peer-reviewed article / 2002

Breath, Perception, and Action: The Body and Critical Thinking

Barbara Sellers-Young

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Description

This article extends Sellers-Young's somatic pedagogy into the theory of critical thinking. She argues that thought is not a purely verbal or abstract operation; it is shaped by breath, sensation, perception, habit, image, and action. Breath becomes a practical model for reflective inquiry: receiving experience, integrating it bodily and imaginatively, and responding with greater awareness.

The essay is important because it brings performance training into conversation with general education. Sellers-Young does not reject analysis; she argues that analysis becomes deeper when students understand the embodied conditions through which they perceive and judge. Movement and breath practices can interrupt stereotype, widen attention, and make reflection more flexible. The work shows her expanding from performer training toward a broader educational philosophy grounded in embodied cognition.

Metadata

Typepeer-reviewed article
Year2002
Era 2000-2004: Japanese Influence, Body-Mind Integration, and Critical Thinking i

2000-2004: Japanese Influence, Body-Mind Integration, and Critical Thinking

The Japanese performance writings deepen her theory of embodied transmission. Nihon buyo in America is not merely nostalgic heritage; it is a site where diaspora, incarceration memory, gendered discipline, teacher-student hierarchy, and Japanese American identity are bodily negotiated. The iemoto system preserves continuity while enabling new subjectivities across generations.

At the same time, her work on Japanese influence in American actor training reframes Zen, Zeami, Suzuki training, and related practices as answers to a crisis in Method-dominated acting pedagogy. The “one pointed mind” integrates breath, stillness, concentration, inner image, outer form, and action.

Her educational writings extend somatics beyond performance. Breath, perception, and action become elements of critical thinking. “Feel, fuse, and follow” turns breath into a practical model of reflection: receiving, integrating, and responding. She now argues explicitly that thought is bodily, that education should cultivate embodied attention, and that critical inquiry can be deepened through movement.

Continuity: bodily training changes consciousness.

Revision: Asian-derived practices are treated less as exotic resources than as disciplined modes of attention requiring careful translation.

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AuthorBarbara Sellers-Young
JournalConsciousness, Literature and the Arts
Pages1-15
ISSN1470-5648
Roleprimary author

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Barbara Sellers-Young’s “Breath, Perception, and Action: The Body and Critical Thinking” belongs to a moment in her work when questions developed in performance training begin to press directly against the habits of the university classroom. The article does not merely argue that the body matters for learning in some general or benevolent sense. It makes a sharper claim. If thought is generated through “the interplay between the brain and the body,” if consciousness itself depends upon an organism’s ongoing monitoring of its own changing states, then the dominant educational image of critical thinking as a disembodied verbal operation is not simply incomplete; it is structurally...

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