Summary: | 碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 心理學系 === 103 === This thesis adopts the approach of action research, and with reflective narrative and action inquiry, presents the field notes of a practitioner’s move-testing experiments.
This thesis is organized in three parts.
The first part of this thesis depicts the conflicts and struggles of recognizing and accepting the blindness, to hide or to reveal oneself. I have learned throughout the changes of my sight, from being able to see to being unable to see. Confined and perplexed by my blindness, I hid myself out of ignorance, fearing people’s judgmental eyes, and gradually opened up myself to various experiences of the blindness, including traditional socio-cultural stereotypes and biases on the physically and mentally disabled in the specific political and economic situations.
In the second part, I compared my experiences in the care systems of western and traditional Chinese medicine. The attack of acute glaucoma made me look back on my past doctor visits and reflect on the care my parents had received in the western medicine. I used Chinese medicine and tried to destigmatize herbal medicine through my own bodily experience. Having experienced two different views on how body heals, I reflected on how the conflicts between knowledge and perception-sensation are caused. Through learning about herbal medicine and practicing Ya-Yue Dance techniques in my daily life, at the same time sorting out the experiences in the field of my family, I came to identify the cognitive and emotional conflicts provoked when body and mind are treated separately in the western medicine practice. These are episodes of transformative action that deconstruct the twisted and knotted self.
The third part depicts the path of learning Ya-Yue Dance through tactile sensation pathways.
In this part, I reflected on my learning experience of Ya-Yue Dance on the interface of tactile sensation, along with senses of hearing and smell. The tactile sensation pathways of how I experience touching and being touched are explored. The representation after exchanges of self and other is the starting point toward future practice of mind-body work.
1.Initially, I touched the teacher’s and classmates’ movements to construct the forms of the movements. Later in 2012, when my acute glaucoma attacked, I focused on the linkage between my scars and body during Ya-Yue practice. The pain from intraocular pressure made me more sensitive to my body movement.
2.In the initial period of group practice, I experimented how to help adjust Ya-Yue movement with massage, mainly point pressing.
3.Touching and being touched: I learned Ya-Yue using gentle touch and listening to my breath, together with my sensitive nose, I practiced hard on a daily basis to treat the stasis in my body, hoping that others do not find any deformation on my body when they touch me.
I introduced the approach of my learning Ya-Yue Dance to the blind community. In 2014, two blind groups participated. From the group members’ feedbacks, I experienced how Ya-Yue deconstructs. Through tactile sensation pathways, I formed my own mind-body work methods. As a practitioner/actor, how I intervene and research in action is an ongoing process of inquiry and moving.
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