This study was intended to look into how a dancing class through meditation program brings change to dancing majors in their course of learning. This change was especially chased in-depth through a qualitative approach on psychological change and lear...
This study was intended to look into how a dancing class through meditation program brings change to dancing majors in their course of learning. This change was especially chased in-depth through a qualitative approach on psychological change and learner commitment felt by dancing majors through meditation right before and after a dancing class.
This study was carried out for a total of 4 months from February through May 2012 by selecting 6 dancing students attending classes for majors at a dancing institute located in Y city. At the beginning of February 2012, preliminary interview was conducted by selecting participants, then after three times of pre-testing, meditation program was composed in consideration of characteristics of students majoring in dancing. For 7 weeks from March 12 through April 27, a total of 28 sessions of dancing class (4 sessions per week) applying meditation program was conducted and then data for stating their experience of meditation program was collected through in-depth interviews. To get an actual understanding of in-depth interview contents, observation diary was made through non-participant observation on the behavior of dancing majors in dancing class under application of meditation program. Through documentation, their experience of meditation program was understood, from which diverse data was collected for content analysis and conceptualization. Finally, the results drawn from triangulation, members check and peer review are as follows:
First, psychological change was further divided into 9 subcategories – ‘diversion’, ‘positive frame of mind’, ‘stress relief’, ‘awareness of goals’, ‘empty mind’, ‘haven for the mind’, ‘improved perseverance’, ‘calmness’, and ‘pleasing dancing class’.
For ‘diversion’, dancing majors were aware that meditation program helped relive every kind of negative thoughts and take class with a fresh mind. For ‘positive frame of mind’, they admitted that meditation program led them to positive thinking not only in dancing class but also in daily life. For ‘stress relief’, dancing majors said that meditation program helped them forget bad memories on their mind relieving stress until the end of the class hours. For ‘awareness of goals’ meditation program helped dancing majors bring their awareness of goals to the front. For ‘empty mind’, meditation program helped dancing majors make efforts to get rid of every idle thoughts occurring during the dancing class. For ‘haven for the mind’, meditation program provided dancing students with the only time in each day for feeling comfortable and relaxed as a haven for the mind. For ‘improved perseverance’, they said that meditation program improved their perseverance helping with movements hard to bear during the class hours. For ‘calmness’, they said that meditation program helped take class more seriously and with more concentration because meditation calms their mind from excitement and buzz. For ‘pleasing dancing class’, they said that meditation has an overall effect on their mind and body to make dancing class pleasing and fun.
Second, learner commitment was further divided into two subcategories – power of ‘concentration’ and ‘memory’.
For ‘concentration’, they said that meditation program enabled them to learn how to concentrate their mind on dancing order, chief movements, etc. exercising concentration deeper and for extended time.
For ‘memory’, power of concentration and clear head improved through meditation had a favorable effect in improving memory during the dancing class.
Third, the others refers to what happened during, after and outside of dancing class, which was further divided into three subcategories – ‘Use of meditational breathing’, ‘recovery from fatigue’, and ‘upright posture’.
For ‘use of meditational breathing’, dancing students said that they apply and use constant and calm meditational breathing practiced through meditation program for changing faster breaths after a hard movement into calm breaths. For ‘recovery from fatigue’, dancing majors said that meditation helped them recover from fatigue relaxing the body and mind tired from a hard day’s work. For ‘upright posture’, they said that maintaining the right posture straightening the spinal column during meditation helped them with the right posture in the school classes in which they have to spend a long time in a sitting position.
These results of the study prove that experiencing meditation program has a positive effect on dancing majors’ improvement in dancing class. It also suggests that this kind of psychological change will allow them self-control in their performance or contest as well as in the context of dancing class and that improvement in learner commitment will have positive effect in their schoolwork as well as dancing class. Besides, seeing that the effect of meditation program before and after physical activity has positive effect on the participants’ capacity for emotional control as well as improvement in memory, it is considered desirable to include a process for stimulating the learners’ cognition and emotion, such as warm-up - teaching & learning - Cool down - Calm down, in addition to the existing course of class.