Running head: EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING WITH YOGA

A Reflection Paper: Experiential Learning with Yoga

Krystal A. Woods

MBM5615 Movement, Exercise, and Health

Stephanie Shelburne, Ph.D.

Saybrook University

February 11, 2018

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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explain the experiential learning process as I practiced yoga.

Although, my yoga practice is a few years old, a different type of mindfulness was applied when

tasked to record the mental (mind) and physical (body) benefits of this mind-body modality. The

reflection that took place was not only a mindful practice for me, but is also a call for mind-body

practitioners to realize the importance of communicating a modality’s benefits in a way that all

four categories or experiential learners can understand and pursue.

Keywords: Mind-Body Medicine, yoga, experiential learning

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A Reflection Paper: Experiential Learning with Yoga

I began my yoga practice over two years ago and my reasons for starting are far different

than the reasons I choose to continue with my practice now. Furthermore, my reasons have

recently evolved once again since attending an academic course on movement, exercise, and

health. An assignment for this particular course required me to choose yoga, tai chi, qigong, or

movement exploration and explain a theory on its benefits. I decided to take my yoga practice

and run it through the mill of experiential learning.

Kolb (1984) explained four cycles to experiential learning, which seems to still be a

natural progression for holistic, hands-on learning. The steps include: being involved in a new

experience (concrete experience); developing observations about my own experience (reflective

observation); creating theories to explain my observations (abstract conceptualization); and

applying those theories to my personal and professional life (active experimentation). Kolb

furthered identified four types of learners in this process, depending on how they best acquired

and applied the knowledge from their new experience: the diverger, accommodator, assimilator,

and converger. Divergers reflect on concrete experiences and ask “why” an experience is what it

is, thus diverging from one concrete experience to multiple possibilities. Accommodators are

also concrete experiencers, but choose a call to action over reflection and instead ask, “Why

not?” to justify their action-first approach. Assimilators prefer abstract conceptualization and ask,

“What is there to know?” They are the opposite of accommodators and prefer to think than act.

Lastly, there are the convergers like me. We take the time to reflect and create abstract

conceptualizations, but then put those concepts into practice to answer the question of “how.”

Further defining of the converger resonated with me - not only in how we learn experientially,

but also how I learn within my profession. Convergers look for “facts and will seek to make
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things efficient by making small and careful changes” (Amory, 2012) and prefer to work

independently. I am an applied researcher. In academia and in profession, I look for facts to

support my evidence-based research on mind-body modalities, such as yoga. Within the two

years of doing yoga, it was only recently that I decided to try my practice with a group. I have

always preferred to work on my practice by myself. However, being mindful of the experiential

process, I realized it was time to move forward from my concrete experience if I wanted to learn

something new about my practice.

Concrete Experience

The first of February came and I decided that this was the best time to begin recording

my yoga journey for the purpose of this reflective paper. What has always impressed me about

yoga is that the experience is always new, and so by definition, it is always a concrete

experience. The body changes whether I do yoga or not, so whenever I get on my yoga mat, I am

pleasantly surprised at the small physiological changes that occur, which I can only contribute to

my yoga practice. On the first day, I started out my morning with the same poses I have done for

the past 761 days: hip-openers.

I have always gravitated towards hip-opening poses, or asanas. It was based solely on

how good it felt to stretch neglected muscles. “Hip-openers” seemed to ease physical pain from

old injuries caused by the constant physical fitness requirements (exacerbated by the lack of

education on exercising safely) during my past eight years in the military. I had tried on many

occasions to research the purpose of hip-openers; but like a physicist trying to explain quantum

mechanics, yoga teachers have an entirely different language that us less-experienced

commoners may not understand. The language is often flowery and requires additional research

just to understand it before finding the answer I was originally looking for. On one side of the
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spectrum, an answer to the benefits of hip-openers will require me to research the locations of

the psoas, the ischial tuberosities, and the obturator internus muscle (Armstrong, 2012). On the

other side, yogis’ less academic but more superfluous answers still leave me researching how my

hips have “trapped emotions,” what emotions those might be, how those emotions became “stuck

in” my hips in the first place, and if my posture is correct enough for the pose to welcome

“renewal” of something that I did not realized need renewing but obviously needs renewing

because my hips must be tight for some emotional reason (McInturff, 2016). For this, I stopped

looking for evidence-based research on yoga’s mental benefits and simply continued focusing on

physical benefits, since those were more apparent and concrete.

Reflective Observation

Physical Benefits

I continued to chronicle my yoga journey as the week went on. Yoga was a new

experience, as it was most days; however, as I began recording each day, I realized that my

concrete experience was not new solely because I was inexperienced and learning something

new about yoga each day. For the first time in two years, I realized a major physical benefit that

yoga provided – a benefit that the other exercise routines I did consistently did not provide. Since

the time I recognized I had pes planus, or flatfoot, I assumed it was hereditary. I may have been

told this by my immediate family. Even though, none of my immediate family had flat feet like

me. As an adult, I am aware enough to realize that my flatfoot was most likely caused by years of

unnatural “glide stepping” during middle school and high school marching band, years of

running track in overly padded, constricted athletic shoes, and spending my teenage and young

adult years in the church wearing heels several times a week. On the third day of chronicling my

yoga sessions, I sat in paschimottanasana, or seated forward fold, with my legs stretched in front
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of me, my stomach close to the top of my thighs, and my gaze towards my feet. I held my feet as

