Researching the Relation of Being and Doing
Establishing the validity and legitimacy of love as a living standard of judgment through researching the relation of being and doing in the inquiry, 'How can love improve my practice?’
Eleanor Lohr
University of Bath
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Warwick, 6-9 September 2006
Abstract
This paper takes a subjective experience of love and shows how this can be transferred to organisational settings using a methodology that combines spiritual practice and action research methods. This highly experiential focus relies on the articulation of embodied knowledge, from which a living educational theory arises. The same criteria for judging the value of both being and doing are developed from this sensuous knowing. Two examples are given, firstly, showing how spiritual practice can influence professional practice and secondly, how living standards of judgement, that refer to love as an unseen but potent presence in relationship, can be applied in an organisational context.
There is an increasing literature on the role of reflective practice in professional development. This paper is one example, in which I show how my subjective experience in spiritual practice can become more closely aligned with improving my practice as a yoga teacher and as a Director in a social housing organisation. As I find the words to describe the connections between ‘being’ in meditation practice and ‘doing’ as a teacher and leader, I begin to uncover my learning processes and over time I start developing my living educational theory. When I come to evaluate my research findings and consider how I might assess the worth of what I have done, I realise that I can set criteria for judging the extent of the transformative power of love that has influenced my teaching and decision making. It is this process, of learning and evaluating with love that is addressed in this paper.
And what do I mean by love? That sense of pleasure, care and connection that I got when I touched the soft skin of my babies, that feeling of being part of the sky and the landscape on a windy day at the top of the hill above our house in the North Pennines, the excitement that I get from talking and working with others when we are planning, creating and achieving. For me love is a sense of pleasure, acceptance, creation and connection that can be found within relationship. This applies not only in relationship with people, but also with nature, ideas and sometimes material objects. Mine is a relational and responsive way of being, seeing and learning where love is in the weft and the warp of connection.
The standpoint
Practising meditation reaffirms my identity and brings a sense of love and wholeness, which has enabled me to both value my skills and talents, as well as accept and learn from failures and challenges. It has made me more flexible, better able to tolerate and work with difference. I have found that love has expanded my intelligence by expanding my capacity to learn. This echoes with Bunnell and Forsyth who say:
‘Emotions modulate the operation of intelligence as a concrete aspect of everyday life. … if you consider your experiences you will likely see … that the only emotion that broadens our vision is love. In love we accept ourselves and the circumstances in which we live, thus expanding the possibility for intelligent behaviour’ (Bunnell and Forsyth 2001 p.163).
My research mode is deliberately highly subjective. I justify this approach from three different perspectives: allowing my bodily experience to influence my writing; allowing feeling to influence my reasoning; and relaxing the boundary between self and other.
- I write somatically, holding an embodied memory of love in my memory, focussing my perception through love. I want to bring profound human experiences to the surface, to bring the fullest meaning of love onto the page. This means often writing poetically, trying to bring voice into the written word, to capture the subtle sense of something to be grasped just beyond the conscious mind. As Rosemarie Anderson writes:
‘In allowing for the complex sensorial awareness, embodied writing posits that we have many senses – perhaps dozens or hundreds – but probably more than we can name in words. … Contemporary psychologists add the proprioceptive and kinaesthetic senses to the list. … Actually human sensorial awareness is a complex play of organ senses and imagination’ (Anderson, 2003 pp. 41-42)
- I write with feeling induced reason, using Spinoza’s ideas about the colouring of perception with joyfulness in order to reach the highest state available. As Damasio says:
‘Spinoza recommended that we fight a negative emotion with an even stronger but positive emotion brought about by reasoning and intellectual effort. Central to his thinking was the notion that the subduing of passions should be accomplished by reason induced emotion and not by pure reason alone’ (Damasio, 2003 p.12).
- And coupled with the ideas about embodied writing and cultivating love, is the idea of learning in relation, of setting out to be influenced by love, learning by creating loving connections and ‘holding the other as part of the self’ (Jordan, Kaplan, Baker Miller, Stiver and Surrey 1991 p. 62). Originally developed by feminist therapists as a way of describing a gendered mode of learning, this describes my way of writing about and dealing with differing, challenging and contradictory situations. In these circumstances I hold a sensed memory of love in the face of conflict or difficulty, asking love to show me the way.
To summarise, the critical standpoint of my inquiry is based in spiritual practice and takes the form of full immersion in feeling. It is not indiscriminate passion, but a disciplined approach to cultivating my understanding of how love can be brought more fully into what I do.
