June 1st 2020
As of tomorrow, we will move to Phase 1 of easing some of the Circuit Breaker rules. So what does that mean? How are we going to respond? Do we just go back to how things were before COVID-19? What does that even mean now? I am unsure because truthfully, in the last two and a half months since end March 2020, I have been reacting and adapting to the various changes. It was an eye-opening experience and one roller-coaster ride. To start, as an academic, I had to move my teaching online, but I was lucky (well, more fortunate than most) because my shift went smoothly and I was able to transit with ease. The ease came because I had finished delivering all my lessons, and so it was time for assessments and consultation.
Nevertheless, it was a new domain, holding a practical one-on-one consultation. It was exciting and unique and admittedly slightly daunting. This new experience had me being more precise in the way, I articulated my observations, especially when I gave the students tasks. So literally, I was doing side-coaching while engaging on a digital platform.
For example, to start the work, I will ask my student to stand with their feet apart, and then we would begin with a series of breathing exercise. I will ask them to articulate their breathing - while I was taking deeper breaths, inhaling and exhaling ‘loudly’ so that they can hear me breathing. Then after, I would ask my students to do the exercise on their own, while I watch intently via the zoom meeting platform, listen carefully to their breathing. This was a crucial point for me because the sound of their breaths paired up with the visual observation of how their body /chest expanded out and collapsing in - gave me the assurance that the students were embodying the exercises and there was live-ness coming through the digital platform. And this was a crucial point of reflection and was re-assuring because there was a sense of dread, as over the past two months, there has been an urgent push to go virtual/online with comments that embodiment has reached its end. But, in truth, COVID-19, in my opinion, has made us realise how crucial embodiment is.
This whole experience in the last two months gave me an opportunity to learn how to use the different digital communication platforms available, and it has allowed me to stay connected, work and even play. There has been some exciting new research, but I just want to go back to ask a straightforward question: what does it mean to be human or to be alive? To be alive is to have breath and so what is the breath? How do we respond to this new sense of Being after being isolated from each other?
Where is the body? Because the communication platform seemed to create a diversion between a cognitive response versus an embodied cognitive response. In truth, I think people need the body more, and so maybe we should start with the body rather than say embodiment has reached its end, let us say that with the body, we can articulate an art of being.
I am, therefore saying that the body is a vessel through which we can experience things. The body is marked by its experiences because within a site of action; there is live-ness. This live-ness is the body’s response to the experiences that it encapsulates. Through these experiences, the body makes sense of how it is affected and comprehends what is happening around. As a body, we feel, and as we become aware of this, we slowly begin to acknowledge that how we see or perceive things comes from the point of view because ‘to see the world, we must see it from some point of view: a position that determines our horizon and directional planes of observation, that sets the meaning of left and right, up and down, forward and backward, inside and outside, and that eventually shapes the metaphorical extensions of these notions in our conceptual thought.’ (Shusterman page 33).
I am heartened to know that I am not the only person that firmly believes that this ‘new’ normal is also an ‘abnormal’ response because arguably, embodiment is an essential element for live-ness and of being because the body is|as sense-makers. The term, “the body as a sense-maker” was first argued for and by cognitive neuroscientist Francisco Varela (1946 - 2001) in which bodily experience is not merely associated with cognition; rather, lived experience is foundational to consciousness, mind and thought (Batson, 2014, p. 75).
Maybe I am holding onto a myth, and I may be wrong. Still, upon reflecting and as I eagerly anticipate visiting my family and meeting my friends face to face, I am looking forward to June 3rd when I can experience the art of being with my loved ones.