Taking care

Engaging the body on a daily basis in a high-intensity practice places both educators and students/learners in risky situations or ones where they may feel vulnerable. Naming questions around physical, mental and social health within a group makes these questions real and tangible. To create opportunities for listening, it’s essential to begin by naming situations (fatigue, overtraining, motivation, availability). It’s important also to create spaces to name or share feelings through regular “body scan” exercises and to create sharing circles and the sharing of information (physical, mental, social injuries). This can mitigate the pressure to hide pain or discomfort, as well as the fear of speaking up about working conditions, of appearing “weak,” the constant adaptation to dangerous situations, the feeling of loneliness, or the fear of destabilizing a group, a pedagogical relationship, or a project –all of which lead to hiding information, either consciously or unconsciously. By making the invisible visible, we have an opportunity to collectively pay attention.

Taking care requires engaging one’s responsibility as educator and pedagogue, without stepping out of one’s role. The role of the pedagogue is not to diagnose, whether the problem is physical or psychological, but the pedagogue must nevertheless equip themselves with observational tools so as to notice and guide. This makes it possible to identify one’s own boundaries and allows each person to set their own limits and express them, at a given time, in a specific context. Some of the many responsibilities that the pedagogue takes on include: setting up a safe(r) working environment; having reasonable objectives; analyzing the context for giving technical feedback to students/learners (i.e. including in one’s analysis fatigue, time of day, conditions, stakes, physical and psychological availability); identifying, measuring and discussing risk-taking together; protecting from risks. By developing confidence, and by including practices that allow for more acute awareness (somatic and attentional practices), responsibility and safekeeping practices can be shared between pedagogues, between pedagogues and students/learners, between students/learners themselves.

It’s important to rethink training as a laboratory for experimentation, possibilities, and empowerment. We can rethink training as a dramaturgical and physical space for paying attention, for fighting oppression, for preparing and becoming available[1], for protecting against injury, etc. In this sense, care works to shift the norms which constrain bodies (i.e. norms of productivity, gender assignment as birth, physical standards according to practices or disciplines, imposed habits, etc.). These norms otherwise prevent students/learners from accessing serene and nourishing learning processes. Developing alternative and unusual injury prevention and recovery practices also make it possible to engage in daily work and training in a way that is adapted to each specific context of practice, needs, desires, and emergencies. Training, whether it be to recover or to prepare, can be a place of joy, play, and engagement. Training can be performative, intense or gentle, logical or absurd, and can take different forms (innovative training protocols, working from sensations, from images, music, etc.). Training can center or decenter the body (walking, going to an exhibition), and this is valid for students/learners as well as for educators.

[1] By “become available” we mean that these tools aim to increase our awareness of body and mind ; becoming more aware is a first step towards becoming more available and present, both for oneself or for the group. These tools therefore utilize different methods to work towards this awareness.