Research Practice
I use reminiscence, writing stories about the past to establish the values base for my writing as I begin to articulate my lived understanding of loving values and the meanings of love. I write accounts of teaching yoga and of incidents at work. I choose critical issues to write about and use Whitehead’s (Whitehead 1988) format, adapted to include embodied knowing:
(i) I experience a concern because I feel my values are negated (love is hidden, it feels uncomfortable).
(ii) I imagine a solution – I think about where this discomfort is coming from, how do I explain it, how does this alter my action.
(iii) I act in the direction of this solution in the act of writing from my bodily knowing
(iv) I evaluate the outcome, in this case my felt experience, the resonance of my bodily response
(v) I modify my actions and sometimes the meaning of my values in the sense memory that I hold in my body.
I sit and think, ‘What connection does this have with my experience of love. What aspects of love can I see? Where is love here? What is this account telling me? Where is love taking me?’
Two or three times daily I sit to practice silence, to meditate. The boundaries between writing, researching and practice become blurred. ‘Where am I going?’
I read my writing. I read books that I hope will move my thinking on. I start having internal conversations with the author. I write down some of these ‘conversations’. They could be book reviews. I can see that my thinking has become clearer and that I can bring some of these ideas into revised accounts of practice. I realise that I am engaged in cycles of action and reflection. I call the revised interpretations of the underlying meanings of my practice ‘reflective writing’.
In this way, my action accounts and the reflective writing that emerges from those accounts, create the data on which my research is based. I consider the material that I have produced and ask, ‘What have been doing? How did I do this? What disciplines my thinking? How do I discriminate?’ And looking again at what I have done I begin to discern two principles, one derived from the action research practice arising from my use of language, and the other derived from the mysterious silence of being experienced in spiritual practice.
The ordering principles of language
As I read and ponder on my reflective writing, I realise that I absorb meanings as I read the words, rather than use the language to take in information. I notice my embodied responses to the writing, and later, after several iterations of reflective writing, I use this mind / body combination to decide whether or not the process has been satisfactorily completed. I explain this as is a post-modern reading, looking for underlying meanings, looking for the rules ‘that will have been done’ (Lyotard 1979 p.81). The only logic I look for is my own, the as yet not discerned logic, what Whitehead refers to as ‘living logic’ (Whitehead, 2006). In writing and revising my accounts of practice I uncover layers of meaning until the final re-vision, which is when I can say ‘Yes, these words signify what I mean, and now I can see how I have done it!’ This is how I develop my living educational theory, and learn how I know what I know.
I allow myself to be guided by my reflexive writing, and do not explain or point to it, or attempt to stand outside it.
The ordering principle of silence
This sensed way of working with embodied knowledge is dependent on movement, felt inner shifts that are sometimes subtle and sometimes overwhelming. I ‘see’ these in meditation and if I do not get involved in following the movements, the breathing, thoughts and movements slow down. Occasionally the movements become still. There is a moment of unity and harmony within. When I return to my usual active state I find that my body is quieter and my thinking has altered, and my perception of the world has been inevitably changed by that moment of silence. This happens frequently enough for me to claim that this is an intrinsic aspect of the way that I make meaning, and I have called it the ordering principle of silence, because it has a re-ordering effect on my thinking and on my actions. A practical example of what I mean is on page 8.
(E)pistemology and (O)ntology
These reflexive processes uncover my underlying thinking, and show me how I learn. In this way I develop my epistemological foundation. I refer to this as my (e)pistemology following Barbara Thayer-Bacon (Thayer-Bacon, 2003) . I infer through this notation that this epistemology is uniquely my theory of how I know what I know, and that I do not seek to impose this on others, or to universalise this theory in any way. Similarly I refer beingness, my ontological experience, as my (o)ntology. My inner experience cannot be generalised, however both my (e)pistemology and (o)ntological experience are open to influence and change, mediated by social relations and the outcome of my actions. The changing nature of my (e )pistemology, developed as a consequence of my experiencing is what Whitehead calls ‘living educational theory’ (Whitehead & McNiff, 2006). This knowledge is not fixed, but fluid.
Validity
In this ever-moving world, where all my understandings are in flux, where is my ground, how do I get my bearings? How do I know that I what I do is good? I take my answer from yoga philosophy. Yoga is ‘the union of the individual self with the Universal self. …philosophy is theoretical while Yoga is practical. … Knowledge without action and action without knowledge do not help man. They must be intermingled’ (Iyengar, 2002
p.4). I seek union with the divine, and I judge the efficacy of both my spiritual practice and my action in the world on this basis, asking ‘Is this harmonious?’ I find that harmony can be applied to both my inner world and outwardly in social interactions.
