Yoga Minds, Writing Bodies: Contemplative Writing Pedagogy

PERSPECTIVES ON WRITING | Series Editor, Susan H. McLeod | In YOGA MINDS, WRITING BODIES, Christy Wenger argues for the inclusion of Eastern-influenced contemplative education within writing studies. She observes that, although we have "embodied" writing education in general by discussing the rhetorics of racialized, gendered, and disabled bodies, we have done substantially less to address the particular bodies that occupy our classrooms. She proposes that we turn to contemplative education practices that engages student bodies through fusing a traditional curriculum with contemplative practices including yoga, meditation, and the martial arts. Wenger draws on case studies of first-year college writers to present contemplative pedagogy as a means of teaching students mindfulness of their writing and learning in ways that promote the academic, rhetorical work accomplished in first-year composition classes while at the same time remaining committed to a larger scope of a writer's physical and emotional well-being. | CHRISTY I. WENGER is Assistant Professor of English, Rhetoric and Composition at Shepherd University, where she directs the Writing and Rhetoric program. Her research has focused on the intersections among feminisms, contemplative traditions, and composition. Her work on the materiality of teaching and the value of contemplative pedagogy for writing studies has appeared in journals including English Teaching and Practice and JAEPL, and has been shared at conferences held by the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the Rhetoric Society of America, and the Association for the Contemplative Mind in Higher Education, among others.