The Way of the Crane

Authors

alexandra fidyk, University of AlbertaFollow

Abstract

Using pastiche, a dreamscape and reflection upon it, offers entry to a centring practice. In holding both, a new image emerges. The dreamscape—an unexpected scene of cranes in joyous dance—unfolds as actual dream and offers a metaphor for understanding the dreamer’s life. By extension, the dream returns practice as a syn- aesthetic engagement, which she calls expressive arts pedagogy. In this condensed yet nuanced rumination, personal and professional, poetic and haptic, participating and witnessing blur. This practice, the way of the Crane, is timely because it introduces, by embodying its own phenomona, a relational pedogogy for our troubled times—a pedagogy that integrates image, movement, storying, silence, sound, rhythm, and synchrony, while touching the pulse of life beyond human. As an intrapsychic and interspecies image, the dream symbolizes the richness that breaks forth when holding complementary opposites in tension. It privileges somatic, intuitive, creative, and contemplative processes. It, too, signals the centrality of testimony and witnessing—potential companion enactments. This earthen practice calls us to lean into the ancient wisdom of centring—illustrating the way the centre of the dance entwines with the centre of oneself and one’s work and the centre of the world. It is an old wisdom reconfigured for contemporary challenges.

Author Biography

Alexandra Fidyk, professor, philosopher, and poet serves the Faculty of Education, University of Alberta, Canada. She engages with youth and teachers on issues of wellbeing through body-centred and creative-centred processes. Her transdisciplinary scholarship integrates her background in poetic inquiry, hermenutics, process philosophy, and life writing. She has won awards for her research, scholarship and teaching at institutional and national levels. Balancing these domains, she is a Jungian somatic psychotherapist; Integrated Body Psychotherapist; Somatic Experiencing Practitioner; Sandplay Therapy Trainee and Expressive Arts Therapy Trainee. Contact: fidyk@ualberta.ca

Recommended Citation

fidyk, alexandra (2022) "The Way of the Crane," Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal: Vol. 7: Iss. 1, Article 5.
Available at: https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/atj/vol7/iss1/5