Donna Frost

Chapter 5 164 In Figure 5 . 8 the figure stands with broad, steady feet on a solid base, stable but no longer caught up, in connection yet free to move. The energy in the picture represents all the colours of the spectrum, it builds up in the centre, in the body of the figure and also the head, flows and extends outwards and also back inwards. It feels generative to me instead of binding. This drawing represents integration, freedom and openness; energywhich can flow and is flowing. In these ways it is representative of the transformation I experienced during the course of this research and how it felt to experience human flourishing. At some stages during the inquiries and in any case at the end of the NPI I was no longer trying to stand, I was standing; I was no longer trying to facilitate with artistry, I was facilitating with professional artistry; I was no longer struggling with reconciling different ways of knowing and being within my research praxis, I was embodying and thus enacting the methodological principles of the research. Reaching this place of integrated, flowing energy and feeling grounded was not a singular, one-off ‘I have arrived’ experience. Rather it is a place or state of being I have moved into and out of depending on the circumstances. In my case, the particular obstacles I have repeatedly needed to overcome have beenmore internal than external: my own mental models (Senge, 1990 ; Schön & Rein, 1994 ) or deeply ingrained beliefs, for example, about my professional artistry, where it resides and how it manifests itself; my understandings of my own expertise and the meaning I attached to that; or the strategies I repeatedly returned to when attempting to understand my experiences and develop my own professional artistry. During the inquiry process I came to understand that despite my espoused theory (Argyris & Schön, 1974 ; Argyris, 2010 ) of valuing different ways of knowing, and despite my countless embodied and creatively articulated experiences of reaching profound insights via embodied learning, there was an alternative, powerful, almost pre-conscious theory-in-use (Argyris & Schön, 1974 ; Argyris, 2010 ) operating in my being. This theory-in-use privileged intellectual knowledge and ways of knowing over other forms of knowledge, as Munten ( 2012 ) describes when reflecting on his ‘rational’ approach to dealing with challenges within his doctoral research. For much of this research journeymy default positionwas one of trustingmy intellectual reasoning and rational conclusions above my bodily, spiritual and emotional insights and ways of knowing. As Senge ( 1990 ) and others (eg. Senge et al., 1999 ; Senge et al., 2005 ; van der Kolk, 2014 ) point out, deeply entrenched mental models, or theories-in-use, are very powerful. They can produce inertia even once we are aware of them and in the face of compelling experiential or systemic insights to the