Earning a Living Through The Body
    Kinesiology graduates are particularly well-suited to enter professions that have as their central focus the human body. They are knowledgeable about its structure and function and about the social and psychological processes that surround the movement phenomenon. Consequently, they naturally gravitate toward vocations that focus on enhancing the movement of others, such as in the school system, in sports, in the colleges and in the realm of medicine. Mind/body philosophy is evident and active in each of these career fields. If you are leaning toward teaching, coaching, healing or researching as a way to spend your future, look before you leap. Just as the unexamined life is not worth living, so the unexamined career may not be worth having. This section is designed to help you reflect on the salience of mind/body philosophy as a significant factor in your career choice.
Teaching
Exercise 21: Congratulations! Having completed a teacher education program you have received two offers of employment. Both elementary schools are well-situated for you, the salaries are comparable, but you really don't know which one to choose. To solve the quandary, you decide to pay them both a visit. Upon your arrival, in each case you are ushered into well-appointed gyms staffed by highly trained teachers, but you find the programs to be quite different. In the first, you are impressed by the discipline, students line up obediently and answer by number. On the day of your visit, class is preparing for the upcoming annual fitness test when the students get to perform as many pull-ups, pushups and sit-ups as they can in a given time. The teacher stands in the middle of the classroom, carefully watching her charges, and occasionally barking out orders or exhorting greater effort. She explains to you that the entire curriculum is geared toward reaching certain fitness goals. She adds that the establishment of national standards has given the P.E. program a certain legitimacy in the eyes of the School Board, because they can compare these fitness performances with other schools. She feels much more comfortable with this type of accountability, than with what she considers to be the very nebulous, "woolly', standards of the other school you are going to visit that day. She expresses a certain pride in the fact that all her students are striving for the same goal. She hopes that the new high-tech fitness equipment the school has just bought will increase the effeciency of class periods and the performance of her students, so that Cartesian Elementary School might rise in the school district rankings. As you are about to leave, a discipline problem arises. Apparently, one overweight child has complained that he doesn't enjoy trying to pull his chin up over a bar, partly because he can't do it and partly because all the other kids laugh at him when he tries. The student is punished for his temerity by being made to run around the gym several times as the rest of the class snickers at him.
    Down the road at Embodiment Elementary, you encounter a quite different scene. In fact, it is so different that your first inclination is to turn around and walk right back out through the door. In the place of the orderly, silent rows of children intently and seriously working on their fitness tasks, is what seems to be organized mayhem. Children are running around the gym, sometimes talking, often laughing, all apparently doing their own thing. The teacher is too busy to talk to you, because she is flitting from student to student, asking them how their exploration process is going, suggesting alternative solutions and encouraging them in their efforts. She knows everyone's name and seems to joke with them rather than reprimand them. In conversation after class, she tells you that the class assignment that day had been to explore personal space in all its movement dimensions. To do so, students had worked at their own pace according to their unique capabilities. When you tell her that you were alarmed at the hubbub, she responds that physical activity should be fun. When you tell her about the physical fitness emphasis in the school you just visited, she admits that she doesn't test her kids but tells you that she encourages all of her students to aim for a higher level of fitness and health within the limitations of their own particular physiques and proclivities. Discussion: Which school do you choose? Cartesian or Embodiment? Underlying the educational practices you can clearly see philosophy in action. During your first visit you witnessed dualism and behaviorism in action. The logical connection between the two means that they are often linked in educational practice. Teaching children to view their bodies as objects is dualistic. Training and testing them like little machines is behavioristic in that it emphasizes the stimulus-response approach to physical education and features rewards and punishments, uniformity of tasks, conformity of behavior, measurability of results and a general disregard for the wishes and uniqueness of the children. Did you notice the following cues that this teacher had a dualistic mind-set as you watched her in front of the class? : teaching students to separate themselves into segments, that physical activity is mindless, that they must use their bodies to reach some external goal[ which they may or may not find personally desirable] and that their bodies may bring them rewards and success but may also be the source of humiliation and derision? On the other hand the Embodiment School encourages students to discover their own uniqueness, to revel in the movement process and to explore their physical potential. In practice this means that teachers tend to adopt a humanistic approach to physical education. In the case that you saw, the teacher was busily encouraging every child to complete an assigned movement task to the best of their abilities. In the behavioristic class this meant completing a mindless task the teachers way and repressing individual interpretation. In the humanistic setting there was no one right way to move, each child was encouraged to add to a personal movement vocabulary to become more physically literate. The Cartesian classroom was a carefully controlled environment in which clear and specific learning outcomes were predicted and particular behavioral norms were tolerated. In the humanistic gymnasium the unexpected is expected. The creative impulse is encouraged unless it infringes upon the movement exploration of other students. In contrast to the orderly atmosphere at the first school where a strong emphasis was placed on obedience and the class was expected to work quietly and seriously, laughter was commonplace in the setting where students were encouraged to seek joy in their movement experiences. Rules existed, such as, "thou shalt stay on task" and "thou shalt not mess with other students," but within those parameters the class had great leeway to experiment, to follow their own course of action and to mingle with their peers.
