• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Heart - Head - Hands logo

  • About
    • Beth Godbee
    • Commitments
    • Offerings
    • Publications
  • Blog
    • Contemplative Practices
    • Emotional Literacies
    • Everyday Feminism
    • Higher Education
    • Interviews
    • Racial Justice
    • Recipes
    • Why Vegan?
  • Courses
  • Coaching
  • Subscribe
  • Contact
  • Navigation Menu: Social Icons

    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter

Triangulating the Heart, Head, and Hands for Justice

Filed Under: Contemplative Practices, Emotional Literacies, Higher Education By Beth Godbee March 17, 2018 Leave a Comment

This spring I’m teaching a new course titled “Contemplative Writing.” I’ve visualized the course design through triangulation, or three intersecting points that rely on the others for fuller understanding. Like a compass, triangulation helps with navigating complicated terrain. It shows locations (or ideas) in relation to each other, highlighting multiplicity. In the case of “Contemplative Writing,” triangulation brings together three semester-long focuses, audiences, and goals:

  • 3 intersecting focuses = writing, justice, and contemplation/mindfulness
  • 3 audiences (or spheres of interaction) = self, others, and institutions
  • 3 goals = rhetorical flexibility, self-awareness, and courage in writing/speaking
2018-02-06 16.47.48
2018-02-06 16.49.09

To cover this complicated terrain, the students and I are journaling and doing regular (almost-daily) contemplative practices, while also pursuing “Projects That Matter” (research and activist writing). To keep me writing and practicing alongside the students, I’ve been doing some form of contemplative journaling, meditation, or movement daily.

Some days, I’ve been responding to the writing prompt that gives this blog its name, checking in with my heart, head, and hands:

  • Heart: What am I feeling?
  • Head: What am I thinking?
  • Hands: What am I going to do?

Through these check-ins, I have been triangulating intellectual, emotional, and embodied knowledges.

Recently, I discovered a yoga-asana (movement) video that essentially asks the same questions through a 25-minute “Head & Heart Reset”:

This Yoga with Adrienne video has resonated with me because I want to build physical strength to carry a hiking backpack, and it includes several strength-building poses. While I typically prefer gentle and super slow asana, this flowing practice seems to be opening the energetic pathways connecting my heart, head, and hands (as well as my gut, tear ducts, and held-within knowing).

The practice opens with wrapping arms around the shoulders, giving myself a hug, as I’m striving to do daily. It ends with deep breathing to carry energetic connectedness off the mat and into all communication.

While in the past I’ve practiced yoga through writing, now I’m channeling writing through yoga. I’m reminded of the importance of nurturing my body and its wisdom in order to create and share wisdom through writing.

Such realizations are also showing me that triangulation is much more than a navigation tool, research method, or course design. Triangulation is why I understand writing as connected with embodiment and everyday living. It’s why I associate yoga and other contemplative, spiritual practices with the work of countering injustice and investing in more equitable relations. And it’s why I strive to connect the heart, head, and hands.

Said differently, triangulation helps me not only navigate complicated terrain but also remember that no guiding principle stands alone. May I continue to learn and make meaning in multiple ways. May I continue to open to what emerges through varied contemplative practices. May I continue to weave triangulated webs of striving (with an attitude of try-try again) to live a life for justice.

—
This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Gentle Yoga for Releasing Burdens,” “40 Days of Yoga Nidra,” and “Practicing Yoga Through Writing.” Please also consider following the blog via email. Thanks!

Share this:

  • Print
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Pocket

Tagged with: commitments, community care, courage, embodiment, environmental justice, hope, learning, meditation, racial justice, resistance, self-care, social justice, teaching, writing, yoga

Support the Work

subscribe to posts:

Previous Post: « Snapshots of Support
Next Post: “We’re All the Ages We’ve Ever Been” »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Sarah Haywood

    March 17, 2018 at 10:09 am

    Once again, you’ve inspired me, Beth. Also, this reminds me of the YMCA and the triangle of spirit, mind, and body. I worked for the Y for many years, so the idea of triangulation resonates with me, too. Thank you.

    Reply
  2. Beth Godbee

    March 20, 2018 at 1:27 am

    Sarah, thanks for sharing this! I’ve joined the Y this year, and yet I never knew about this triangle. You’ve sent me on a fun expedition researching this triangle. 🙂 You’ve also reminded me of my own history with 4-H: head, heart, hands, and health. I was a 4-H member for many years, so I’m realizing now this must have seeped in deep. With love, Beth

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

About This Site

Embodied knowledge matters. So do commitments. And especially acting on commitments as part of everyday life, BIG and small. This website—a mix of blog posts and research writing, courses and offerings—shares ongoing efforts toward everyday living (feeling, thinking, and doing) for justice.

Subscribe via Patreon

This button from Patreon says “Become a Patron” in white font against a bright orange background.

