This article explores the application of Michel Foucault’s technologies of the self—practices of freedom that are characterized by ethics of self-care, critical awareness, and aesthetic self-stylization. Foucault’s argument states that the technologies of self can act as practices of freedom from disciplinary, discursive body practices. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this study examines the intersections of Foucault’s theory with commercial fitness practices to identify possibilities for changing the dominant, feminine body discourse. The focus is on fitness practices collectively defined as mindful fitness and specifically one hybrid mindfulfitness form that combines Pilates, yoga, and Tai Chi with western strength training. Through in-depth interviews with the instructors of this hybrid form, this study analyzes the possibilities for mindful fitness to act as a practice of freedom by detailing what can be meant by critically aware, self-stylized fitness professionals for whom ethical care of the self translates to ethical care of the others.
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“Tuning into One’s Self:” Foucault’s Technologies of the Self and Mindful Fitness
Pirkko Markula
Jiu-Jitsu and Society: Male Mental Health on the Mats
Jack Thomas Sugden
of coherence and the confidence to engage with our environment. Continued learning and development, the ability to cope with stress, and engagement with mindfulness are all strategic resources that appear as strong themes in this research. They each speak to a degree of empowerment and self
International High-Performance Sport Camps and the Development of Emplaced Physical Capital Among Pasifika Athletes
Wendy O’Brien, Caroline Riot, and Clare Minahan
culture are also deeply entangled with the impacts of colonialism. We therefore were mindful of the socio-cultural context or milieu and perceived peripheral status of the postcolonial countries invited to participate. Developing and working with a cultural sensibility was a process of recognizing the
Awakening to Elsewheres: Collectively Restorying Embodied Experiences of (Be)longing
Tricia McGuire-Adams, Janelle Joseph, Danielle Peers, Lindsay Eales, William Bridel, Chen Chen, Evelyn Hamdon, and Bethan Kingsley
returns stolen lands. The second is that decolonization, whether it be personal or in working toward reciprocity to the land and Indigenous peoples, must still occur. It can occur in our minds and in our actions, in a daily cycle of mindfulness about, and uncomfortableness within, contextualizing
Extraordinary Normalcy, Ableist Rehabilitation, and Sporting Ablenationalism: The Cultural (Re)Production of Paralympic Disability Narratives
Emma Pullen, Daniel Jackson, Michael Silk, P. David Howe, and Carla Filomena Silva
remaining mindful of the supercrip praxis and drawing on theoretical contributions from across disability and cultural studies, we explicate a number of narratives that framed the stories of para-athletes and resonated in Paralympic audiences’ perceptions and understandings of disability. In doing so, we
“I Just Want to Be Left Alone”: Novel Sociological Insights Into Dramaturgical Demands on Professional Athletes
Martin Roderick and Jacquelyn Allen-Collinson
with which they were involved would be identified in project outputs. Consequently, every effort has been made to strip away identifiers in the data excerpts that follow. Having previously undertaken research with professional athletes, the first author was mindful of the sensitivities bound up in
Counter Stories on the Meaning of Sport in the Lives of Black Youth Who Are Incarcerated
Jennifer M. Jacobs, Gabrielle Bennett, and Zach Wahl-Alexander
, with discussions of how the skill can be utilized in the sport session, life while incarcerated, and life after release. Examples of life skills utilized include authenticity, mindfulness, honesty, and so forth. Participants Participants in the study were nine African American males between 18 and 20
Women Yoga Practitioners’ Experiences in the Pandemic: From Collective Exhaustion to Affirmative Ethics
Allison Jeffrey, Holly Thorpe, and Nida Ahmad
beneficial Yoga practices that were at the same time physical, mental, spiritual, and ethical. These included postures, breathing techniques, meditations, and practices of kindness, gratitude, acceptance, mindfulness, and self-reflection. They found benefit in an expansive range of Yoga teachings and
Decolonizing Sports Sociology is a “Verb not a Noun”: Indigenizing Our Way to Reconciliation and Inclusion in the 21st Century? Alan Ingham Memorial Lecture
Paul Whitinui
mindful of as an Indigenous researcher? • What am I willing to defend as an Indigenous Māori person, and what lengths am I willing to go to defend it? What ways can I self-determine, decolonize, transform, or empower others who experience colonization in similar ways? The intention is to help discover one
Critical Friends, Dialogues of Discomfort, and Researcher Reflexivity in the Sociology of Sport
Adam Ehsan Ali, Tavis Smith, and Michael Dao
), mindful fitness instructors ( Markula, 2004 ), and track-and-field athletes ( Butryn, 2003 ). Researcher reflexivity was identified in numerous autoethnographic works on injury recovery ( Collinson, 2003 ; Dashper, 2013 ; Fisette, 2015 ; Hockey, 2005 ), cycling tourism ( Lamont, 2020 ), the Little