The challenge you face as you contemplate embarking upon a teaching career is to clearly define your own philosophy and to consider how you might translate it into practice in the school setting.
Exercise 22: The following discussion questions are designed to help you in that process:
- what is your primary goal in teaching physical education? : to develop fitness, health, athletic skills, the joy of movement, lifetime interests, physical literacy, creativity, self-understanding, movement exploration.
- rank these ten teaching goals in order of preference
- what would a class [or a curriculum if you prefer] look like that is developed around your number one goal?
- how could you structure this class to emphasize the integration of mind and body?
- how could you teach the class so that it would be dualistic?
- what are the strengths and weaknesses of both behaviorism and humanism as philosophies of teaching physical education?
- which teaching environment would you feel more comfortable in? Why?
Coaching
Exercise 23: Another choice! Another dilemma! After a stellar high school basketball career, you are now a senior, in the process of deciding which college to attend. You have narrowed your choice down to the two colleges which have offered you scholarships. They seem to be identical in every respect, except for the coach. You decide that your best strategy is to make a recruiting visit to check out which coach you would prefer to play for. At the College of Bill and Martha you meet Coach Carter. You are greeted warmly and invited to attend the team's practice that afternoon. To pass the time until practice is due to start, you decide to visit the athletic training facility [you had heard that there was an excellent chance that you would spend some time in the training room during your varsity career]. The athletic trainers are polite, but don't have much time to entertain any visitors that day, so you just watch what is going on for a while. A basketball player comes in with an injury. The trainer asks how the knee is and enquires how the rehabilitation program is going. "Too slow for coach," the point guard replies, "I'm needed for tonight's game." After a thorough evaluation of the injury, the trainer administers ultrasound treatment to the affected joint and leaves with the recommendation of a shot of a painkiller before the game to help play through the pain. You head up to the gym to watch the practice. Coach Carter is in the basketball office intently watching a tape of the opponent's most recent game, looking for weaknesses in the playing personnel and strategy that can be exploited in the big game tonight. Then the injured point guard arrives to give the good news, "I'm ready to play, but I don't know if the painkiller will slow me down, coach." Coach decides to make the injured player work on the jump shot, which is bound to be rusty after the long layoff. "Next, announcements. The biomechanist on staff has analyzed the latest research on the forces at work in the jump shot, the angle of trajectories and the optimal momentum. From now on we will all do it the right way - no questions asked. Furthermore, based on the physiological profiles I have just received that contain information about your circulo-respiratory endurance and body-fat levels, I have decided to institute some dietary changes and increase the number of wind sprints at each practice. Finally, I have decided to ask the sport psychologist to try something new in the hypnosis session right before the game tonight: to deaden the mind's perception of the bodies pain through certain visualization techniques performed in a state of deep hypnosis. Mind over matter; that's the secret to our success tonight."
