Creative RelaxationSM : A Yoga-Based Program for Regular and Exceptional Student Education

2004 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Goldberg

School is a stressful place, especially for those with special needs. Sitting still, paying attention, staying on task are not skills that come easily to anxious learners,yet classroom learning is very difficult without these constraints. There are few opportunities in most educational curricula to train students in the skills required for self-control and focusing the mind. Any Yoga teacher knows, however, that control of the body and mind are skills that one can learn with instruction and practice. Creative RelaxationSM is a Yoga-based program designed to teach students to strengthen, stretch, and calm the body, quiet the mind, and control the breathing. The teaching principles of Creative Relaxation are as follows: make a sacred space, engage the student, provide tools for success, and create opportunities for independence. This article will demonstrate ways to apply these principles in an educational setting for regular and exceptional student education, based on the experience of the author as a consultant in the public school system since 1981. Anecdotal data and examples will be given from the author's work with children in regular education,as well as with those with autism and related disabilities,emotional handicaps, ADHD, and learning disabilities, and with anxious learners. In addition, the author collaborated with school professionals in a study to evaluate the effectiveness of a Yoga-based relaxation program for six children with autism over an eight-week period. A summary of the group's findings is presented.

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 126
Author(s):  
Gunne Grankvist ◽  
Petri Kajonius ◽  
Bjorn Persson

<p>Dualists view the mind and the body as two fundamental different “things”, equally real and independent of each other. Cartesian thought, or substance dualism, maintains that the mind and body are two different substances, the non-physical and the physical, and a causal relationship is assumed to exist between them. Physicalism, on the other hand, is the idea that everything that exists is either physical or totally dependent of and determined by physical items. Hence, all mental states are fundamentally physical states. In the current study we investigated to what degree Swedish university students’ beliefs in mind-body dualism is explained by the importance they attach to personal values. A self-report inventory was used to measure their beliefs and values. Students who held stronger dualistic beliefs attach less importance to the power value (i.e., the effort to achieve social status, prestige, and control or dominance over people and resources). This finding shows that the strength in laypeople’s beliefs in dualism is partially explained by the importance they attach to personal values.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-84
Author(s):  
Austin Riede

Abstract David Cronenberg's The Fly (1986), the definitive film of the body horror genre, poses political questions regarding the limits of human recognition and the disciplinary surveillance techniques employed over the body by ideology. This article reads The Fly alongside H. G. Wells's 1896 novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, arguing that both texts are allegorical explorations of the foundation of human politics, through surveillance and control of both individuals and populations. Brundle's transformation leads him to a Hobbesian 'state of nature', in which he asserts his natural right of self-preservation. The vivisected animals that Dr Moreau creates, however, exist in a highly ritualized political system predicated on the human capacity to experience, understand and remember pain. It is a political system that exemplifies Foucauldean notions of self-control through disciplinarian surveillance. The two texts serve as inverted reflections of one another: in The Island of Dr. Moreau, animals are humanized by the fear of pain, and in The Fly a human is animalized by the experience of pain. Both texts are reminders that, as Elaine Scarry has pointed out, pain has the capacity to eradicate individual humanity. They also remind us that empathy for the pain of others is essentially humanizing.


1870 ◽  
Vol 16 (74) ◽  
pp. 166-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel H. Tuke

A few weeks∗ ago a gentleman informed the public, through the newspapers, that he had been cured of rheumatism by the fright he had experienced in a railway accident. The remarks which the circumstance has elicited lead me to think that the whole subject of the influence of the mind upon the body deserves more serious and systematic consideration than it has received. It is now some time since I endeavoured to formularise the generally admitted facts of physiology and psychology so far as they bear on this question, and to collect from the sources at my command all authenticated facts illustrative of this influence. Dissatisfied with my work, I laid my cases aside. Judging, however, from the remarks above-mentioned that, imperfect as they are, they may be of some service, I conclude to forward my observations to the Journal of the Association. I must apologise to the reader for treating the subject in so elementary and aphoristic a manner; but I trust the advantage of this method will be apparent as I proceed.


Rhetorik ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann Anselm Steiger

AbstractIn the newly published, critical edition of Birken’s handwritten manuscript, Birken inserts fictitious conversations that contain sacred poetry and prayers to God. This text, which belongs to a new genre of »exercises in sacred conversation« (»geistlichem Gesprächspiel«), serves the praxis pietatis in which the public proclamation of God’s Word is appropriated to private meditation. The added value of this conversational form is not only that it serves to edify, but also that it allows thoughts to freely fall into the mind that otherwise would not. Birken makes it clear that in conversation the Holy Spirit makes Himself known 1) within the plurality of interlocution, as well as 2) in the intensified form of the conversation, so that the presence of God is realized among the interlocutors (following Matt. 18:20) in the mutuum colloquium. Therefore, not only the proclamation from the pulpit, but also the devotional discussions become the vehicle of the Spirit’s presence. In this way, everyday rituals, such as getting out of bed, brushing one’s hair, and bathing the body, are explored according to their sacred and emblematic significance. Birken conceptualizes and practices this intermediality of the talking image, the painted word, and the pictorial conversation in such a way that this elevated rhetoric can be implemented through the medium of everyday speech.


