The place of eros in the classroom

“Sit still,” I told myself diligently. “Don’t talk too much,” referring the anger directed towards the teacher back into my body, soaking it into my nervous system, transforming outward energy and the felt frustration of needs into paralysis.

I tried to connect with my young friends sitting around the same table to channel the energy I felt streaming throughout my body. This led to another reprimand which I could also understand, but understanding does not fully silence the hunger to live, love and learn. And there was yet another concrete example of how counting works that got me disturbingly distracted...

Not knowing how to consciously and healingly inhale and exhale that drivenness to learn, I noticed how it became absorbed into a fascination towards other people. How do they ‘manage’ this educational environment that frustrates me intensely? Can I learn from them, or in any case study their behavioral tendencies up to that extend that I can cope more easily, with less free energy roaming around my system? I want to live; I don’t want to disintegrate yet!

You see, this was existentially threatening.

I really, really, really wanted to go to school when I was three, four years old, maybe younger. This “really, really, really” was life’s energy bubbling up in my biology. I yearned to be as alive - as I intuited with all my instinct - as I could be. The world is fascinating, right? The world and me fell inlove easily in the most intimate realms of my inner experience, boldly, romantically speaking.

In the insightful words of the inspirational thinkers Bell Hooks and Sam Keen:

“To understand the place of eros and eroticism in the classroom, we must move beyond thinking of those forces solely in terms of the sexual, though that dimension need not be denied. Sam Keen, in his book The Passionate Life, urges readers to remember that in its earliest conception ‘erotic potency was not confined to sexual power but included the moving force that propelled every life-form from a state of mere potentiality to actuality’. Given that critical pedagogy seeks to transform consciousness, to provide students with ways of knowing that enable them to know themselves better and live in the world more fully, to some extent it must rely on the presence of the erotic in the classroom to aid the learning process.’ (Bell Hooks, Teaching to transgress)

Teachers putting an understandable string on my stream of words (the birthplace of verbal virtuosity I remind myself gently with backward soothing of my emotional system), made me search for other outlets of this erotic energy. I fell in love, got infatuated, with other students and icons early on and with great passion, noticing with an awkward sense of self how this differed from other children. Is there something wrong with me? Why I am this eager? Sensuality of learning was not something that was named and accepted as such.

And why, against all odds of these educational frustrations, do I want to become a teacher anyway? A thought that popped up when I, as a seven-year-old, wrote down this future perspective with great self-determination in a class book.

Thanks to the insights gained by Bell Hooks perspectives, and, among others, a lively participation at the communal effort of rethinking education organized by House of the Beloved (curious? Check out the community), I sink deeper and deeper into a firm integration between desire and learning.

Between yearning and learning, it is not an enormous difference, huh ?

Why is it that moving is so important for learning? There is much to say about this. Thinking is (like) moving through space, a landscape...It is like sensing (making sense out of) how the energy is in motion (e-motion) and creating the space in which the energy is moving at the same time.

Hmm, my body groans. Sitting still, becoming more aware of the energies in motion “running around”(jumping, stretching, tingling, tweaking, grasping, holding back,…) in this repeatingly reconstructed, recreated landscape can for a while offer enough inhibition of extraverted (e)motion in a way that may come with increased clarity of thinking; awareness, and the intertwined, increasing ability to discern (deconstruct) different thoughts and perspectives, weighing their clarity and relevance, their interconnected hierarchy. This “weighing”, to me, is again part of emotional intelligence (essentially, thinking and feeling are fully interconnected). Following these perspectives…in classrooms, a combination between critical thinking, meditation, interconnection and relaxation techniques, and rituals and practices that allow for intensity of experience to be experimented with logically seem to do justice to a combination of learning needs. This combination is a direct reflection of the complexity and intensity of being a human-animal, of being this unique embodied cognition. The world is our classroom and our bodies teach us so.

I passionately believe we need to share our experiences and processes around the place of eros in our classrooms. It might be a bit taboo, and thus we need to speak from a place of honesty and respect.

The first time I met a teacher that, in my experience, could contain the intensity and complexity of my experience of being alive and yearning to live, I deeply fell in love! This became one of the most profound learning processes I can look back on with great gratitude. Thanks to the firm integrity of the teacher, thanks my willingness and openness to share my experiences, I sense that boundaries were both kept in place (yet another thankful learning process) and my desire to learn was not contracted into self-rejecting behavior or disillusion towards the educational setting. This is also the birthplace of a new trust in a learning community.

Learning is to love. How can we, teachers, and students, co-create embodied openings to dive into a learning process transcending the normative roles we often represent, and which often suppress the intrinsic powers to learn, intrinsic to life, our ‘elan vital’ (Bergson)? Which conditions are both safe and risky, in that sense, that we can be both responsible in the ways we connect, also from places of authority, and be intensely responsive towards emotions as the source of vitalizing learning? This does right to what it means to be together: to be respons-able.

Now that I feel and recognize my own voice again after a period of feeling that same voice quite(ly) imprisoned, I can relearn how to sing together in a way that heals the learning that loving is.

Grateful!

*Explore your heightened awareness of living. Intensity is richness for all of us, see this article.

*Want to integrate your educational experiences combined with your exploration of giftedness in a way that is a ware of and transcends limiting beliefs? Feel welcome to contact me.

*Are you looking for a teacher and thinker to create inspiring educational experiences or (re)think education together with? I am here !

*And I feel deeply drawn to speaking about education, (professional) growth and emotional and existential development as an vitalizing inspiration for those working in many different fields. Contact me if you are (thinking about) organizing a meeting (conference, retreat, training,..) on these topics:

lotte@alotofcomplexity.com