    Impressed by the scientific, hi-tech approach of Coach Carter, you now depart for the College of Mary and William to size up Coach Sarter. Once again, you have time to slip down to the training room before practice. Much to your surprize, another basketball player with the same knee condition that you had witnessed on your other visit is reporting for treatment. This time though, the trainer seems less concerned with the state of the injury than the well-being of the injured person. When the point guard inquires about the wisdom of returning to action for a big game that night, the trainer councils caution: "it's up to you, but you have a lifetime to live on those legs." Upstairs, Coach Sarter is meeting with a distressed athlete who is concerned about recent poor performances. "Just relax and be yourself. Don't worry, don't force it, try to enjoy yourself," says Coach Sarter. Practice consists of the players working at their own rate on the aspects of their game that they want to work on. They seem to be absorbed in the process of play: creating new moves and practicing old techniques. Coach tells the team of some new techniques researched by sport scientists. "If they help your game, by all means use them, but remember we are all different, so don't be surprized if some of these things work better for someone else than for you. If I can be of assistance, let me know - I am here to help you to become as good as you want to be," says coach. Finally coach asks the sports psychologist to help each athlete to get in touch with their inner selves, to find peace within themselves and harmony with each other through a variety of hypnosis and visualization techniques.
    At home you mull over the alternatives: will it be Carter or Sarter? To help you in your decision-making process, you make a list of key differences between the two coaches, which reads as follows:
 
Carter
Sarter
Knee as object[ in training room also] Knee as part of subject: concern with impact on self
Me as object: as a recruit Me as person: emphasis on self and others
Pain of injury as a barrier to overcome Pain as an inner signal: an opportunity to look ahead
Dependence on science and technology Awareness of latest advances, athletes' option to use
My way or the highway: uniformity One size does not fit all: emphasis on athlete choice
Psycho-doping: mind control as strategy Psychology as an aid to self-awareness
Conformity as a basis of team success Creativity and free choice for individual success
Working at the game to win Playing at the game for self-discovery and fun

    Even though you postponed the decision for as long as possible, the signing deadline eventually forced your hand. So, who did you decide to play for? What were the factors that swayed your decision? Would you model yourself after either of these coaches - what changes would you make before becoming either of these role-models?
Discussion: To answer the basic question of how you intend to act as a coach, consider your philosophy and the philosophy underlying sport carefully. Philosophy precedes and dictates your behavior. Coach Carter's actions belied his Cartesian leanings. When he looked at his athletes, he saw cogs in a machine. When he turned to the latest scientific research and when he adopted the most recent technological aids to performance, he was seeking greater effeciency. When he displayed impatience with injury, lack of fitness and excessive fatness, he was annoyed that the athletes were not keeping their bodies finely tuned. From this perspective, the body is something to be subjugated. Mind over matter suggests both a separation and a hierarchy. In the interests of winning the game, pain must be borne stoically. When it becomes too much to bear, coach asks the athletes to play chemical and psychological games of hide and seek with themselves by masking the pain through the use of painkillers and hypnosis. On the other hand, Coach Sarter, had a philosophy of embodiment not unlike that of Jean-Paul Sartre who believed that the body is wholly "psychic." When faced with injury, this coach and his athletic trainers recognized the connectedness of the physiological breakdown with the athlete's being. They saw that the injury was almost certainly personally devastating for college students who have so much self-esteem wrapped up in their identity as athletes. They urged caution because they were concerned that in that circumstance athletes might make rash decisions to play through pain causing chronic debilitation in the future. They encouraged athletes to use medical and psychological technology to get in touch with themselves and to seek inner harmony by healing the rift that exists between mind and body. In this society, and particularly in the culture of high-performance sport, there must certainly be such a rift. In the final analysis, the factor that may have swayed you to sign with Coach Carter is that his approach is more consistent with the prevailing philosophy of sport. As nice as Coach Sarter seemed, his concern for your wholeness, his emphasis on athlete choice and creative fun may have seemed misplaced to you in the context of college athletics. In short, you might be concerned that such a flaky attitude is not likely to win many games. You may even be willing to overlook the ruthless attitude of Coach Carter because his focus on fitness, discipline and using every edge he can find to win games is a proven recipe for success. Dualism is implicit in such practices that bring success in sport as rigorous [sometimes mindless] practice and subjugation of your own individuality for the greater good of the team. The locker room slogan, "there is no "I" in team," reflects a level of self-alienation which might be surprising to the Sarter's of the sports world who would counter that there are "U's" and "I's" in team "unity". In no other setting, they would argue, can an individual be so totally immersed in an activity that divisions of body/mind become meaningless. In the highest level of athletic competition, you hold nothing in reserve. You are not aware of the flexing muscles, stretching ligaments and firing neurons that are enabling your movement. You are only peripherally aware of the thought processes you engage in as you notice the actions of your teammates and opponents and as you size up your strategic options. You are, at least momentarily, at one with yourself, operating in a state of unity as a lived-body. Therein lies the basic paradox in coaching today, Sarter would conclude, that this state of integration is desirable, yet so many coaching practices serve to disintegrate the moving being. As you contemplate what kind of a coach you want to be, you may find that you are faced with a fine balancing act between being coopted by the system and living by your own philosophy. You may be content with the status quo and happy to follow in the footsteps of Coach Carter or you may decide to swim against the tide, like Coach Sarter. If so, you need determination, a thick skin and strong convictions.
