By Neil Freese August 21, 2013
CIIS President Emeritus Joseph L. Subbiondo has contributed a blog to The Huffington Post, "From Liberal to Integral Education," in which he argues that "[i]ntegral education advances liberal education and offers a radical makeover of the humanities by expanding them to include embodied and spiritual learning as well as global diversity."
"As for moving beyond the cultivation of the mind in higher education -- well, here we've been far less responsive. We've not yet coherently connected the mind, body, and spirit -- something our students seek to do on their own outside classes, or at yoga and qigong classes in the university gym, or at off-campus centers for bodywork and meditation. In their impressive research on the preferences of students over more than the past 50 years, Cultivating the Spirit: How College can Enhance Students' Inner Lives (2011), Alexander Astin, Helen Astin, and Jennifer Linholm -- all of UCLA -- document how students increasingly explore their inner selves, and usually have to do so outside their courses. While some meager data give us hope that this may be changing, embodied learning and spiritual practices are taboo for most professors and academic administrators."
Subbiondo points out that after graduation students are continuing their "inner journeys" in their careers, and that in Silicon Valley and beyond, corporations are facilitating this journey:
"Just look at the attendee list of conferences like Wisdom 2.0 and Conscious Capitalism. Fortune 500 corporations such as General Mills in Minneapolis, for example, offer yoga classes on-site that attract large gatherings of employees. While some attention is paid to improving the bottom line, the programs are primarily intended to cultivate in employees a sense of higher purpose and greater life balance."
