Mindfulness researchers have predominantly used quantitative methods. Post positivist researchers have developed operational definitions and measures of mindfulness to understand and capture what mindfulness is. However, the act of operationalizing and measuring mindfulness ignores the works of some teachers/students of mindfulness that describe mindfulness as the immeasurable or indefinable. This is not to say that we cannot use descriptions to spark learning into mindfulness, only to understand that the description is not the described when discussing mindfulness, as Krishnamurti has highlighted. The common tools utilized by mindfulness teachers to help spark students learning into mindfulness are such things as yoga, questions, stories, and breath awareness. <p>Post positivist researchers, and mindfulness teachers and their students, are exploring the question: What is mindfulness? with different methods. To be able to utilize story to spark learning into mindfulness/represent the results of this study, I have completed a qualitative study exploring the question: How do the participants in this studys mindfulness program inquire? <p>Eight middle-aged women Hatha yoga students consented to participate in this studys six-and-half week mindfulness program. The program had experiential, discussion/story, and movement based learning. As the mindfulness teacher, I continuously posed questions to and discussed questions with the students, to help spark learning into mindfulness. The women, myself, and the works of mindfulness authors highlighted that mindful inquiry was about the oneness of learning, listening, and compassion; as well as, the importance of stories, friendship, and trust. These themes were communicated through the fictional story.

Mindfulness researchers have predominantly used quantitative methods. Post positivist researchers have developed operational definitions and measures of mindfulness to understand and capture what mindfulness is. However, the act of operationalizing and measuring mindfulness ignores the works of some teachers/students of mindfulness that describe mindfulness as the immeasurable or indefinable. This is not to say that we cannot use descriptions to spark learning into mindfulness, only to understand that the description is not the described when discussing mindfulness, as Krishnamurti has highlighted. The common tools utilized by mindfulness teachers to help spark students learning into mindfulness are such things as yoga, questions, stories, and breath awareness. <p>Post positivist researchers, and mindfulness teachers and their students, are exploring the question: What is mindfulness? with different methods. To be able to utilize story to spark learning into mindfulness/represent the results of this study, I have completed a qualitative study exploring the question: How do the participants in this studys mindfulness program inquire? <p>Eight middle-aged women Hatha yoga students consented to participate in this studys six-and-half week mindfulness program. The program had experiential, discussion/story, and movement based learning. As the mindfulness teacher, I continuously posed questions to and discussed questions with the students, to help spark learning into mindfulness. The women, myself, and the works of mindfulness authors highlighted that mindful inquiry was about the oneness of learning, listening, and compassion; as well as, the importance of stories, friendship, and trust. These themes were communicated through the fictional story.

Emily Dickinson, with a soul passing beyond the confines of mainstream gender ideology, religiosity, natural theology, transcendentalism, and literary conventions, creates the sublime in her poetry, which demonstrates her realization and manipulation of inspiring thoughts and liberating movements experienced where diverse conscience stirrings, ideologies, ideas, axioms and discourses intersect. Dickinsonian sublime offers an example for Jean-Fran&#x00E7;ois Lyotard¡¦s discourses on the modern and postmodern sublime, which coincidentally mirror Dickinson¡¦s time, her personal response and reaction. Liberating herself from the confines of gender ideology as well as female literary conventions, Dickinson invents her own self and identity, suggesting differences among women, who can be discontinuous and multiple instead of being a category with ¡§ontological integrity¡¨ (Judith Butler, Gender Trouble 23). She embodies a writer who creates according to her nature and experience as a sensitive person constantly investigating inwardly and outwardly, blurring traditionally-assigned gender distinctions, alternating between various roles, and reversing gendered traits instead of just being a subordinate advocate of mainstream domesticity, gender identity, or religiosity. Not traveling on the path constructed by the traditional theological system but abolishing its authority over her thoughts, attitudes, deeds, or interpretations and manipulation of language, Dickinson interrogates received doctrines and develops her own understanding of religion, idiosyncratic employment of the Bible, and definition of language. Inspired but not dominated by new sciences, natural theology, or transcendentalism, Dickinson cultivates and reinforces her ability to analyze, judge, and examine things ¡§without respite, without rest, in one direction¡¨ but in all directions (Ralph Waldo Emerson, ¡§Intellect¡¨ 179), transcending the confines of both natural theology and optimistic transcendentalism while displaying her ¡§active soul,¡¨ "power of forming great conceptions¡¨ and ¡§vehement and inspired passion¡¨ (Longinus, ¡§On the Sublime¡¨ 80) and intending to be what is advocated in Emerson¡¦s ¡§The American Scholar¡¨¡X ¡§Man Thinking¡¨ (64). Not conforming to literary traditions, Dickinson enters a realm of artistic experiment, representing a great poet reflecting the individualism and potentiality of American poetry in her age as well as in the modern and postmodern periods. Not making her readers passive receivers of messages or meanings, her idiosyncratic methods in rhyme, language, images, and syntax promote ¡§the sense of palpitant vigor¡¨ (Amy Lowell 7) and sublimity, repeatedly challenging, deconstructing, or activating her readers¡¦ thinking and various faculties. As a self-reliant nonconformist experimenter with a Socratic philosophic spirit, her poetry of ¡§possibility¡¨ provokes ¡§polymorphous,¡¨ multiple, ¡§psychological¡¨ inspirations and creates a subjective, dynamical, and liberatory sublime.