Cultural and faith-based narratives live in our skins and personal lives. Each body is tied to the stories that are written on it, and thus the body and the soul within it are central to our coming to know of tears, wounds, pain, and suffering. Using autobiographical narrative inquiry and poetry, I share my lived experiences and encounters with…

This article focuses on resilience and chronic pain in the context of choreography and performance. Through critically-creatively reflecting on my practice-as-research project, "Ecologies of Pain," I explore practices of resilience that emerge from turning towards and working creatively with chronic pain. I draw from two strands of the…

The issue of pain warrants attention as, by virtue of having an intellectual disability, a person may have associated medical or physical conditions and associated factors increasing their risk of pain disorders. People with intellectual disability experiencing pain need to be provided with the best possible care. The focus of this article is on…

Pain is an under-recognized health concern for young people and can significantly impact physical, social, and psychological health. This article presents a three-part strategy to integrate evidence-based education about pain and pain management into health and physical education classes.

This article explores "the politics of sentimentality" with specific reference to the documentary film "Sick," which represents the narrative of a young lesbian woman, Ana, who was confined in a psychiatric hospital in Croatia and "treated" for her homosexuality. We consider the ways our most intimate emotional…

Calls for the decolonisation of higher education in South Africa have been punctuated by comments on black pain. This is not surprising if it is acknowledged that violence inordinately marks so much of South African life. What is rarely discussed though is the idea that pain has also come to be fetishised. Pain, for example, is valued as a…

Author Toni Morrison used fictional narratives to make readers uncomfortably aware of their collective role in perpetuating the culture of poverty and pitying its victims. In her first novel, "The Bluest Eye," she focused on the most vulnerable member of society -- a child -- to depict the consequences of extreme social isolation and…

Healthcare practitioners are often presented with vulnerable encounters where their professional experience is insufficient when dealing with patients who suffer from illnesses such as chronic pain. How can one otherwise understand chronic pain and develop practices whereby medical healthcare practitioners can experience alternative ways of doing…

Critics of the 'strong social model' of disability developed in the U.K. commonly claim that it focuses too one-sidedly on social oppression, thereby neglecting the role of individual impairment. In this theoretical article, we contrast that model with what we call the 'pathic model' of disability, which we characterise through the case of people…

In the midst of the most serious refugee crisis since WWII, nation states are buttressing their borders. This paper explores the border politics of the nation state in response to the refugee crisis. Drawing on the work of Susan Sontag, Judith Butler and Imogen Tyler it considers the ways in which the imagery of the pain and suffering of Others is…

Different positive effects of interactions with animals, such as reduction of stress reactions, depressive mood, anxiety, aggression, and pain, and promotion of trust, calmness, motivation, and concentration have been documented by research on human-animal interaction (HAI), including animal assisted interventions (AAIs). Potential biological,…

In this article, I argue that African-American philosophy emerges from a socio-existential context where persons of African descent have been faced with the absurd in the form of white racism (This paper is a substantially revised version on an earlier article. See Yancy, G. (2011). "African-American Philosophy through the Lens of…

This article explores an important section of Jean-Paul Sartre's famous early work, "Being and Nothingness." In that section Sartre proposes that part of the human condition is to actively engage in a particular kind of self-deception he calls bad faith. Bad faith is recognized by the obvious inconsistency between the purported…

The use of animals for therapeutic purposes has been documented in the literature for centuries. This review will highlight evidence of the benefits of animal-assisted therapy as well as provide a plethora of resources for therapists interested in learning more about how animals can provide restorative benefits for their clients.

Stretching before activity has been a customary part of most physical education classes (PE), with static stretching typically the preferred method due to its ease of implementation. Historical and implicit support for its continued use is due in part to the sit-and-reach test and flexibility as one of the components of health-related fitness.…