Postural Yoga Laboratory

Postural Yoga Laboratory

Grant:
Instructional Development Fund (IDF)
Academic Year:
2019 - 2020 (June 1, 2019 through May 31, 2020)
Funding Requested:
$500.00
Project Dates:
-
Applicant(s):
nachiket
Overview of the Project:
see attached document
Final Report Fields
Project Objectives:

A CRLT-IDF grant allowed 35 students enrolled in my “HISTART 304/ASIAN 304 Art of Yoga” course to join two classes at the Ann Arbor School of Yoga, a well-known center in downtown Ann Arbor that propagates the teachings of B.K.S. Iyengar (1918-2014). Iyengar was an Indian guru who is widely credited with bringing yoga to the West and popularizing it widely. Both classes were taught by Laurie Blakeney, AASY founder-director and long-time Iyengar yoga practitioner. 

Through this learning experience, my students gained a deeper understanding of the range of yoga postures: from standing poses to twists and from to inverted poses to forward and back-bending positions. This made them more aware of their own bodies and their interior reserves of strength and balance. It also allowed them to experientially situate postural yoga and Iyengar’s characteristic method within the longer and wider history of the discipline, and then to write four-page long formal essays, complete with footnotes and citations, on this topic.

Project Achievements:

As my students left the doors of Ann Arbor School of Yoga to return to central campus several informally mentioned to me they felt that it was now easier for them to assess and use different types of evidence in making a scholarly argument. Others mentioned to me that thanks to the yoga class they had just attended, they more alert and had more mental and physical energy to tackle the rest of the workday. Since the postural yoga class brought the entire class together in the same space in a shared tactile-kinesthetic activity, in retrospect, I also think it nurtured a greater sense of community. For the rest of the semester my students shared class notes more freely with each other and participated in class discussions more openly. Their four-page long essays, which grew out of the experience, were more polished and compelling than other assignments that they submitted to me.

Dissemination:
I've spoken to colleagues about this enriching experience on several occasions, and it has wide-ranging effects. For example, this semester I am teaching my Art of Yoga course again and it has attracted many diligent students from diverse departments, and eight members of the Michigan Wolverines football team.
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