researcher well-being: self-reflexivity through yoga

I recently attended a roundtable sponsored by the Canadian Consortium on Human Security in Toronto, Canada where I was asked to present the research that I conducted in Rwanda between April and October 2006. Some of my remarks focussed on the difficulties of carrying out research in places like Rwanda where psychosocial trauma abounds, and is compounded by poverty and other social inequalities. This comment got some of us thinking at the break about researcher well-being. Who/what supports the researcher? How can researchers/academics protect themselves — emotionally and physically — while conducting research with so-called vulnerable populations. How can researchers respect and acknowledge the difficulties that our research participants experience in their daily lives while preserving compassion that drives most of us working on issues of human (in)security?
My suggestion was to develop a yoga practice. The physical aspects of yoga have gained prominence world-wide as just plain good for health and well-being. What western practitioners of yoga sometimes underestimate (or simply overlook) is the ultimate goal of yoga to unify the body and mind. The unification of mind and body, and the emotional, spiritual and physical consciousness that a yoga practice provides is, to my mind, a good starting point for any researcher that wants to surface the knowledge of vulnerable populations in vulnerable societies.
Working to see things are they are is the foundation of yoga. Yoga is much more than a series of physical postures. These postures or asanas represent only one of the eight steps in the ladder to the state of yoga. Yoga is philosophy that was first expounded by the sage, Patanjali, as a path to spiritual enlightenment. The philosophy is widely available to Western audiences in the 1946 book “Autobiography of a Yogi”, by Paramahansa Yogananda.
The philosophy of yoga holds that each person is made up of three elements: body, mind and consciousness, which merge to constitute our being as individuals. The achievement of harmony among these three elements is the purpose of yoga. Yoga emphasises the necessity of yama (abstentions) and niyama (observances). Yama and niyama are the first steps on the ladder to enlightenment and offer a strong foundation from which researchers can base their interactions with the participants in their research: Taken together, yama and niyama imply a high moral code of conduct in personal life and ethical behaviour in our relationship with others, and the the world around us. This means that researchers should be self-reflexive about the purposes of their research, of the impacts (negative and positive) on the participants of their research, and to conduct their research in a way that privileges the participants of the research, not the other way round. Good research is collaborative, and is based on a relationship where both the researcher and the so-called researched work together — in an enabling, safe and supportive environment — to generate knowledge together.
The third and fourth steps in the ladder of yoga are asanas and pranayama (the regulation and control of the breath). Asanas obviously open up the body, loosen the joints, stretch and strengthen the muscles and detoxify the body. They harmonise the nervous system and promote physical health, which directly affects the functioning of the mind. The practice of asana is deepened by pranayama. Special breathing techniques have been developed by yogis over the centuries for dealing with fluctuations of climate, inducing a sense of mental equipoise, and for harmonising the left and right sides of the brain. Anger, fear, and anxiety cause the breathing to be short, sharp and rapid. Deep, slow and rhythmic breathing are indications of a deeply relaxed state of mind and body. Stiffness in the body is often the reflection of rigidity of the mind, as is reflective of a body that stores a lot of fear, anger, resentment or disappointment.
I experienced the power of pranayama in Rwanda when I attended a civic re-education class known as ingando in September 2006. Ingando is a series of classes, sometimes all-day everyday over a period of two weeks, or a day-long course once-a-week over a three-month period, in which Rwandans learn about the history of their country, and are given techniques and tools to promote harmony and peace amongst Hutu and Tutsi. I spent every Friday for five weeks in an ingando session in rural Kigali as a guest of the government. The ingando classes are highly-structured and the course content is delivered in lecture format in military fashion. I spent my Fridays sitting in my assigned place on the lawn on the hill-top that was our ingando class-room surrounded by thirty or forty demobilised soldiers. The lectures were tedious for me as the course was delivered in Kinyarwanda. I sat comfortably, legs-crossed, however for up to eight hours a day in lotus pose. By the third week of class, I had become friendly with the guys around me and at a break in the lectures early one afternoon, I suggested that we all move into downward dog to stretch out the legs and back, and to break the monotony of our minds. The mood of the group moved between boredom with both the content and format of the ingando lectures, and there was also some agitation within the group about the lack of available physical comforts. No meals were provided, and the group of soldiers were living in spartan quarters until they could be released back to their families and friends. When I kicked my hips back into downdog, most of the group just smirked and laughed that nervous laughter that I have experienced so many times before in Rwanda. But as my breath deepened, and my body relaxed, several of the guys joined in. I am not a trained yoga teacher, so did not offer adjustments or any sort of body alignment. I simply showed these guys the power of combining the physical with the breath to gain perspective and relax a little. It was one of my most powerful yoga experiences. It also speaks to the power of the emotional connections that can be made in sharing a physical experience. Following our 15-minutes of yoga, I had gained a connection with the humanity of these guys. Regular guys, full of all the promise and anxiety of individuals that are trying to make sense of their lives following violent conflict, who also happened to be soldiers, most if not all of whom had killed in the course of their duties. I learned through a translator at the end of the day that many of them saw me as less of an outsider, and I revealed that I was initially nervous and bit anxious to sit with them because they were soldiers. In reflecting on the day later, I learned that the experience allowed me to feel a human connection with them despite my imaginings about what inhumane things they may have done during and after the 1994 genocide. I gained an appreciation for them as individuals — as brothers, as fathers, as friends — not simply as soldiers.
The fifth step in the ladder to the state of yoga is pratyahara. Pratyhara means literally ‘withdrawal’. It suggests a withdrawal of the senses. In the modern world, I think this means withdrawal from the information overload that characterises daily life in the West. Our 24/7 lifestyle, where blackberries, email, satellite tv, and on-demand news programming mean that there is very little space in the untrained mind for the peace, inspiration, creativity and strength of character that can only be found within and in silence. Pratyahara suggests a withdrawal from company and activities that lead to a state of restlessness, of holding on to the thoughts that distract the mind from concentration. Where the mind and the body meet in yoga, the practice of learning to first still still, then to quiet the mind culminates in an acquired ability to concentrate despite the many obstacles that modern life puts in the way. This quieting of the mind can be a powerful tool for the researcher who is living in an unfamiliar culture and who is trying to make sense of the life worlds of the individuals that are the purpose, form and content of the research project which the researcher is trying to surface. A quieting of the mind underscores the need for researchers in unfamiliar cultures to listen. An ability to listen well — to listen deeply, with compassion and purpose — is the benchmark of the self-reflective researcher.
I have only touched on some of the benefits of yoga for my own research. Part and parcel of a yoga practice is to build a connection with the vital energy of the world around us. Yoga philosophy says that this is achieved through the food and water that yogis consume. Food and drink becomes a strategic choice that allows the yogi to fuel his or her own practice. In the context of research, we also give energy in our words and actions, just as our research participants have their own energy. Learning to understand and appreciate the life flows and energy that yoga brings to the surface allows also for an appreciation of the energy that is created through the words and actions of the people around us. It teaches us to accept people for who they are and to appreciate the lived realities of individuals whose life experiences are often vastly different to our own.
For information the yoga asanas, check out: http://www.santosha.com/asanas/. I have deepened my practice while on retreat at Purplevalley Yoga Shalla in Goa and recommend a yoga retreat for anyone who is serious about achieving the merger of mind, body and consciousness that yoga can provide.

