November 30th, 2022—My new instructional mantra is “rest, settle, and center”. The ideas are not new, but the clarity, alignment, and intention behind the trinity is. As I’ve grown into the role of professor, I’ve worked to create and sustain classroom spaces that are healing and invitational of the spirit. My instructional moves were in response to students who were arriving to class stressed, exhausted, and sometimes just putting in the time to get by and complete the course. I sensed that their human and scholarly potential was always much more than their life or work circumstances often allowed. The emotional depletion they brought to our classroom space lessened the learning potential for everyone. Through no fault of their own, they were worn down by work and were doing the best they could to advance their education. In response, I started thinking about ways to disrupt the pattern. To reset their emotional stance prior to class.
And then the pandemic hit. The level of day-to-day stress and uncertainty exploded. And when all my classes went online, there was a noticeable uptake in student fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. All understandable emotions given the unknown health consequences of COVID, impacts on academic trajectories, disruptions to work/home routines, and economic challenges. At about the same time, I read My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem. His insights on ways to understand and metabolize trauma suggested concrete ways for creating a classroom context, for students and me, that was healing. Resmaa argues that the intentional act of breathing helps the body move from flight/fight/freeze to a more relaxed state of openness. Breathing, among other embodied skills, was used by enslaved Blacks to create spaces of resistance in the day-to-day trauma of the dehumanizing experiences of enslavement.
I heard in Menakem’s wisdom the value of settling and centering before doing the deep work of learning. I started each virtual class, with three breaths and the invitation to settle and center. The intention was to invite the fullness of our bodies into our shared classroom space. To transition from the demands, disappointments, uncertainties, and frustrations of the day. I felt the difference as I settled and centered into our classroom time. My students noticed the difference, commenting how much “they needed that”. Many students noted this ritual as important to their learning and classroom culture in their end of course evaluations. Now that classes are face to face, I still start each class session with three-deep breaths. The sense of settling and centering is abundantly present. Even before I invite the guided breaths the energy of the room shifts. Settling and centering. Settling and centering. My new instructional normal. A centered body is a body and spirit that is more open to learning and change.
I’m teaching a new course this quarter on activism and mysticism in education. In preparation for the course, I asked a colleague what they were reading these days about mysticism. They recommended Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey. Tricia argues that rest is essential to resisting the dehumanizing impact of White Supremacy and capitalism. As a form of counter resistance, Hersey advocates for the liberation of the body as a source of divine wisdom and imagination. Like Menakem, Hersey draws from personal history and the narratives of enslaved Blacks to place rest at the center of resistance, social justice, and reclamation of the soul/body as a divine instrument of knowing. Grind culture as practiced through White Supremacy and capitalism is dedicated to the denial of this truth. Grind’s highest purpose is to turn our bodies into machines that are valued for productivity, efficiency, and standardization.
Throughout my career as an educator, I intuitively knew that traditional forms of teaching and learning were robbing students and me of something essential to our humanity. Something often felt lacking or wanting when we gathered together in our classroom community. I wrote about and published the story of my awakening to the truth that, when in times of instructional trouble and uncertainty, the way forward was not technique but the wisdom of my inner-teacher. I learned that the more I could settle and center the more my head and heart could work in combination to see new possibilities when before only uncertainty and fear existed.
As I grew to trust the wisdom and knowing of my teacher-soul, I experimented with ways to create spaces of liberation for my students. I questioned the value of grades, tests, long final-papers, extensive reading lists, and didactic forms of instruction and learning. All seemed to bend the heart of the learner to my determinations of value, rather than the personal insights and knowing of the students in class. As I open up the curriculum and became more explicit in my teaching. I increasingly state that a primary learning outcome of the course is a change in student knowing and being, not performance on a standardized assessment. Resmaa Menakeem’s insights on breathing is one example of a strategy I now use to settle the body and empower learner agency. Tricia Hersey’s insights on rest provides a clear argument for the body as a trusted source of deep knowing which leads to liberation.
When I bring Menakeem and Hersey together in conversation, my new mantra of “rest, settle, and center” comes into focus. The cycle of preparing for learning in which freedom and liberation are the end state begins with rest. An intentional time of breaking away from the forms of grind culture characteristic of traditional notions of teaching and learning. The push for grades. The power differential between learner and educator. The rush to complete the assigned daily content. All are forms of instructional grind culture. Once in a state of rest, the body, the source of deep wisdom, can more easily settle and open to its divine knowing. And then the process of centering on inner-truths can begin.
Rest, settle, and center is my new instructional mantra. I will start every class with an explicit invitation for students to slow, resist grind culture, and to bring the fullness of their body and soul to our learning space. I know that through this trinity new pathways to learning will open and new visions self as a liberated self with emerge. And I know that this is a long-term practice and ritual. The power of grind is immense and the tendency to slip back into old habits of teaching and learning that deny the wisdom of the body and soul will always be present. Rest, settle, and center is an ongoing process. An instructional life commitment.