Exercise 24: To help you in the process of thinking through your coaching philosophy to identify your convictions, consider the following discussion questions:
- In your own playing experience, have you encountered several coaches with distinct philosophies? If so, recall which coach made you feel best about yourself, which helped you enjoy it most, which taught you most about the game and which made you the most effective player. What were the coaching qualities in each case that were successful in achieving these goals?
- do you view yourself dualistically as you play? For example, do you analyze your technique as you play -, i.e., an inner self [mind] stepping back to evaluate the outer self [body]?
- is it desirable to play as an embodied self?
- how would you coach an athlete if your aim was to encourage an athlete to think and play dualistically/ as an integrated whole?
- do you side with Carter or Sarter in the debate over coaching strategy? Why?

Healing
Exercise 25: Much to your chagrin, you feel terrible. Your sore back stops you from performing well at work and at play. This state of dis-ease has persisted for months. It's really time to do something about it. You are referred to a physical therapist by your primary care physician. When you arrive for your appointment, Doctor Coma asks you what symptoms you are experiencing. The physical therapist conducts a battery of tests before prescribing various chemicals in pill and liquid form for you to ingest for the next few months. As you leave, a parting suggestion is made that unless these medicines clear up your condition, you should undergo exploratory surgery in the next few months. You decide to visit Dr. Soma for a second opinion. In this initial examination, less time is spent on symptoms of disease than on your feelings and lifestyle. Your sense of alienation from your own body, your sense of inadequacy at work and your frustration at being unable to play seem to be of genuine concern to the therapist. After an extensive consultation, Dr. Soma suggests a course of action that includes light exercise, stretching and meditation designed to help you to heal yourself. If the problem persists, Dr. Soma counsels, a session of acupuncture may be beneficial. Which teaching model appeals most to you? Why?
Discussion: Although Doctor Soma may seem to be an anomaly in the modern western scientific medical community, the somatic approach that he represents has been prominent through time and cultural space. Historically, medicine has affirmed the intimate relationship of the mind-body and the importance of its wholeness in maintaining and restoring health. In other societies, holistic traditions of healing still dominate the medical scene, ranging from qigong, a form of self-healing exercises widely practiced in China, to shamanism among native peoples in Africa, Australia, and elsewhere. Yet in modern America, medicine has developed an exclusive focus on the physical body to which it brings a fragmentary approach. Doctor Coma would point out that this country has the most advanced medical capability in the world today. Breakthroughs in research have allowed us to bring most of the infectious diseases that were killers in previous generations into submission. Our surgical technology and expertise is unparalleled. Doctor Soma would respectfully retort that we might have won the war with bacteria but that we are losing the battle with lifestyle. [ Some hardliners would not even concede that we have been victorious in germ warfare, pointing out that we may have won the first battle but that the war is still raging as the depleted ranks of the microbes are even now being reinforced by treatment-resistant mutations]. Most people in America today die of lifestyle-related diseases, ranging from heart conditions, cancer, and AIDS to automobile accidents and homicides. Even when an individual has a genetic predisposition to one of these potentially lethal conditions, changes in the lifestyle can often help to delay, and perhaps even prevent, the onset of the disease. Even so, the old school of treatment, represented here by Doctor Coma, treats the body not the being, looks for symptoms not causes and advocates chemical intervention and surgery not natural methods of healing, such as herbal therapy, meditation and exercise. Such doctors tend to be even more skeptical of remedies of a spiritual nature, such as prayer. They would be nonplused by the evidence from such studies as that conducted at San Francisco General Hospital by cardiologist Randolph Byrd in 1988 where good scientific methods were used to conclude that prayer had a significant effect on heart disease. In this case, a randomized, double-blind study of about four hundred patients was conducted to test the effect of