We Need More Embodied Education! A Conversation with Arawana Hayashi, Prof. Guy Claxton, Dr. Akhil K. Singh, Emily Poel and Caroline Williams
This week we're exploring embodiment science in education with some of the worlds leading embodiment practitioners and cognitive scientists! We believe that this is one of the most important shifts happening in education globally, which is simultaneously so simple, and yet so hard to budge given the depths of the tendencies towards disembodiment, especially in the Western tradition, that we explore. Joining Tim in this fantastic conversation are:
Arawana Hayashi
Arawana heads the creation of Social Presencing Theater (SPT) for the Presencing Institute. Working with Otto Scharmer and colleagues, she brings her background in the arts, meditation, and social justice to creating “social presencing” that makes visible both current reality and emerging future possibilities for individuals and groups.
Arawana’s pioneering work as a choreographer, performer and educator is deeply sourced in collaborative improvisation. Her dance career ranges from directing an interracial street dance company formed by the Boston Mayor’s Office for Cultural Affairs in the aftermath of the 1968 murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, to being one of the foremost performers of Japanese Court Dance, bugaku, in the US. She has been Co-Director of the Dance Program at Naropa University, Boulder, CO; and founder-director of two contemporary dance companies in Cambridge, MA.
She is currently on the core faculty of the Presencing Institute. She joins Peter Senge and Otto Scharmer for the Executive Champions Program co-hosted by the Presencing Institute and the Center for Systems Awareness. She co-hosts social arts residencies with Claudia Madrazo and Ricardo Dutra in Mexico, and joins Michael Stubberup and Ninni Sodahl for the Sustainable Co-Creation program in Denmark. She co-teaches with Phil Cass in the Physicians Leadership program in Columbus, Ohio.
Links: https://arawanahayashi.com/
Book: Social Presencing Theater: The Art of Making a True Move - https://presencing.market/collections/frontpage/products/social-presencing-theater-the-art-of-making-a-true-move
Prof. Guy Claxton
Guy is a cognitive scientist, education thought leader and prolific author interested in expanding human intelligence through research, writing and education. He has spent most of his working life based in a variety of UK universities including Oxford, Bristol, King’s College London and Winchester. Increasingly his work has taken a more practical turn, and he has been involved with a wide range of organisations where a better understanding of human intelligence is needed. For example, he has been:
Consultant on education to the Royal Albert Hall; workshop leader for Premier League Youth Football Coaches; lecturer at the Siobhan Davies Dance School and the London College of Fashion; Inaugural lecturer at Her Majesty's Treasury Learning Centre; meditation teacher at Atsitsa holiday centre on the Greek island of Skyros (where I met my wife Judith); consultant to the Centre for Contemplative Education research project on mindfulness in European schools (under the auspices of HH The Dalai Lama); guest lecturer at the Harvard Learning Innovations Laboratory (LILA); consultant to the South Australian Department of Education and Child Development among many others.
Links: https://www.guyclaxton.net/
Recent Deans Lecture Series, University of Melbourne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGFEswKBnMw
Book: Co-authored with Emily Poel, Bodies of Learning: How Embodiment Science Transforms Education will be released soon from Routledge.
Dr. Akhil Kumar Singh
Akhil is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Policy at MS Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences. He earned his Ph.D. in Liberal Arts from the Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur, Rajasthan, where his research focused on embodied learning and the development of curricula that foster holistic understanding in students. With an academic background in Philosophy and Psychology, Dr. Singh works at the intersection of these disciplines with education, emphasizing the creation of educational policies and innovative curricula that drive systemic change.
Akhil received the prestigious Contemplative Research Fellowship from the Mind and Life Institute, USA, recognizing his commitment to integrating mindfulness and Indian knowledge systems into education. He is actively involved in designing and training teachers at Auroville Schools in Pondicherry and was invited by the Ukrainian Government to speak on the importance of physical activities in education. His allied interests include creating inclusive learning environments for children with special needs.
In addition to his academic pursuits, Akhli has been involved in several impactful initiatives. He was associated with the GOAL program by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, contributing to the empowerment of tribal youth through digital and life skills education. He also served as a consultant for an ICSSR-sponsored project. Akhil is dedicated to community service, having led Student Wellbeing Committee at IIT Jodhpur, and has been actively involved with organizations like the Rotaract Club and Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat.
Links: https://akhilksingh.in/
https://www.msruas.ac.in/faculty-staff/akhil-kumar
Book, Education for the Embodied Human: A Contemporary Understanding on Human Nature for Holistic Education - https://brill.com/display/title/71864
Emily Poel
Emily has been teaching embodiment in Berlin for over fifteen years. Originally from Michigan and with a degree in contemporary dance performance and history, she's worked internationally as a performer, choreographer and creative advisor. In 2004 she shifted her focus to embodiment training and hasn’t stopped since. Over the last ten years she's developed a large collection of activities using physical awareness tools and movement training to better understand how creativity, learning and thinking actually work. Emily is the co-author with Guy, of the forthcoming book, Bodies of Learning: How Embodiment Science Transforms Education.
Links: https://embodimentatwork.co/
Move4Schools - https://move4schools.com/
Caroline Williams
Caroline is a UK-based science writer with 20 years’ experience in magazine and radio journalism. She writes regularly for New Scientist magazine, where she also spent several happy years in-house as a feature editor, working mostly on neuroscience, health and nature-based stories. Her work has also appeared in the Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, BBC Future, BBC Earth and the Boston Globe. She is the author of three books: Inner Sense: How the New Science of Interoception Can Transfrom Your Health (2025), Move! The New Science of Body Over Mind (2021) and Override (published as My Plastic Brain in the US, 2018), and the editor of two of New Scientist’s Instant Expert Guides: How Your Brain Works: Inside the most complicated object in the known universe (2017) and Your Conscious Mind: Unravelling the greatest mystery of the human brain (2017).
Caroline has also produced and presented radio programmes and reports for the BBC, across Science, Natural History and Children’s Radio and was the regular co-presenter of the New Scientist podcast, along with Ivan Semeniuk, between 2006 and 2010.
Links: https://www.carolinewilliams.net/
Caroline's latest book - https://profilebooks.com/work/inner-sense/
Move4Schools - https://move4schools.com/
