Embodied scholarship and decolonizing practices are the central themes explored in the book “Sharing Breath”. Embodiment scholarship provided grounds for re-centering the body in my research endeavors and helped me articulate the problem space of my research.
The writing in this collection concerns itself with how contemporary theories of embodiment and embodied learning foreground the relationship between sentient and social lived experience [and] – how we experience ourselves and the world around us in terms of material and discursive aspects of mind-body-spirit and social relations of power. (Batacharya & Wong, 2018, p.3). This foregrounding influenced my embodied research methodologies and artistic processes.
The essays in this collection bolster my critique on Western-Liberal education and the pervasive privileging of mind-intellect. Many works in this collection help me argue and advocate for bringing the body back from the margins of education and help me frame why it is important to create a space for the body (my body) to write itself back into learning. My research methodology and culminating film, Chalk Moves – Body as Teacher and Scribe is my embodied critique on Western-Liberal education and the mind/body dualism it promotes. The film integrates the body, mind and environment as central to the meaning-making and knowledge generation process.