Americans imaging Africans...

I recently was asked to participate in conducting survey research on the imaginings of the American public on Africa. I am not an American, but was asked through one of my research working groups to participate as imagining the other is one of my research interests.

I think a survey that will consider and assess what Americans think when they think of Africa is a good idea. It reminds me of the imaginations of Mel Lastman, then Mayor of Toronto. Before a trip to Kenya to promote Toronto’s bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, he said, “I’m sort of scared about going, but the wife is really nervous. I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me”. Most Canadians, upon hearing this news, just rolled their eyes. There was no public debate on the not-so-implicit racist and essentialist comments, because few people understood them. In my own imagination about how Americans perceive cultures other than their own, I can only guess that Americans writ large would support Lastman’s view. At a minimum, they would be unable to contradict Lastman because their world view is so narrow, and the American (and international) media tends to characterise Africa as a monolithic blob of inter-ethnic and/or primordial strife, not as a continent of great promise, and even greater diversity.

There is another side to the ignorance of Americans (and Canadians) to the past and lived realities of life across Africa. In my own travels in Africa (mostly Kenya and Rwanda, some South Africa and Madagascar, and a bit of DRC, Uganda, Tanzania and once to Mozambique), I’ve often wondered what Africans imagine about life abroad in countries like Canada or the US. I have met many young men and women in a number of African countries who imagine that life in Canada will be one of luxury. They will have their own home, be able to buy a car, get a good education for themselves and their kids, be able to enjoy spare time, and so on and so on. The reality of life in Canada is often living from pay cheque to pay cheque in a basement apartment in minimum-wage jobs as the government places road block after road block in the process to gain landed residency status, which is required before the application for citizenship can even me made. And these individuals are the lucky ones. I met the other day in downtown Ottawa an Ethiopian taxi driver who was a medical doctor in his own country, his family was unable to join him in Canada as he could raise enough money to pay for their plane tickets to Canada, nor the restrictive costs of applying to land in Canada. I’ve met newly arrived immigrants to Canada from Lebanon who are well educated, have family ties in Canada, and who are unable to find a supportive environment in which to settle. Statistics Canada reports that the higher the level of education of an immigrant, the lower his or her chances of finding employment in his or her field of expertise. That means that lawyers, doctors, architects, and the like are unlikely to take up those professions in Canada. They are more likely to work as paralegals, nurses, CAD designers, and so on.

I think it would be a useful exercise to also undertake a survey of African’s perceptions of the West. The two surveys together might be able to help us build up a picture of what it means to be the other - Westerners can learn about Africa through the voices of Africans, and Africans can learn about the West as it real is, rather than as it appears to be.