[Last modified: December, 14 2024 12:15 AM]
Initial project
- Was an exploration of the phenomenology of retired athletes of aesthetic sports – stemmed from a deeply personal experience that I found was difficult to separate my own lived experiences from
- It became quite sensitive for me, which was a helpful realization to have in this module at this point in the school year.
Current project
- Moving forwards, I began to consider another better-suited topic, which focuses on the experience of energy work as a form of therapeutic practice – engaging the senses as healing, which I believe inherently challenges Western programming that traditionally values vision/sight as the dominant sense.
Methods
- The main method of my previous topic was photo-elicitation, which would have involved extracting an understanding thru an explicitly visual form… given the way I jumped ship on this topic early on, I didn’t give much thought to the structure of the interviews—
- From my preliminary research and brief experiences with this spiritual practice, energy work involves reflection that often takes the form of journaling — whether before, during, or after a session.
- Worlds are created that engage a visual sense in the screen behind your eyelids, or through sensations that are felt in various parts of the body
- These sensations and visualizations are supplemented through the a variety of methods:
- Conception of elements (fire, water, earth, air) that compose an interactive space to ‘move about within’.
- Another method includes ‘reprogramming’ through ‘encounters’ with entities/spirits like mermaids, Mary Magdalene, or the moon to let go of preconceived notions of these figures and then the encouragement of your intuition to bring forth a cleansed or more authentic sense of these entities and how you can use them in your everyday life to reimagine your world view.
- IMAGINATION, MEMORY, THE BODY!
- These sensations and visualizations are supplemented through the a variety of methods:
- Worlds are created that engage a visual sense in the screen behind your eyelids, or through sensations that are felt in various parts of the body
- A quick overview of the methods that I propose for this new project that I hope to carry through into my dissertation, so any suggestions, comments, critiques are welcome There is one particular online community (Patreon) that I am a part of, and have been making connections within the group so far, discussing our experiences with one healer’s offerings, which has been lovely
- Textual-analysis — symbolic analysis of individual containers and worlds; significance of certain parts of the body (when focused on, what comes up?); individual memories (past) or dreams (future) that inform the participant’s present
- Semi-structured interviews — flexible form of interview that brings more up for interpretation, which allows the participant to go as in-depth as they please
- Multimodal techniques — crucial to this research topic; how to capture smells? Idk; soundscapes for sure, Definitely would like to include poetry or vignettes of worlds that people have built, perhaps a documentation or observation of people who do energy work and their other creative practices, how those might go hand in hand.
Further considerations
- There is much to be said about the dichotomy regarding how, through the bodily sensations and how people make sense of them, we can make connections to cognition/psychology/science (micro levels) and institutions/governments (macro level)
- It has allowed me to conceptualize what has been diagnosed on a psychological level versus what it could be conceptualized as in religion and connect all of these things.
• • Continuing to think about ethical considerations and field sites/people to interview, but I think these themes are quite sensitive, which require extra care and conversations with the Ethics Committee.