The TECT Summer School Groningen
June 26th – 30th 2023
The TECT’s thirds summer school was hosted by the University of Groningen, Groningen. The summer school took place June 26th-30th and addressed the question: What is it like to be embodied and how does more awareness of embodied experience affect the practice of differentiated thinking and research?
The summer school focused on hands-on exploration of participants’ experiential landscapes – they will explore methods of embodied thinking and research practices by applying various approaches of inquiring and reporting on lived experience, such as Micro-phenomenology, Thinking at the Edge, and meditative self-inquiry.
Students were also introduced to exploring the mind through movement and will got to know traditional embodied practices, such as the (Tibetan-Buddhist) monastic debate. Finally, the summer school offered an opportunity for dialogue between participants and trainers to explore the opportunities and challenges of interdisciplinary research.
As part of the summer school was participant explored the Wadlopen near Pieterburen, Groningen. Part of the excursion was in-nature exercise lead by the summer school trainers.
Around 30 participants, both students and researchers, participated in the summer school, from all over Europe. The summer school teachers included the TECT trainees along with special guest teachers from Tibetian Monasteries.
The TECT Summer School Ljubljana
June 13th – 18th 2022
TECT’s second summer school, „Embodied Critical Thinking: Exploring Lived Experience“, took place at the University of Ljubljana from June 13th to 18th, in Slovenia. The summer school is part of a 15 ECT course hosted by the University of Ljubljana (consisting of a 12 week webinar in the spring, the summer school and an independent project in the fall) as part of the three year ERASMUS+ project „Training Embodied Critical Thinking“.
In the summer school, participants could choose between three different paths: „Thinking at the Edge“ (with profs. Donata Schoeller, Guðbjörg R. Johannesdottir and Sigríður Thorgeirsdóttir), „A Micro-phenomenological exploration of sensing our „right-place“ in the city and in nature“ (with profs. Claire Petitmengin and Ram Eisenberg) and „Observing experience – in meditation and in real life, in a dance between subjective and objective approaches“ (with profs. Urban Kordeš, Marieke van Vugt and Toma Strle).
Participants were introduced to methods of embodied critical thinking, got a training in the ECT methods and participated in outdoor exercises. Students and trainees came from the Erasmus+ partner universities in Groeningen, Ljubljana, Jena, Haifa and Iceland as well as from many other countries with a total of 25 people attending.
Micro-Phenomenology of Nature, France
October 18th – 21st 2021
Micro-phenomenology is a new scientific discipline that stems from an astonishing observation: a substantial proportion of what we live moment after moment, of what is thus the most intimate to us, escapes our awareness. For example, how does an emotion of joy or anger, a memory or an idea arise, evolve and disappear? We know very little about these experiences. Living an experience does not necessary mean being fully aware of it.
Among those experiences, one is particularly unrecognized: our relationship to what we call “nature”. What exactly are we experiencing when we get close to a tree, a river, when we cross a forest, meet an insect or a bird? Recent scientific studies show, with supporting figures, the positive effects of nature on our health, especially on our immune system. They also show that the loss of contact with nature, due to the extension of the urban way of life, creates a psychological suffering called “nature deficit disorder “. But the corresponding experience – what we feel when we are in contact with nature or when we are deprived of it – has been little studied, in the absence of suitable method, and remains ignored, including by ourselves.
As we are not in contact with these feelings, we represent ourselves as individuals whose inner space is separated from the environment by a rigid border. We perceive this environment as made up of objects intended to be categorized, controlled and consumed: plants and animals for our food, fossil energy for our trips, rocks and forest for our houses, seas and mountains for our leisure activities. This attitude is characteristic of our relationship to the world, that transforms any activity into an object that can be measured and consumed: education into ready to consume knowledge, health into medical treatments, leisure into ready-made shows and trips, which leads to catastrophic ecological and societal consequences.
Yet if we stop our run and take the time to connect with ourselves, a whole different picture emerges. When we allow to let ourselves be touched by the tree, the animal or the water, the rigid border that we usually perceive between ourselves and the outer world fades. We discover rhythms, sounds, colors that do not stop at this frontier, a subtle dimension where our ideas originate and which gives meaning to our words and acts. Being cut off from this vibrant dimension depresses and exhausts us, being connected with it makes us joyful and reanimates our lives.
The TECT Summer School, Iceland
August 9th – 13th 2021
The Erasmus+ summer school, „Embodied Critical Thinking and the Environment“, took place at the University of Iceland from August 9th to August 13, 2021. The summer school is part of the larger course HSP912F: „Embodied critical thinking: theoretical foundations and practical applications“ at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Iceland, and is the second part of this three-step TECT-course (consisting of a 12 week webinar in the spring, the summer school and an independent project in the fall).
In the summer school, students/researchers were introduced to methods of embodied critical thinking. The participants got a training in the ECT methods and participated in outdoor exercises taking place in the lava fields of Reykjanes. The summer school teachers/trainers were Prof. Donata Schoeller, Prof. Sigríður Þorgeirsdóttir, Prof. Guðbjörg R. Jóhannesdóttir, Assist. Prof. Ram Eisenberg, Prof. Marieke van Vugt and Monika Lindner.
Students and trainees came from the Erasmus+ partner universities in Groeningen, Ljubljana, Jena, Haifa and Iceland as well as from many other countries with a total of 35 people attending.
The weather during the summer school was wonderful by Icelandic standards, sunny days and warm, allowing group work to take place in the arena outside the building. One highlight of the week was an afternoon/evening excursion to the volcano at Fagradalsfjall with a glorious sunset as a backdrop to the active volcano and the burning lava flowing out of the crater.
