Transcript Life-Lines: new-spiritual geographies in Brighton, UK

Life-Lines:
new-spiritual geographies
in Brighton, UK
AHRC–ESRC Religion & Society Programme
Phase III
(presentation for Religion & Society Programme Conference,
Sacred Practices of Everyday Life, 9th-11th May, 2012)
Chris Philo (University of Glasgow), PI
Louisa Cadman (University of Glasgow), RA
Jennifer Lea (Loughborough University), External
Consultant
Life is lived, I reasoned, along paths, not just
in places, and paths are lines of a sort. It is
along paths, too, that people grow into a
knowledge of the world around them, and
describe the world in the stories they tell.
(Tim Ingold, 2007, Lines: A Brief History, p.2)
It seems that what modern thought has
done to places – fixing it to spatial locations
– it has also done to people, wrapping their
lives into temporal moments. If we were but
to reverse the procedure, and to imagine life
... as a manifold woven from the countless
threads spun by beings of all sorts, both
human and non-human, as they find their
ways through the tangle of relationships in
which they are enmeshed, then our
understanding ... would be irrevocably
altered. (Ingold, ibid, p.3)
• ‘new-spiritual lines’ run
through/across the city
• connecting sites, nodes,
places of new-spiritual
practice
• traced (made) by individual
new-spiritual practitioners in
the course of their
embodied travels
• individually composing their
own new-spiritual lifeworlds
• collectively composing an
overall new-spiritual
landscape
– subtly pervading the overall
landscape, lending it character,
soaking into its interstices
– many small visual cues, albeit
largely unregistered
Time-space diaries (x 26 [with follow-up interviews x14])
DIARIES : addressing our first two project aims, an innovative feature has been to recruit practitioners of yoga and
meditation to keep a detailed diary on the days when they practised yoga and/or meditation, providing data on
the form, duration and location of their practices, but also reflections on how these practices 'fit in' with and 'leak
out' to shape aspects of their (often very busy) everyday urban routines. Our target was 30 diaries, but we ended
up with 26 (28 practitioners agreed to produce diaries, but we had 2 drop-outs]). It quickly became apparent that
not all of our diarists wished to participate in follow-up interviews, so we decided that the 'diary pack' would
include not only a brief questionnaire used to extract basic quantitative data (age, gender, type(s) of yoga and/or
meditation practised, longevity of practice) but also an open-ended request for more substantive qualitative data
(biographical details, health and disability, religious and/or spiritual beliefs) which would otherwise have emerged
in interview. This change in our 'diary pack' compensated in large measure for the 'loss' of some interviews. We
are exploring ways to represent the findings from the diaries, including the use of time-geographic diagrams,
which we argue will allow a particularly novel window on the 'microscopic' level of 'new-spiritual' encounter,
effect and affect. (From our Project Final Report)
Sites:
homes, centres, ‘outside’ ...
Meditated with a friend at home.
we set up a shrine with candle, buddha,
angel, flower, crystal, etc. He did some
chanting and then we meditated. Nice to
build up confidence meditating at home
and to do it with someone else. Felt
relaxed after and more at ease and
accepting in mind about spending the
day at home and pottering around as,
previously, I felt I ought to be out doing
something while I was meditating. [D7]
... still not cycling but cooking, gardening, walking dogs,
washing have become contexts for yoga practice. And so
is work, and study (and also definitely sex but I’m not
writing about it in the diary). [D2]
Cooking tonight wasn’t yoga practice. Partner a
little bit involved with it but feeling ill – I think I
have to cook on my own to get to that yoga place. [D2]
... it was an amazing experience to have about 17 of us in
the room all moving in rhythm with of our breath. [D1]
... practice was pretty good. Oh, except I felt a bit
squashed against the wall and didn’t have enough
space, especially as everyone had to squeeze past
me get to the mat cupboard. [D1]
Guided meditation, not many people,
lots of space. I had a great spot in front
of beautiful buddha triptych. Just the
room helps me relax. Guided body scan
and mindfulness of breathing. [D7]
Noticed sky when I went out. Feeling
meditative and walking at slow pace, noting
smells (it’s warmish evening): orange
blossom and honeysuckle is exquisite. Also
smell of dampening of grass, petrol, sundried dog shit, bus exhaust. [D2]
Went for walk and tried to make space for how
I was feeling based on meditation practice.
