Embodying Artistic Reflexive Praxis: An Early Career Academic's Reflections on Pain, Anxiety, and Eating Disorder Recovery Research

Abstract

Writing about our bodies, as researchers, does not always do justice to their ebbs and flows—their entanglements with the processes and "products" of our research journeys. In this piece, I share my reflexive engagement with artistic praxis over the course of my early career. Engaging with embodied reflexive praxis through dance, film, and writing enabled me to not only produce but also to feel research and to work through messy and painful experiences. Beyond simply unearthing my spaces of belonging in relationship to participants, reflexivity has meant examining and re-examining my relationship to pain, disability, recovery from eating distress, and research itself.