Understanding Body.................................................................................................105
Motion Ignites Creativity........................................................................................106
Words in a Surge: Composing in Motion...............................................................109
The Writing Classroom as a Grounded Place..................................................................116
Learning the in the Circuit of the Self..................................................................117
Teaching Writing as a Spiral................................................................................119
Moving into the Vortex: Next Steps.......................................................................124

CHAPTER 3: PHILOSOPHICAL GROUNDING: PARALLEL CIRCUITS........127

The Self in a Circuit with the Questions: Why is Phenomenology for Me?....................127
I Felt It in My Body................................................................................................128
Movement Toward Wholeness—of Understanding and of Research....................131
The Unconcealdness of Being and the Presencing of Meaning....................132
The Embodied Researcher in the Circuit of Research..................................133
Phenomenology is the Study of Lived Experience.................................................137
Overlapping Circuits of Meaning: Why is Phenomenology Fitting for This Work?......141
Phenomenology Recognizes the Body as a Generator of Meaning........................142
Phenomenology Sees the Body as Ground for Experience....................................145
Phenomenology Contextualizes the Body as a Manifestation of Nature...............147
Phenomenology Can Allow for Motion as a Source of Meaning...........................150
Phenomenology Can Address Words as Generated by the Body in the World.....153
Phenomenology Can Center the Body in the Classroom.......................................156
Phenomenology is Wholistic..................................................................................159
Phenomenology is a Circuit....................................................................................163
Researching Lived Experience: van Manen's Framework for Research.........................165
Turning to a Phenomenon which Interests Us and Commits Us to The World.....166
Investigating Experience as it is Lived Rather than as it is Conceptualized.........169
Reflecting on Essential Themes which Characterize the Phenomenon.................172
Describing the Phenomenon through Writing and Rewriting................................175
Maintaining a Strong and Oriented Pedagogical Relation.....................................181
Balancing the Research Context by Considering Parts and Whole........................183
Conversations Charged with Meaning: a Method for Research......................................187
Selection and Engagement of Conversants............................................................190
Gathering Texts......................................................................................................193
Surging Forward....................................................................................................195