The Manifestation and Integration of Embodied Knowing Into Social Work Practice

Abstract

Traditionally, research in both adult education and social work fields have focused on cognitive ways of knowing. Although both disciplines have acknowledged other ways of knowing, there has been minimal focus on noncognitive ways of knowing, including embodied knowing. The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand how social workers incorporated embodied knowing into their social work practice. Ten social workers from a variety of settings were interviewed to understand how they learned to trust their bodies as a site of knowing and integrate embodied knowing into their social work practices. Using a feminist theoretical framework, findings indicated that participants embraced and trusted their embodied knowing as a valid source of knowledge. Participants identified internal reactions in social work interactions and described how they processed these somatic sensations to guide their practices. Implications for social work practitioners and social work and adult educators are discussed. Keywords somatic knowing, embodied knowing, body in practiceRationality and cognitive knowledge, resulting in a mind/body dichotomy, have been the focus of research and dominated the field of education since the scientific

Towards a taxonomy of meaning making: A critical latent content analysis of peer‐reviewed publications in adult education.

“…Trends showing contradictory and ambiguous usage emerged, both within the sample and between it and formidable adult education writings. Within the sample, numerous authors distinguished learning from meaning making (Caudle, ; Erichsen, ; Nicolaides & NcCallum, ; Sodhi & Cohen, ; Stuckey, ; Wang & Yorks, ), whereas beyond it, influential scholars have proposed “learning is a meaning‐making activity” (Merriam, Courtenay, & Baumgartner, , p. 172), and “At the heart of adult learning is engaging in, reflecting upon, and making meaning of our experiences” (Merriam & Bierema, , p. 104) .…”

Developing a Sense of Knowing and Acquiring the Skills to Manage Pain in Children with Profound Cognitive Impairments: Mothers’ Perspectives

“…Their learning occurred partly because they were attuned to their child through being a constant presence [2, 20] and although they did not use the word “reflection,” it was clear that they attended to their own feelings about what they thought was happening with their child. Attending to feelings is an aspect of embodied knowledge and whilst the mothers talked of gut feelings, this appears to be them “trust[ing] their bodies as a site of knowing” [41]. Taking this concept of embodied knowing further it is interesting to speculate that this was perhaps dualistic, not just trusting their own embodied knowledge but also being so close to their child that they could trust their child's body (through touch, sight, and insight) to complement their own embodied knowing of their child's pain.…”

You Gotta Be: Embracing Embodied Knowledges in Doctoral Study

“…In a world that prizes rationality and theory, structure and relative convention, the body—vulnerable, boundless, reflective of dissimilarities—has often represented something to be both denied and controlled. In many ways, this disconnection from things corporeal is an outgrowth of a Western‐based mind/body dualism that has historically valorized the rational workings of the mind and concomitantly presented the less easily restrained physical body as a threat to this control (Bordo, , ; Sodhi & Cohen, ). Such a perspective suggests that not only should the body and its needs be contained, but also that an emphasis should be placed on developing and supporting the mind's capacity for cognition and logical thought (Bordo, ).…”

“…Scholars in diverse fields, including adult education, have increasingly pushed back against this perspective (Johnson‐Bailey, ; Lawrence, ; Peile, ; Sodhi & Cohen, ; Tisdell, ). Much of their work is an outgrowth of more postmodern and feminist thinking that has questioned the value placed on abstracted assessments and encouraged analyses grounded in the less well known and appreciated—the margins (Bordo, , , ; Peile, ).…”

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