I then combine the sense of loving harmony, inspired by Mr Iyengar’s words, and hold this feeling as a part of myself. At the same time I read my accounts, remembering the pleasures of teaching yoga, sitting in meetings, and the challenges of managing, and ask, ‘If I was living lovingly, how would I judge my behaviour, what standards would I set myself for ‘good’ behaviour? I tune into the inner movements of resonance and dissonance. This is not a just cognitive process but an embodied felt experience focussing the mind and body on the question.
From these thoughts, memories and feelings the words that describe how I could evaluate the worth of my work emerge:
- I aim to reframe what I am or we are doing now so that our joint work can become easier and more pleasurable
- I want my professional practice to inspire and support relational based strategies and inclusive decision making within organisations
- I aim to bring a resonance, a flavour of harmony linking the practical and invisible spaces in which we participate.
These criteria become living standards of judgement because they can be applied to both my knowing - (e)pistemology and my being - (o)ntology. I can apply them to reflection-on-action, as I did in the course of my research and I can apply them to reflection-in-action if I retain awareness of my embodied resonances as I act. In meditation I practice disciplined awareness, and if I stay mindful, observing the quietening of inner movement, just watching and not interfering, an harmonious silence arises.
As a practitioner-researcher I also evaluate my actions against what works and what does not. I give an example of this later on page 10.
However, what I am concerned with the validation of the transformatory nature of love through praxis. When my outward actions are open to the judgement of others, as they inevitably are, and by setting (as I have shown) the same criteria for judging the efficacy of my spiritual practice and the worth of my action, love, as a living value, is an acceptable standard within the academy with which accounts of practice may be judged. This claim has also be validated and legitimated by the award of a doctorate by the University of Bath.
The evidence
There is an enormous body of academic writing on how self study and autobiographical research can be validated and evaluated. I think these can be classified into (1) making the case by demonstrating consistency between intention, accounts of action and reflection, and research outcomes. This does not mean that there is no contradiction, but that the logic contained within the study is consistent. (2) Giving examples of how my professional practice, the research method and its outcomes were altered and influenced by other people’s ideas and practices. (3) Demonstrating how the original purposes of the research have been amended as the research methodology has been carried out, and incorporating this into the findings. (4) Developing criteria with which to judge the research findings that are consistent within the logic of the inquiry, and which can be understood and applied by others
There is insufficient space in this paper to cover all these points in detail. However, in relation to (1) and (4) I have shown how my standpoint, the methodology and the outcomes are coherent with my intention. What I want to give here are two examples, one, which relates to (2), which shows how I applied my research method and combined spiritual practice (sitting in silence) with action research practice (journaling) and the second, which relates to point (3), which shows how I applied my research findings to my practice.
Example One: how spiritual practice influences professional practice:
The events took place in the organisation within the Board where I am a non executive Director
I notice the process that I went through, shown in bold.
My concern: I journal an event which involved several meetings and a telephone conversation with a fellow Board member with whom I had a serious disagreement on an equal opportunities issue.
I begin to imagine the solution and explore possibilities:
I journal:
…I need to reflect on how it might be possible to build bridges….I have a great deal of respect for D’s financial expertise and the way that he is willing to speak up in Board meetings.
At this point I drafted the following email but did not send it:
“Just wanted to appreciate your public support for those policies last night.
Whilst we might have a difference of opinion on ‘Equality and Diversity’ issues, there are so many other key issues on which we agree, even for this reason alone I think that it is important to maintain our alliance on the Board.
You are a good man David and I would not want this to interfere with our relationship in the long run.
It’s a pity that I had to rush off last night; it would have been good to stay for the wine and mince pies.
Did anything interesting happen?
All the best,
Eleanor”
I evaluate my imagined solution:
I have been sitting in ‘silence’ since I drafted this email. What came to me during this time was:
- That in retrospect, I could have handled the previous sub-committee meeting, and my conversations before the Board meeting, a lot better. I responded too quickly to (a) G not taking ‘care’ and not responding properly to my email suggestion and (b) Sending the email to K, C and T. I could have telephoned G, and I could have telephoned C if I had really wanted to resolve the issue, rather than ‘prove’ someone had acted wrongly.
- Who is this ‘self’ that wants to see equality, but acts in this way? What does my loving self say?
I have spent at least 2 days on this, not slept for more than 5 hours last night, and the net result is that I have built myself into a … stereotype … But then my stereotype of him may be even stronger!