I'm shocked! My website got 398 pageviews in the first 30 days! Remember, classes in Camberwell Wed morning and Thurs evening (this week covered by the lovely Jo Barclay and Alison Matthews).
That's because this week I'm back in Germany, at an astronomy conference down in southern Bavaria at a beautiful old castle called Ringberg. The castle (built only in the 20s) was donated to the Max Plank Society (one of the main German research foundations) a few decades ago for use as a conference centre, and I must say, it's a great venue!
This conference is the last thing for me in my astronomy career (thanks to ESO and MPE for giving me the funds). My talk was on the first day, and I mentioned at the end of it that I'm leaving astronomy to become a yoga teacher. Unsurprisingly that generated lots of questions about why I'm leaving - and why yoga?! I guess choosing to leave voluntarily before I'm forced out by circumstances is fairly unusual. It's funny, as soon as you say you've decided to leave, you hear from a lot of others (granted, roughly at the same stage of their career) saying they've also been thinking of leaving. The lack of social and scientific interaction, difficulties with having to move around a lot, job insecurity, and the lack of positive feedback are the common gripes.
Anyway, I think people's reaction to my choice to teach yoga has ranged from (mostly) incomprehension to (at best) interest!! Some people, though, have asked if I'd do a class sometime during the conference…!
I can understand why. Many people have taken long flights to get here, which involves a lot of sitting. And in the conference we sit for 10-12 hrs a day: in the talks, during the meals, and in the evening. Personally I find this tough on the body - I get aches in my back and bum. It's no wonder many people have bad posture. I look round the room and see rounded shoulders, collapsed chests, stoops, tense lifted shoulders, and many of the more senior people are overweight. I can feel my own shoulders are getting tense, I'm slouching, certainly overeating, and I find myself choosing a danish pastry over a banana! Yes, yes, it's ok, it's only one week! - True, but with all the travel in academia you might have weeks and weeks of this in a given year. I have (now, had) one collaborator who has gout as a result of his sedentary, 10 trans-atlantic flights a year lifestyle!
From my own experience, I think being a scientist encourages you to disconnect from your body. It trains you to develop your reason, the logical side of your mind. This would be fine, of course, if it wasn't to the exclusion (I think) of your more intuitive, emotional, creative side. And this seems to include the body-mind connection. All the travel and moving from country-to-country certainly uproots you and maybe further encourages this disconnect. After all, your body is only something that brings your brain to your computer, right...?!
On the more social side, I always find it very difficult at a conference like this to get to actually meet people on a human-to-human level - even if we are all just brains on legs! There's a feeling that you're only expected to talk science, but if you're not then somehow you go down in people's opinion. Of course, you throw 40 astronomers together with a common interest and conversations about science is what you'd expect. But I always sense a massive resistance to people letting their actual personality through - including myself. Socialising is generally very group-oriented, with posturing, name-dropping and ego-boosting comments, and if you can't operate in that environment, then you sink.
That said, there are some lovely people here; and funnily enough, talking about why I'm leaving has had the effect of getting us to open up!
I am a graduate student astronomy who will hopefully finish up his thesis at the end of this year. I came across your blog as I was looking for something related to my research. I was fascinated to read about the change of direction in your life. I feel many people in astronomy who are into living healthy have certain things lacking, which you correctly pointed out in your last paragraphs.
ReplyDeleteSome people in astronomy are very nice but many people tend to suffer from some kind of ego. It is very surprising because the field we work in teaches how magnificent, elegant, complex our universe but we tend to forget it when it comes to our personal lives.
Nice point! I hadn't thought of it like that before. I guess, no matter how grand or awe-inspiring the subject matter, people are still people. Just feeling like a tiny speck in the enormous universe doesn't necessarily dispel the ego...
ReplyDelete