At the beginning of my philosophy class this morning, a student came into the lecture hall carrying a yoga mat. (Full disclosure: To my knowledge, none of my present students know that I practice yoga. I don't exactly know why I keep my yoga and academic/teaching life separate. Maybe it's because I have this notion that people might somehow take me less seriously as a person of ideas if they find out that I can put my body into some interesting shapes.)
Anyway, as the student settled herself into her seat, I asked, as innocently as I could, "Is that a yoga mat?" She said yes (What was I expecting to hear, anyway? "No, this is actually an extra-long seat cushion"?). This is roughly how the conversation proceeded from this point:
Nobel: "Did you just come from yoga, or are you going to yoga after this class?"
Student: "I'm going to yoga after this."
Nobel: "Ah.... I would imagine that standing on your head must be a good antidote for doing too much philosophy."
That last statement drew a collective chuckle from the rest of the class. Meanwhile, the student in question smiles sheepishly (I hope she doesn't think I'm a creep).
I don't know why I am telling this story here (probably because there is no other place to tell it; if I were to tell this to my colleagues, they'll probably think I'm being cheesy, or worse...). So there. For the first time in a long time (or maybe for the first time ever), there is no moral to my story. I'm just telling it like it is. I hope you find it interesting or (I can at least hope) entertaining.
The double life of Nobel! I'm not sure that the antidote is working for you though...
ReplyDeleteConversely, I don't shop in the same town where I teach yoga, at least not usually and not with my kids in tow. I'm afraid that if my yoga students see me as a flustered mother with out of control kids that they'll somehow think less of me.
I think you are right that the antidote is not working (or maybe I need to do extra headstand outside of the Ashtanga practice...).
DeleteI understand where you are coming from about not shopping in the same town where you teach. A couple of years ago, I had a colleague with a similar dilemma. He is a martial artist, but he has given up teaching martial arts since entering academia, because he believes (rightly, I think) that his students will take him less seriously as a professor once they discover that he can use nunchucks! Hmm... maybe they will end up taking him *more* seriously... who knows? Anyway...
As an academic I would be more concerned if my colleagues were to discover that I have a life outside my work. Particularly the tenure committee.
DeleteI'm sorry to hear that you would be concerned that your colleagues would discover that you have a life outside your work.
DeleteHi Nobel,
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to write to tell you that I've been reading your blog for a while now and have really enjoyed your posts. I was a Philosophy major in college, so I appreciate both sides of the coin, so to speak. :) I'm happy your move went well and that you're getting settled in. Thanks for writing. You've been a big inspiration. I recently started a yoga blog myself and have linked to you in the sidebar, if that's okay. Check it out if you have time.
Thanks for reading my blog, Savannah. I'm honored that you find my blog to be a big inspiration, even though I haven't been blogging that much lately :-)
DeleteThanks for linking to me. I just visited your blog. Very beautiful place :-)
Hi Nobel. I'm a philosophy teacher at a community college in Washington state; I've been a serious student of Ashtanga for about 15 years. I don't generally make it known to my students that I do yoga; (generally I don't share much of my personal life.) However, this year, for the first time, I taught a class in non-Western philosophy; we mostly explored Indian philosophy. In that class, I had students DO yoga, along with sitting meditation and some chanting. They adored it.
ReplyDeleteHi Dave. So it appears that you are physically in the next state from me :-) I would like to teach a class in non-western, maybe even Indian philosophy one day. I'm not sure if I will get students to do yoga in that class, though; but I guess I'll see when I get to that point.
Deletehi Nobel, this was an interesting post, and even more interesting are the comments -- some from academics who keep "in the closet" their yoga or alt-wisdom practices. Or perhaps philosophy is the alt-wisdom practice! Which is what your comment suggests. There's a lot of anxiety about the double life.
ReplyDeleteI'm a professor (not in philosophy but in history) and I don't keep my yoga or meditation practice a secret from colleagues or tenure committees or deans or undergraduates. On the other hand, I don't go around talking about it all the time either (which could be annoying, I imagine). In my lower moments or my saner moments, I worry about the tenure situation and the "dignity" situation. What if my students ran into me in a hot yoga class? Mostly I think that would be all right: professors have bodies too. Why pretend otherwise? And isn't the fact that we DO sometimes pretend otherwise at the root of what's wrong with a lot of academic life and the not-necessarily-urgent knowledge production it encourages?
Personally i'm in favor of embodied knowledge at all levels -- whether you're teaching yoga, sitting in meditation, or teaching a class in history or philosophy.
By the way, you seem like you are a very good teacher, Nobel, with a good connection to your class.
best wishes, Rebecca L., reader from Cambridge
Thanks for commenting here, Rebecca. You bring up many interesting things for me to respond to here.
DeleteThanks for thinking I'm a good teacher :-) It's probably just that, not having to worry about tenure, I also worry less about what my students think about what I say in class, for better or for worse.
Ha, keeping the yoga practice "in the closet"? Maybe this is becoming the new "gay" rights movement! But seriously, although I do not have a tenure-track position at the moment, I am also inclined to think that it doesn't make sense to keep one's yoga or meditation or whatever practice from one's dean or students or colleagues. After all, if you are going to keep one part of your life "secret" from others in the academic environment, where is this going to end? Should female academics also perhaps keep their family-starting/child-raising plans secret as well?
Perhaps the problem is that people implicitly assume that only certain kinds of knowledge count as knowledge (i.e. the idea that embodied knowledge is pseudo-knowledge). And no, it wouldn't bother me if my students were to see me in an Ashtanga class; although this issue is actually moot for me right now, because (a) there's no Ashtanga studio where I am, and (b) I'm not on the tenure-track, so there's much less reason for me to worry about this in the first place.
Oh well.