Semiotica ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (212) ◽  
pp. 179-198
Author(s):  
Marianna Papastephanou

AbstractThe semiotic turn and the twentieth century critique of the philosophy of consciousness presented a unique challenge and stressed the problematic status of old binary oppositions such as the subject versus the object, the mind versus the body, and the private versus the public. Karl-Otto Apel has responded to this philosophical occurrence with a theory of transcendental semiotics, a highly original endeavor to avoid mere reversals of older binary oppositions and pernicious consolidations of new hierarchies. This article aims to unravel Apel’s semiotics and to make it relevant to the philosophical-educational themes that preoccupy edusemiotics. After a brief overview of how Apel reworks the theories that influenced him into his own transcendental-semiotic account, the article focuses on some specific points adding more depth to the venture of associating Apel’s theory and edusemiotics.


2008 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 305
Author(s):  
Mark Loane

?MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY? was a system which relied upon sport to allow people to grow in a moral and spiritual way along with their physical development. It was thought that . . . in the playing field boys acquire virtues which no books can give them; not merely daring and endurance, but, better still temper, self restraint, fairness, honor, unenvious approbation of another?s success, and all that ?give and take? of life which stand a man in good stead when he goes forth into the world, and without which, indeed, his success is always maimed and partial [Kingsley cited from Haley, in Watson et al].1 This system of thought held that a man?s body is given him to be trained and brought into subjection and then used for the protection of the weak, the advancement of all righteous causes [Hughes, cited in Watson et al].1 The body . . . [is] . . . a vehicle by which through gesture the soul could speak [Blooomfield, cited in Watson et al].1 In the 1800s there was a strong alignment of Muscular Christianity and the game of Rugby: If the Muscular Christians and their disciples in the public schools, given sufficient wit, had been asked to invent a game that exhausted boys before they could fall victims to vice and idleness, which at the same time instilled the manly virtues of absorbing and inflicting pain in about equal proportions, which elevated the team above the individual, which bred courage, loyalty and discipline, which as yet had no taint of professionalism and which, as an added bonus, occupied 30 boys at a time instead of a mere twenty two, it is probably something like rugby that they would have devised. [Dobbs, cited in Watson et al]1 The idea of Muscular Christianity came from the Greek ideals of athleticism that comprise the development of an excellent mind contained within an excellent body. Plato stated that one must avoid exercising either the mind or body without the other to preserve an equal and healthy balance between the two.


Author(s):  
Martin V. Butz ◽  
Esther F. Kutter

When acknowledging that the mind is embodied, cognitive development and evolution must determine how the body and environment shape the mind. Evolution has evolved structures and computational mechanisms in the body, and the brain that predispose ontogenetic development. Starting with conception, brain, body, and mind co-develop, and shape each other. An infant first develops rudimentary bodily representation and control capabilities, and concurrently uses them to abstract from and generalize over the gathered sensorimotor experiences to develop conceptual understandings and language. Evolution, on the other hand, works on a different time scale. Evolutionary pressures towards survival-suitable cell and bodily structures have dominated much of evolutionary progression. Benefits due to social interactions and coordinated cooperation have led to the evolution of the human brain, enabling the development of human minds. Some details on genetics and on evolutionary computation shed further light on how evolution must have brought about human minds. Thereby, the evolution of suitable bodily structures, of brain modularizations, developmental pathways, adaptive behavioral capabilities, and predispositions for social interactions constitute critical components. Subsequent chapters focus on the computational mechanisms behind embodied cognitive development.


2009 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
June Melby Benowitz

The headlines “Who's Trying to Ruin Our Schools?” and “Danger's Ahead in the Public Schools” grabbed the attention of the American public during the early 1950s as mainstream publications reacted to efforts by right-wing organizations to influence the curricula of America's elementary and secondary schools. “A bewildering disease that threatens to reach epidemic proportions has infected the public schools of America,” warned John Bainbridge in a two-part series forMcCall'sin September and October 1952. “The disease does not attack the body but, rather, the mind and the spirit. It produces unreasoning fear and hysteria.” Bainbridge was writing of efforts of some men, women, and their organizations to censor textbooks; to standardize the curriculum; to eliminate teaching about communism, the United Nations and the workings of governments outside of the United States; and to discredit teaching methods used in both public K-12 schools and in the nation's colleges. These activists also sought to ban those who did not subscribe to a specific way of thinking from speaking before students and at educational conferences and gatherings. As a consequence, in the late 1940s and early 1950s a number of American communities were in an uproar over what the country's youth were being taught, and who was doing the teaching.


2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (43) ◽  
pp. 11374-11379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kara Weisman ◽  
Carol S. Dweck ◽  
Ellen M. Markman

How do people make sense of the emotions, sensations, and cognitive abilities that make up mental life? Pioneering work on the dimensions of mind perception has been interpreted as evidence that people consider mental life to have two core components—experience (e.g., hunger, joy) and agency (e.g., planning, self-control) [Gray HM, et al. (2007) Science 315:619]. We argue that this conclusion is premature: The experience–agency framework may capture people’s understanding of the differences among different beings (e.g., dogs, humans, robots, God) but not how people parse mental life itself. Inspired by Gray et al.’s bottom-up approach, we conducted four large-scale studies designed to assess people’s conceptions of mental life more directly. This led to the discovery of an organization that differs strikingly from the experience–agency framework: Instead of a broad distinction between experience and agency, our studies consistently revealed three fundamental components of mental life—suites of capacities related to the body, the heart, and the mind—with each component encompassing related aspects of both experience and agency. This body–heart–mind framework distinguishes itself from Gray et al.’s experience–agency framework by its clear and importantly different implications for dehumanization, moral reasoning, and other important social phenomena.


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