Telling tales: an inquiry into being and becoming

This is an inquiry into the process of being and becoming through the practice of telling tales. In it, I explore the shifting narrative boundaries between the real and the makebelieve and examine the potential of embodied story‐telling in my personal and professional practices. In the course of this inquiry, I developed a research methodology in which I re‐tell folk tales “from the inside”, by improvised freefall talking in character, while filming myself on my iPhone. These filmed videos became the source material for subsequent cycles of inquiry. My embodied story‐telling method was inspired by the theories of Bateson on Learning III, Stanislavski on method acting and contemporary academic Dr Susan Greenwood on magical consciousness, which together represent multiple ways of “being another”. I inquired into the practice implications of an expanded sense of self that is not “bound by skin” (Bateson 1972); of making use in practice of the “magic if” (Stanislavski 1936); and of experiencing what Greenwood (2010) describes as “an orientation to life that participates in an inspirited world through emotion, intuition and imagination.” In the process of embodied story‐telling, I experienced the world, myself and others differently. Working within the frameworks of a relational ontology and an expanded epistemology, I redefined my own perception of self as being inherently relational and discovered a heightened sense of connectedness with others and with the natural world. I describe the impact of relational selfhood on my practice and suggest potential areas of practice development. I share with the reader how, in the course of this narrative inquiry I rediscovered enchantment and reclaimed it for my daily practice by, in the words of John Updike (1996), “giving the mundane its beautiful due”. Specifically, I experienced through embodied story‐telling what Foucault describes as the “insurrection of subjugated knowledges” and reinstated feminine, domestic and magical realms of knowing