To write what you know: Embodiment, authorship and empathy

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to examine the consequences of mindfulness and embodiment practices in undergraduate university education. Utilizing teacher-initiated qualitative action research, consequences of mindfulness and embodiment in the classroom was investigated, with students serving as co-investigators. Seventeen students in an undergraduate narrative arts class met twice a week over the course of a semester, and, as a class, participated in embodiment and mindfulness practices in connection with the scheduled course content. The dictate to ‘write what you know’ is a familiar one in creative writing classes, but it seemed that students were not sure what they ‘knew’ until they came present into their own bodies. In so doing, and by placing their cognition in their embodied practice, the students discovered they could achieve a position from which to move into authorship. Two coders engaged in a systematic inductive analysis of students’ writings following the embodiment practice to identify themes present in the written material produced by the students. Themes include embodied attention, authorial voice, and empathetic response.