I’m gratified when educators write to me about ingenious courses that they have devised. On occasion, I ask for details and invite the educator to blog about it.
I’m pleased that Cheryl Pallant, who teaches at the University of Richmond, has written about her innovative course called “Writing from the Body.” As signaled by the title, the course involves reflecting on the state of one’s own body, then putting those reflections into words, and in the process gaining a better understanding of one’s own current life situation.
When one attempts to order or array the several human intelligences in some fashion, linguistic, bodily, and personal intelligences may seem distant from one another. But in the hands of a skillful educator, these intelligences can be joined; and the resulting whole can be very helpful to students who, in many cases, are struggling with the stresses of contemporary life.
Writing from the Body: A blend of intelligences
By Cheryl Pallant
At the start of the semester, students in my Writing From the Body class hand in a “somatic journey” contract where they state what areas they intend to focus on and why. Though I periodically teach the class as a workshop at art centers across the U.S. and abroad, I regularly teach undergraduates through the Theater and Dance Department at University of Richmond in Virginia. Students who choose this class can receive a General Education, Visual and Performance Art credit. The class combines writing and movement, exercises in one leading to and building upon the other. Exercises are used to express through dancing and writing, to further somatic awareness, to bring what may be unconscious into consciousness, and to investigate how meaning is made. A somatic journey asks them to come to know their subjective experience, to learn their multi-sensory body. Over the years the students have majored in everything from dance and English to psychology, biology, finance, gender studies, leadership, and international policy.
I’ve been teaching this class for decades. Early on, students attended primarily to increase flexibility, strength, coordination, confidence, and creativity. Those objectives continue but I’ve noticed a significant change. More and more, my students report dealing with high levels of stress, depression, and anxiety to the point of missing class, requiring medication, and dropping out for a semester or two. My speculation as to what’s changed points to fiercer competition to get into grad school and land a decent job. Others have proposed a variety of causes ranging from less autonomy growing up to the pressures imposed by ubiquitous social media.
Hal was a biology major on the baseball team who wanted to increase his strength and coordination. A diligent student, he fulfilled every assignment and participated in class discussion. During movement instruction, I continually ask students to observe their breath, because this pivotal autonomic physiological process impacting the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system is often ignored. The quality of our breath is vital for extended physical exertions common to athletes and dancers. It’s also pivotal for feeling ease and can help or hinder concentration and focus. Regularly, I ask students to check the duration of their breath, whether the inhale matches the length of exhale, and if the breaths are smooth or jagged.
One of Hal’s written assignments revealed the gravity of his newfound breath awareness. As a high school freshman, he developed pectus excavatum, a collapsing of the chest wall. A fellow classmate made fun of him in the locker room and as a result, he vowed to not remove his shirt in front of anyone again. If pectus excavatum is left untreated, the chest wall can squeeze the lungs and heart with fatal consequences. Over the next several years, Hal’s breast bone turned more inward, pressing against his organs, yet he kept his condition a secret from his parents, doctor, and baseball coach. My class got him to recognize the shallowness of his breath and confront his shame. He accepted, too, the potentially fatal repercussions of continuing to ignore his body. He subsequently spoke to his parents and doctors and arranged for surgery; later, he wrote that this class may have saved his life.
Turning his attention to his body didn’t require extraordinary skill. It required that Hal attune somatically to the specific conditions of his body and acknowledge its truths. It required that he be present to the sensations, actions, and emotions of his body, to notice and face his shame, and use that information to determine a course of action, in this case to get medical help.
Maggie was a 4.0 double major in finance and accounting who wanted to explore her creative side. She reported difficulty with stress, anxiety, and panic attacks which led to missing classes the previous semester. She was puzzled though welcoming of her unfamiliar calm at the end of each class session. She danced with great enthusiasm while her writing depicted her struggle to assign words to movements for which there was no readily available language, a process that helped her hone her senses. The exercises led her to identify her stress and anxiety triggers and to modify her behavior. By the semester’s end, she wrote that the somatic lessons saved her college career.
Maggie’s initial lack of understanding is commonplace in that many of us haven’t been trained to read the body’s numerous signals, let alone find the words to describe what is taking place. Somatic literacy increases by turning attention to the overt and subtle phenomenon of the body and using language metaphorically and literally. Articulation through writing increases awareness of the body; similarly articulation through movement helps us loosen the muscles of expression and embody our chosen words. The strength and ability of one discipline creates inroads to the understanding of the other. Essentially, language, bodily, and intrapersonal intelligences interact and increase. The increases enable active engagement with the circumstances of life with greater awareness of causes, results, and choice.
Whereas much of education focuses on objective knowing—memorizing facts and processes through the sciences for instance—a class such as this, teaches subjective knowing and embodiment. It familiarizes us with our individual inner world and how it connects with the outer world. The byproducts are many, among them showing our actions as part of a larger system; revealing the value of honesty—in that harbored lies harm ourselves; demonstrating how physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual awareness work together; and catalyzing that opening to the flow of creativity applicable to many disciplines, especially potent for writer’s block.
A recent report from the Anxiety and Depression Association of America states that as many as 40 million adults suffer from anxiety disorders—women are twice as likely to suffer as men, numbers are thought only to be going up. To improve health and well-being and before resorting to medication, I would first prescribe several doses of dancing and journaling. Other than an occasional sore muscle, the only other side effects I’ve witnessed are a more positive outlook and an enhanced ability to foster connections.
Cheryl Pallant is a poet, dancer, professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, and author of Writing and the Body in Motion.