Slowed busy mind. [D4]
Swimming in sea for me is like yoga/meditation. I
find it really rejuvenating and an instant tonic.
Today nice waves to play in. [D7]
Lines:
resonances and resources; effects and affects; anticipitatory and reflective ...
There was a lovely energy afterwards. [D1]
[Yoga practice] set me up nicely
for working on a family tree, which
involves writing very small with
risk of writer’s cramp. [D3]
Sometimes playing music after meditation can
be interesting – I wasn’t concentrating on
playing exact tunes, but letting the instrument
suggest where to go. [D3]
I woke up thinking about yoga. [D1]
Enjoyed practice ... Had been a v. busy week.
Yoga (mindful yoga) helped to bring me back
together somehow; more whole and focussed,
more positive. [D6]
Went for a drink after course. 1 pint – felt
reflective and open to ideas – talked with
friend about wide range of issues relating to
Buddhism, psychology and therapy. [D4]
How does yoga affect/impact on my day? It
makes me surprisingly chilled, like today the
washing machine door came off in my hand – the
hinge had just sheared apart. That’s really funny. I
can’t/don’t get upset about it. Sure the big stuff
like partner’s anguish at being ill, and my mum
doing what she does to me, it upsets me and I
feel cross ... But recently, I’m not losing it like in a
mental health problem way ... [D2]
Short centring meditations between
clients. Helped to refocus my attention
after difficult client ... Attempted to recentre myself through breathing and
sitting for 5 mins. Helped to feel calm and
grounded. [D4]
Felt energised and relaxed afterwards. (Wed. is
the end of my working week as I work Sat.-Wed.
So it was a great way to start my Thurs.-Fri.
Weekend. [D7]
Determined not to miss this [practice] today as
yesterday didn’t turn out so well with the rushed
start and no Y/M practice. [D6]
Delicate lines, durable lines ...
Lines easily broken; and new lines so
hard to routinise ... all tough to keep
intact in the face of busy urban lives ...
But also lines jealously guarded,
zealously planned and prioritised –
the last things to give, not the first ...
Lines that matter ...
Lines that are matter (material lines of interconnectedness) and they matter ...
But rarely prompting the kinds of fundamentalist obsessions sometimes
associated with other systems of belief-and-practice, if not necessary then being
‘merely’ pick-’n’-mix assemblages (although they can be that ...) ...
For some, the vital scaffolding of physical and mental well-being (perhaps in the
face of the challenging modern city) ...
For some, the invaluable ‘topology of existence’ to set against, not just everyday
demands, but also the more dramatic of life-crises ...
For many, these are life-lines that keep them going, ‘hanging in’ there, better able
to cope, finding meaning (if not necessarily big answers, just intuitions of
‘otherness’): opening themselves to the mundane enchantment of small ‘magical’
people, places, moments, events ...
•
Easy to dismiss these life-lines as of little import ...
* self-indulgent ‘potterings’ around the city
* irrelevant to questions of political-economic
transformation, social sustainability, etc.
* individualised retreat from, even consumerist
complicity with, late-capitalist modernity?
•
And as far from representative of early-21st century
religious/spiritual worlds/landscapes ...
* and of what exactly is our study representative?
•
But, in their attentiveness to the ‘magic’ of the here-andnow – in their insistence on carving out slow time-spaces
from the speed-up of late-capitalist modernity – these
life-lines arguably comprise an immanent critique of this
pervasive/pervading order ...
•
They also embody a practice and a knowledge of a
fundamentally different quality to that installed by the
European Enlightenment – the ‘tests’ of spiritual practice
when questing for (if [of course] never reaching) “truth ...
in the form of the other world and the other life”
(Foucault, 2011:340)
Lines by way of
conclusion