Subscribe to Newsletter

courses, webinars, and writing groups

This grid shows four colorful cacti (two above and two below) the event information (black font against white background): “Monthly Gathering Space: Recharge and Recommit. For details, see Heart-Head-Hands.com.”This e-course announcement shows a yellow sunflower and blue sky. It includes a textbox with the following information: “E-COURSE AVAILABLE NOW! Career Discernment for Academics: Aligning Career with Commitments. Self-paced study, exercises, coaching, and more ...”

This ad reads: “Time to write! Writing Retreats. Learn more @ Heart-Head-Hands.com.” A white coffee mug and table appear in the foreground, with golden chairs and walls in the background.

This image shows writing tools (phone, keyboard, journal, pencil, and pen) along with the event information: “Online Writing Groups. Friday mornings 10am EST | 9am CST | 8am MST | 7am PST. Come Write Together: Heart-Head-Hands.com.”

Categories

  • Contemplative Practices (57)
  • Emotional Literacies (76)
  • Everyday Feminism (91)
  • Higher Education (45)
  • Interviews (7)
  • Racial Justice (56)
  • Recipes (22)
  • Why Vegan? (11)

Footer

bethgodbee

I’m really excited about @soulsupportlc and hope I’m really excited about @soulsupportlc and hope you’ll check out David (@dgs425)’s coaching support. 💗 See you at the launch?

#Repost @ericdarnellpritchard with @make_repost
・・・
Congratulations, David! 💜😭✨🌻🎉💃🏿💕 Today my beloved announced that he has decided to leave his position as a tenure-track faculty member in order to create more space to serve his purpose as a healer. Doing so, he has formally launched his life coaching practice, @soulsupportlc. I say formally because David has been a life coach to me and many of our kindred for a very long time. I am so glad he has chosen to share his gifts and serve his purpose more widely. Please follow his work at @soulsupportlc AND if your time permits, please register and attend the Soul Support Life Coaching virtual launch on June 30. Link in my bio!
vacation mode = cloud watching [Photo is taken l vacation mode = cloud watching 

[Photo is taken looking up at trees, clouds, and blue sky.]

#learningfromnature #cloudwatching #lookingup #trees #sky
I'm starting some time off for hiking and visiting I'm starting some time off for hiking and visiting family this week. And here's a photo of me at a North Carolina welcome center, high in the Appalachian Mountains, standing before a wall of blooming rhododendrons. I'm tired from all-day driving, but so happy to be deep in the mountains and surrounded by blues, greens, and even pinks! <3

#appalachianmountains #rhodadendron #blueridgemountains #home
Today’s newsletter points in multiple directions Today’s newsletter points in multiple directions, much like this turkey tail mushroom. (I love the striations of copper, cream, and olive green on these curly tails.)
 
Here’s a link to the newsletter on tending to brokenheartedness and burnout: https://mailchi.mp/99bd4ad2e962/burnout --> link in bio, too.
 
And if you aren’t receiving my newsletter but would like to, there’s a link to subscribe at the email’s end (just scroll to the bottom).
 
#LearningFromNature #HeartHeadHands #newsletter #brokenheartedness #burnout #resources
🧡🧡🧡 This touches my heart. Grounding and 🧡🧡🧡 This touches my heart. Grounding and guiding.

#Repost @yallaroza with @make_repost
・・・
The first person to show me the power of bearing witness was Helen, my first year Women and Gender Studies professor. Helen was a fierce feminist whose lectures felt more like prose, poetic and passionate. She made me want to take a hammer to patriarchy, and I loved it. 

With Helen, I felt safe enough to say the things I could barely articulate to myself. To name my wounds, to language hard truths, to let someone else in on my hurt. And with Helen, I felt held in those lived and living realities. There were no therapeutic interventions, no life adages, no solutions. There was simply a human being listening, honouring and affirming my experiences of misogyny, racism and sexual violence.

Years later, I forgot this wisdom. I went through therapeutic training(s) that, over time, left me feeling like that wasn't enough. That listening, and presence, and holding space for hurt wasn't enough. And in many aspects of life, I started to feel like I always needed a brilliant intervention that would offer an "aha moment." 

This week, I was reminded in many ways of the power of being present, of listening, of bearing witness. That you don't always need to have the answers, or offer your critical feminist thinking on a topic. You don't always need to have a solution, or advice. And you don't always need to intellectualize what someone's going through. Sometimes, you can just climb into the emotional fort they've built, grab a pillow, and be there. 

Yup, you can just be there, friend. And that's enough. 

(Consensually*)

♥️✨ Gratitude Tag: tag someone in your life who shows up in meaningful ways.
Load More... Follow on Instagram

About Beth Godbee

I'm an educator and former college professor who believes our fully embodied selves matter in the world. We can’t just think our way out of the incredible injustices, dehumanization, violence, and wrongdoing that characterize everyday life. We must feel and act, too. [Pronouns: she/her.] Read more ...

This image shows books alongside the words: courses, coaching, consulting. learning + unlearning.

Copyright © 2022