prayer as a healing agent. The prayed-for group was found to be significantly less likely to require endotracheal intubation, to develop a pulmonary edema or to require antibiotics. The idea that faith, and even prayer, can play a role in healing suggests a new role for the healer. "Physician, heal thyself" takes on new meaning. For physicians to become healers they should exchange the mantle of all-knowing purveyors of medical knowledge, diviners of symptoms and dispensers of pharmaceutical remedies for the clothing of counselors. Instead of telling patients what to do and to take in order to get better, the role of the physician would change to that of friend and facilitator in the changing paradigm of healing. Further, it would hasten the shift in emphasis from disease treatment to disease prevention and health promotion that is currently evident in the growth of wellness programs in such institutions as hospitals, businesses and colleges. Underlying this change in the paradigm of health and healing is the cultural evolution of mind-body philosophy. The Cartesian distinctions between consciousness and matter are becoming blurred. It is not the body that gets sick and needs help, it is the whole human organism. Conventional remedies will continue to cure bacterially-based infections and to surgically replace degenerating organs, but increasingly disease is being recognized as a symptom of a psychosomatic condition. The term psychosomatic can be interpreted as the mind working on the body to cause or cure some debilitating condition, which implies a separation even as they work in a tandem, or it can mean a total embodiment: the concept of a unified source of health, of energy, of being. As an alternative to the impersonal, alienating nature of endless high-tech scans and tests of modern medicine, many seek the solace of psychosomatic remedies in the offices of alternative therapists and faith healers - to the tune of $30 billion a year, by some estimates.
    Your mind-body philosophy is going to radically affect your attitudes to the profession, whether you select a career in the health and healing fields or you only come into contact with the medical community as a patient.
Exercise 26: The following discussion topics are designed to help you to develop your own position:
- to what extent do you consider your body to be the source of your disease?
- do you know of any cases where the mind played a prominent role in recovery from a debilitating condition?
- have you experienced any psychosomatic ailments?
- name as many psychosomatic treatments as you can. Are they effective?
- should the physician determine symptoms and treatment for the patient?
- to what extent should self-help be a part of the cure?
- do shared consciousness and vital energy exist?
- can they play a role in the healing process?
Researching
Exercise 27: After graduating from college with sterling credentials, you decide to satisfy your longing to extend the boundaries of knowledge by seeking employment in a research field. The first interview you have is with a large pharmaceutical company which is engaged in a search for a cure for AIDS. The particular project they want you to join entails injecting chimpanzees with the disease and studying the effectiveness of various experimental serum. They may be the closest relative to mankind, but they are only animals, the interviewer reassures you. Next, you consider working for a biotechnology company which is studying the effects of the human growth hormone on children. The experimental protocol is to inject the hormone into live human tissue in various dosages to study effectiveness and side effects. Next you are off to a large agricultural combine where you will be asked to research hormonal and chemical additives that will bring meat on the hoof to fruition in a shorter time and in a more tender state. Finally, you get an interview with a sports performance enhancement company. At last, you think with a sigh of relief, a chance to work with healthy people. The interviewer explains that you will be extracting blood to study lactate levels during exercise and fibers to evaluate the muscle's response to stress. Assuming similar working conditions, salary and benefits, which job would you take? Why?
Exercise 28: From these interview fragments, what can you deduce about scientific research on the body? Is the body treated as an object to be probed, dissected and analyzed? Do you think that the objectification of the body somehow justifies experimental treatment that would be considered demeaning to a person? Do you think that the rights of animals are secondary to the health and wellbeing of mankind in that if they can save us from getting sick and provide us with sustenance, any research measures are justifiable?
