ABSTRACT
This chapter presents my introduction of Chinese Medicine into a graduate course in an education faculty as a way of disrupting the mind/body divide foundational to Western liberal and critical education. I begin with my own experience as an antiracist, materialist, and feminist scholar who has been trained and steeped in the Western scholarly tradition. I am now convinced that Western European, or at least Euro-American liberal education did not only colonize our minds, it has also made it impossible for Western, North American-trained academics, regardless of their race, gender, class and other social positioning to confront the reality and limits of their embodied experiences. I came to this realization during episodes of illness, which coincidentally but not accidentally began when I began my doctoral study in 1978. In my continual attempt to grapple with my health and to strive toward balance as an academic and an activist I finally realized, not only through my intellect but through my physical and emotional malaise (that is, through recognizing how I embodied my struggles) that what did many other women and me in was the deep-seated bifurcation of the intellect (frequently considered to be equivalent to the mind) and the body-spirit.
