The Rhetorical Embodied Dialogue of Yoga

Karen Bishop

Advisor: Michelle LaFrance, PhD, Department of English

Committee Members: Doug Eyman, Christy Wenger

Online Location, https://gmu.zoom.us/j/95428953850?from=addon
November 22, 2024, 11:00 AM to 01:00 PM

Abstract:

This dissertation seeks to answer the two research questions below by exploring the caring language of yoga through a phenomenological analysis of the lived experience of yoga.
            – How is yoga spoken between practitioners and teachers?
            – How has this “language” translated into their lives off the yoga mat?

As a qualitative methodology, phenomenology encourages the research of a phenomenon by concentrating on the lived experience of that phenomenon as described by individuals. Influenced by phenomenology, hermeneutics, and idiography, the chosen methodology of this dissertation, interpretative phenomenological analysis, goes one step further, encouraging a deep dive into the intricate details of how a phenomenon is experienced by a specific individual, or in this specific project, three unique yoga practitioners. These practitioners generously shared their yoga stories, from moments of challenge and illness to those of compassion and peace. Running through each story is a language of care, a dialogue of embodied conversation between yoga teachers, practitioners, and their inner selves. This language was expressed through words, but more importantly, it was carried out through bodies. As the practitioners learned to listen to and then speak this language, they demonstrated increased self-awareness and self-acceptance, positive change that made a lasting impact on their self-perceptions, how they perceived others, and how they would choose to live their lives.
 
This yoga language, or rhetorical embodied dialogue, is spoken through caring collaborative negotiation, a back-and-forth response between yoga teachers and practitioners that occurs in yoga moments shaped by rhetorical moves. The caring, continuous negotiation of yoga bodies that are constantly changing is an opportunity to become self-aware by acknowledging that there are underlying reasons for why we think, speak, and act in certain ways, and self-accepting, where we show a willingness to explore those underlying reasons and either embrace them and the self as it is, or decide that those reasons no longer express the self and change them so that they do. All three practitioners conveyed a sense of personal growth through the self-awareness and self-acceptance they found in yoga, and each one spoke of how this growth also changed their lives off the yoga mat. This growth through self-awareness and self-acceptance are what a caring language might be capable of achieving, no matter where it is spoken.