Poetic meditation: (re)presenting the mystery of the field

Abstract

ABSTRACT How does one use one’s body in qualitative research? Poetic meditation is a technique that offers to enhance researchers’ sensory capacities and embodied practices in research. By using mindfulness practice as a means to relax and focus on sensations, scholars can prepare to embody data collection so as to encounter multiple environmental features including, but not limited to the visual and textual. So too is poetic meditation intended as a tool to help researchers to encounter mysterious moments and to refigure their surroundings in ways that explicitly reframe sensemaking and representation. This companion essay to recorded poetic meditations encourages researchers to embrace mystery as a pathway to knowledge-making, and to build confidence to creatively step outside of common linguistic and theoretical modes.