Discussion: The style of science is reductionism. Its basic methodology is to focus on one aspect of the body, isolating it from all else, controlling everything impinging on it and measuring everything that happens. Science has enabled us to look at the body and gain insights, but ones that are fragmented into bits and pieces. The assumption of reductionist research is that if the body can be reduced to its most basic parts and if these parts can be understood, then a comprehensive explanation of human performance will eventually be obtained by simply fitting the components back together like pieces in a giant jigsaw puzzle. What are the limitations of this method of studying the body in order to understand movement? For one, we cannot know anything with certainty, only with statistical significance. The very act of observing the body changes it. To study it we must control it. Therefore, we can never really know the body as it really is. But, what is most important, the study of the nature of the body cannot account for human nature. A human moving is not synonymous with a body in motion. Scientific research can enhance human performance, but it has its shortcomings. For example, digitized computer analysis to improve the quarterback's throwing technique, gait analysis on a force platform to help the elderly to move more freely or altitude stress-testing to determine how the human body will respond to the rigors of mountain climbing are contributions to our knowledge of how the body functions. However, they are meaningless in the absence of the vitality and vigor of being in the body. Despite the statistical predictions of how our bodies should respond to different stimuli under various conditions, we are each unique. Feelings, moods and qualities of character differentiate predictable behavior from the reality of our reaction. The self-understanding that comes from philosophic reflection should be the starting place and the destination of experimentation. If you enter the world of scientific research, awareness of the dualism, fragmentation, uses and abuses of the process will prepare you for the professional challenges ahead. Research findings can be useful to humanity within the limitations already discussed, but they have a value in the marketplace and, sometimes, in the battle field, that renders them vulnerable to the problems of commodification. They can be used for profit, for personal gain, to help, but sometimes to hurt, others. In other words, it is incumbent upon you as a philosophically mature researcher to ask, knowledge for what purposes, for what uses and at what cost? With such questions in mind, you can choose wisely at your job interviews and embark upon a career dedicated to expanding knowledge of the nature of things and of yourself.
Exercise 29: To help you to understand the nature of objectification of the body in a research setting, read the description of being in anatomy lab by Brian Pronger at the beginning of the next session and respond to the questions. Better still, conduct cadaver dissection with this excerpt in mind.
    " The instructor - a mature woman, who until that moment seemed more like a nice auntie whose greatest pleasure in life was baking cookies for nieces and nephews - pulled the cover from a partially dissected cadaver, drew back the skin, lifted the abdominal muscles away from the gut and revealed the intestines of what was once a rather large man. This was my first visit to the gross anatomy lab. She told me to stick my hands inside the man and move the intestines around. The only way you really learn anatomy," she said, is to get your hands inside and manipulate the parts of the body." While I was keen to learn about the body, I was reluctant to make such a dramatic entry. But I did it anyway and learned what I needed to know about the structure of the peritoneum. And I felt a tremendous sense of power.
    Normally I wouldn't consider sticking my hands into the abdomen of a dead man, moving his organs about. I had always found the inner reaches of a person's body to be a place of mystery, to which one is given access by the living [and I hadn't given that much consideration to the bodies of the dead] only under the most intimate, indeed mysteriously erotic, circumstances. Yet here I was learning something important about the living body from a dead body: the body need not be a mystery; any part of it is accessible to my probing hands, eyes, or mind. It was a rich moment, a rite of passage. Here was the confirmation of what science had always been told me about the body, but which from my own experiences had always rung false: the body is an object. In my hands, that dead man's intestines were objectified, subjected to my manipulations. That event of subjection was the source of my newfound power. As a student of physical education, I realized that the power of my profession lay in its ability to manipulate the body, to make it an efficient resource. The study of gross anatomy was integral to getting to know the body in this way." [Pronger, 1995, 427-428]
- does this description resonate with your own experience?
- how does Pronger depict anatomy labs as dualistic?
- how does objectifying the body give power to the profession?
Exercise 30: Dualism
    " . . . we are in the midst of a paradigm shift; the old paradigm is the Cartesian, Newtonian world view. The new paradigm is the wholistic, ecological world view. And we need this shift of perception. Our society, our universities, our corporations, our economy, our politics are all structured according to the old Cartesian paradigm. We need the shift." [Capra, 1975]
- in what ways are the institutions mentioned structured dualistically?
- what do wholistic and ecological mean, and how do they fit together?
- how could a university be structured in line with this new paradigm?