I usually do and was more mindful than usual because I knew I had to write something about

today’s experience for my impending paper. I felt something that could have easily been

overlooked because I could not physically see it from my angle, only feel it. I felt an arch in my

feet. I turned the bottoms of my feet toward me and stared at them in disbelief. They looked

foreign to me. The yoga session was cut short and I began researching how this could be. Unlike

my previous attempts of looking for evidence-based research on the mental and physical

implications of hip-openers, this personal experience helped me better search on what I was

looking for. My first search was to figure out how yoga corrects flatfoot. It yielded few, but

relevant results that gave me a new motivation and new focus for continuing yoga. One pilot

study (Fishman, 2009) measured the effects of yoga on low bone density, which is often the

culprit of a fallen arch in the foot. Although the study was conducted over the course of a decade,

just two years of daily yoga practice of 10 simple poses held for 20-30 seconds at a time

measurably increased bone density. I reflected on how long it had been since I stepped into my

yoga journey with my flat feet. From the first day to the date that I found myself staring at the

visible arches in my feet was at two years and two months of daily practice. It is unfortunate that

the study started out with over 100 participants who suffered from the bone disease,

osteoporosis, and the less severe osteopenia, yet 11 participants remained after the study was

concluded. However, the results showed that of those 11, five were reclassified from osteopenia

to normal bone mineral density, and 2 were reclassified from osteoporosis to osteopenia. None of

the participants suffered yoga-related fractures despite how prone their bones were to injuries. I

felt inspired and this is what led to a positive mental and emotional shift in my practice.

Mental and Emotional Benefits

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By this time of discovering the physical benefits of yoga through my concrete experience,

I was newly inspired by its effects and this had a positive effect on me mentally and emotionally.

It was also at this time that I had learned about exercise self-efficacy (ESE). ESE differs from the

more well-known general self-efficacy (GSE) in that unlike GSE which is the confidence in

one’s self to be consistent on a particular activity, ESE is the confidence in adopting and

maintaining, specifically, exercise behaviors (Lee, Lim, and Lee, 2004). The positive mental and

emotional implications of my yoga practice by noticing that I was physically changing my body

for the better due to my two years of daily discipline was an example of exercise self-efficacy. If

I were to put it in the flowery, yoga idioms (that were once incomprehensible for my linear,

“convergent” learning), I could describe the feeling of ESE as a light, airy feeling. I recognized

that yogis may not be intentionally talking over the heads of the less-practiced beginners. When I

tried to journal how yoga made me feel mentally and emotionally, I was at a loss for words

because the benefits transcended from the tangible to the intangible. My reflections also

transcended from reporting a concrete experience to the need for abstract conceptualization.

Abstract Conceptualization

The realization of knowing that my discipline granted me body awareness and control to

change my body physically for the better, gave me a feeling of empowerment, and that feeling

consequently pervaded other aspects of my life. I knew that if I had the discipline to change my

physical body in a positive way, all the more why I could use this internal resource to positively

affect other aspects of my life. Lee, Lim, and Lee’s (2004) study noted the same type of results

among their participants: self-efficacy was present, which was “characterized by persistence,

commitment, resourcefulness, and perseverance” (p. 676) after exercise. As an applied

researcher, I would feel remiss if I did not educate others about the benefits I experienced myself
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and observe how it could positively affect them, as well. I plan to use this in my future

profession but I wanted to implement it now with the people around me.

Active Experimentation

Similar to the participants in Fishman’s (2009) study mentioned earlier in the paper, my

mother suffers from osteoarthritis. Upon finding this study and having such a positive personal

experience, I felt that my mother could also benefit from starting a daily yoga practice. Despite

my preference of experiencing and learning concepts on my own, I realized the importance of

learning hands-on with a yoga teacher who could answer any questions I had. Yoga teach and

author Noelle Cormier (1996) wrote about the importance of teaching movement in a way that

all four types of experiential learners will benefit from the practice:

These students are the visual and tactile learners. Similar to LP2 these students will want

information about postures, however only in bits and pieces. They will understand and

grasp the concepts (such as alignment principles). They are hands-on people. They do not

tolerate unclear ideas, as they are results driven. They like to know the plan. You can

advance these students with demonstrations and physical adjustments. They will benefit

from the spiritual teachings and life lessons that come from making their hearts sing. (p.

15).

My mother and I signed up for yoga classes at our local yoga studio. I feel that a teacher

was the missing piece of my experiential learning.

Conclusion

For the past two years, although I stayed dedicated to my yoga practice, I often wondered

why I did not feel the spiritual exuberance or the physical benefits that others seemed to

experience. So far, I have found comfort in knowing that something as simple as exercise self-
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efficacy can lead to physical and mental benefits of a practice. I also find comfort in knowing

that I am a converger, and that my learning experience is enhanced when I have time to reflect,

create abstract conceptualizations, and put those concepts into practice. This assignment of

experiential learning has done just that and I look forward to what I will be learning in the next

two years of my journey to mindful movement and exercise.

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References
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Armstrong, R. (2012). What Really Happens in Hip Openers. Gaia Magazine. Retrieved from
https://www.gaia.com/article/what-really-happens-hip-openers.
Cormier, N. (1996). What makes your heart sing?: A guide to creating themes for yoga classes.
Victoria, BC: Friesen Press.
Fishman, L. M. (2009). Yoga for osteoporosis: A pilot study. Topics in Geriatric Rehabilitation,
25(3), 244-250.
Kolb, D.A. (1984). Experiential Learning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Lee, M., Lim, H., & Lee, M. (2004). Impact of qigong exercise on self-efficacy and other
cognitive perceptual variables in patients with essential hypertension. Journal of
Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 10(4), 675-680.
McInturff, M. (2016). Hips don’t lie: Releasing old emotions through hip openers. Yoga Today.
Retrieved from https://www.yogatoday.com/