- how has Cartesian dualism affected the hierarchical position of kinesiology in the university?
- what would kinesiology look like if it was restructured to be wholistic and ecological?
- why do we need this shift [according to the author]?
- do you agree that such a shift would benefit society?
Exercise 31: Research
    " I am coming into your lab to have my body composition assessed. To you, if I am merely an object, I am merely a source of data. My suprailiac crest is like a thousand other suprailiac crests. It is 25 mm of thickness as measured on the skinfold calipers. To me, something very different may be going on as you come at me with those calipers. As you prepare to measure me, my concern may be whether this will hurt. Your measuring my suprailiac crest is my discomfort at having myself "exposed"to you. It is perhaps your presence in my private space. It may be my fear of being labeled fat because your calipers and your formula and your ability to perform that measurement in a valid manner place me at or about 30% fat. It may be my fear of the possible consequences of a higher percent body fat. It may be my elation at having decreased that percent from last time. It may be that my body fat has increased because I am trying to control an eating disorder. It may be my self-consciousness that you may be making value judgements of the of the decisions I have made and behaviors I have engaged in as evidenced by the shape I am in." [Rintala, 1991, 275-276]
- can you recall a time, like this when measurement of your body made you feel vulnerable?
- what do such experiences suggest to you about the desirable style of a researcher or a doctor?
- it might be fun and instructive to act out two very different scenarios with a partner, one in which this body-fat research is undertaken by a dualist who treats your body as an object and one in which you are tested by an empathetic researcher who treats you as a participant in the research project. What are your conclusions about science, the body and the being?
Exercise 32: Sport . . . and the body
    "At the 1990 World Weightlifting Championship in Budapest the exhortatory banners displayed in the competition hall read "No Doping" - a curiously muted and discordant note at a competition punctuated by the grunts and screams of the lifters. But the International Weightlifting Federation [IWF] had had no choice but to join the antidrug chorus: At the previous world championship meet, every fifth athlete had been thrown out of the competition for hormonal irregularities, and the sport was facing possible expulsion from the Olympic movement. . . . As a result, the lifters this year were attempting weights far below what they had put up in the past, and only one athlete even tried for a world record" [Hoberman, 1992, 100]
. . . and the mind
    "Back in the 1980s a West German racing cyclist, accompanied by an anxious coterie of sports officials, paid a visit to a psychologist at the University of Heidelberg. The young rider's custodians explained that, while he was a spectacular hill-climber and a flyer across level ground, he could not rid himself of the fear that prevented him from hurtling down mountainsides at 100 kilometers an hour. "Take the brakes out of his head, doctor," they demanded. . .Several years later, an Italian rider afflicted with the same problem found a composite cure. A music therapist had him listen to Mozart at different speeds and volumes; an allergist took him off wheat and milk products and prescribed new pills; and a psychologist went to work on a timidity complex dating from the athlete's childhood. By 1990 the music therapy had cured his vertigo, and Gianni Bugno sat atop the computerized rankings of the world's top 6000 professional riders." [Hoberman, 1992, 154]
- what do these two excerpts from Mortal Engines suggest about how the body and mind should be approached if you want to be successful at the highest level of sport?
- is there another mind-body philosophic position that can also produce a winner?
- is it part of the nature of sport that it tends to alienate you from your own body?
- how has sport contributed to your own self-understanding?
Exercise 33: Medical
    "ITEM: Melbourne, Times of London. A leading American surgeon claimed here today that human brain transplants are now medically feasible, but he said the whole head would probably have to be grafted at the same time. Professor David Hume, Chief of the Department of Surgery at the Medical College of Virginia and a pioneer of organ transplants said . . . that the donor of the brain in such an operation would, in fact, be the recipient, as the mind would take over the body to which it was grafted. The person whose brain was transplanted would retain his personality, as the brain is a memory bank, he said." [Baker, 1967]
- do the major organs of the body, such as the heart, retain the personality of their original owner when they are transplanted?
- is the mind the same as the brain?
- is the mind located in the brain?
- is the mind the governor of the body?
- can the mind heal the body?
- each of the preceding questions has assumed a dualistic split between mind and body. How would you address each of them if you held a holistic view of the human being?