The research presented here contributes to a developing sociological-phenomenological empirical corpus of literature by addressing the lived experience of asthma in non-élite sports participants and committed exercisers. Despite the prevalence of asthma and exercise-induced asthma/bronchoconstriction, there is a distinct lacuna in terms of qualitative research into living with asthma, and specifically in relation to participation in sports and physical cultures. Here we focus upon the aural dimension of asthma experiences, examining the role of ‘auditory attunement’ and ‘auditory work’ in sporting embodiment

Allen-Collinson, Jacquelyn

Owton, Helen

Siriwardena, Aloysius Niroshan

English

Open Research Online (The Open University)

Open Research OnlineThe Open University’s repository of research publicationsand other research outputsIt’s scary, scary, scary . . . ”: the lived experience ofasthma.Conference or Workshop ItemHow to cite:Allen-Collinson, Jacquelyn; Owton, Helen and Siriwardena, Aloysius Niroshan (2015). It’s scary, scary, scary. . . ”: the lived experience of asthma. In: Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust and University of LincolnResearch Forum, 25 Jun 2015, University of Lincoln.For guidance on citations see FAQs.c© [not recorded]Version: Version of RecordCopyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyrightowners. For more information on Open Research Online’s data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policiespage.oro.open.ac.ukSee	discussions,	stats,	and	author	profiles	for	this	publication	at:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279177600Allen-Collinson,	J.,	Owton,	H.	&Siriwardena,	N.	(2015)	"It's	scary,	scary,scary…	"	:	the	lived	experience	of	asthma,University	of	Lincoln/NHS	ResearchForum,	Lincoln,	25	June.Conference	Paper	·	June	2015READS183	authors,	including:Jacquelyn	Allen-CollinsonUniversity	of	Lincoln134	PUBLICATIONS			1,121	CITATIONS			SEE	PROFILEAloysius	Niroshan	SiriwardenaUniversity	of	Lincoln208	PUBLICATIONS			1,094	CITATIONS			SEE	PROFILEAvailable	from:	Jacquelyn	Allen-CollinsonRetrieved	on:	10	May	20161 “It’s scary, scary, scary…”:  the lived experience of asthma Dr Jacquelyn Allen-Collinson Director of Health Advancement Research Team (HART)  Dr Helen Owton, Open University Professor Niro Siriwardena, CaHRU  1 HARTresearch.org.uk Twitter: @HARTResearch  Research programme – 3 projects on lived experience of asthma in non-élite sportspeople – sociological phenomenology • 3-year research study including PhD project – Dr Helen Owton, at Exeter (now Open University) • 3-year autoethnographic & autophenomenographic study of women’s distance running  • 1-year Research Infrastructure Funded project at Lincoln (HART colleagues, Helen Owton, Niro Siriwardena) – data analysis ongoing  JAC 2 Today specific focus on two  dimensions: • Asthma as ‘dys-ease’ (Leder, 1990) – lack of control • Bodily attunement & learning control Asthma • Breathing disorder, inflammation of airways deleteriously affects pulmonary ventilation; myriad symptoms e.g. coughing, wheezing, breathlessness • >5 million people with asthma in UK, attacks result in hospitalisation of sufferer every 7 minutes (Asthma UK website, 2013) • c. 3 people per day die from an asthma attack (Asthma UK website, 2015) • Exercise-induced bronchoconstriction (EIB) found in c. 80-90% of asthmatics – exercise & physical activity therefore as problematic • Moderate/intense physical activity tends to provoke bronchoconstriction  • But regular physical activity - physical & psychosocial benefits  • Distinct dearth of qualitative research on lived experience of asthma amongst sports participants & committed exercisers  3 Participant (pseudonym) Age   Sports participation & current physical activity level Asthma sub-type (if any) Asthma severity Autophenomeno-grapher 52   Distance runner (serious leisure) EIB Mild controlled   Football, golf, skiing Brittle asthma Severe Olena 23   (serious leisure) EIB uncontrolled       Ex marathon runner Brittle asthma Severe Peter 60   Cycling (recreational) EIB controlled       ex-professional ballerina Late onset Mild Jane 87   (very light physical activity)   controlled       Horse riding, running Allergies Severe Esta 33   (serious leisure)  Not EIB controlled     Marathon runner   Severe Betty 31   (elite/serious leisure) EIB controlled     Swimming   Mild Lucy 22   (recreational) EIB controlled     Football, cycling, swimming   Severe Eve 24   (serious leisure)   uncontrolled     Ex rugby; football mild Matt 24   cricket (recreational) EIB uncontrolled     Walking Late onset mild Joanne 72   (recreational)   controlled     ex-squash player; Late onset mild Brian 70   gym, skiing (recreational)   controlled     running, exercise, aerobics mild Molly 33   (recreational)   controlled     Golf player/climber Late onset mild Ivor 49   (recreational)   uncontrolled     Running, martial arts Allergies changing Nick 36   (serious leisure) EIB controlled     Footballer (serious leisure) Allergies mild Steven 24   running, cycling EIB Controlled             JAC 4 Table 1: Participants in the interview-based study 1) Asthma as generative of ‘dys-ease’ • Leder (1990): in ‘normal’, healthy state, mundane, taken-for-granted experience of the body marked by ‘ease’- lack of self-reflection & self-awareness • Body as ‘backgrounded’, ‘absent’; not focus of intentionality; thus ‘disappears’ • When everyday bodily routines interrupted -  e.g. illness, pain, injury, intense sensation • Body breaks into consciousness; thus ‘dys-appears’  • So, asthma body dys-appears when breathing becomes difficult -  self-conscious awareness of being a body in the world   JAC 5 • For those suffering more severe asthma attacks, unpredictability & onslaught of asthma upon the body generated feelings of panic, Heideggerian (2005) ‘thrownness’, of being ‘caught out’ by one’s own body, reliant upon inhaler:  • It just feels like I can't, I can't get the air in... and that's the main uncomfortableness of it. But then it's like the panic side of things as well, is that I'm not getting the air in at the moment. I can't sort of get enough air [laughs] to make me feel good. You know when you feel satisfied and you have a deep breath, I can't sort of get that… and that's what makes me feel uncomfortable and then it's obviously like, oh god, I'm not breathing. This isn't working, that yeah that, mainly physiological but it's also shit, panic, the panic side.  (Lucy, 20s, swimmer)    JAC 6 … panicky […] not very nice… your chest just doesn’t get, bring in the air in… so… um… it’s a bit scary… but then you take your blue inhaler and it’s alright. (Jane, 80s, former ballet dancer)  2 JAC 7 • Male participant evocatively described the ‘black zone’, when an asthma episode would develop into a severe, life-threatening attack:  •  …you can’t breathe either way in or out, for some time, I think that’s black… They do say if you drown you get this sense of beautiful calm and I did not get that. It was… vigorous. Choked, glorifying panic of… I have to find a way to get air into my lungs... It was very, very scary. It was more scary than dangling off a cliff or, you know, being in a car accident or anything that’s like, oh this is it then. It’s scary, scary, scary thing and it’s immediate, and there’s no time for your life to flash before you, you just think, how the f**k am I going to breathe? (Ivor, 40s, golf player and climber)   JAC 8 Frightening for others • On a personal basis, I  mentioned a minute ago I didn’t realise my daughter  had exercise induced asthma until she was running in a school race. And she was coming round the corner of the field in her little running race, her lips were blue and I thought, and she was really struggling to breath.  • So although we suspected then she might be borderline asthmatic seeing her like that, and that was strictly exercise induced, it’s quite frightening to see actually. (Nurse practitioner) JAC 9 2) Bodily attunement: breathing ‘work’  • Sociological & anthropological literature on sensorium - ethnographies of sound, the soundscape, ‘acoustic knowing’  • ‘Deep listening’: careful, analytic auditory attention; attunement to nuanced & multiple layers of meaning enfolded in sound (Allen-Collinson & Owton, 2014) • For asthmatics - noisy, heavy breathing, wheezing, coughing, spluttering = highly salient ‘non-symbolic sonorous expressions’ (Vannini et al., 2010: 331)  • People with asthma perennially ‘listen’ to their bodies, anticipating & monitoring symptoms  • Sportspeople & exercisers - often become acutely aware of, and attuned to their & others’ breathing patterns through their training (Hockey & Allen-Collinson, 2007) • Motivated to manage their asthma & control the body JAC 10 • Highly refined auditory work & careful monitoring of sound AND proprioceptive indicators (e.g. feelings emanating from lungs, bronchi & trachea) evident in the data  • Fine corporeal attunement to tiny nuanced changes in the body & body-world relationship:  • When I’m doing sport … you’re constantly aware of you know, the way you’re breathing and the air … your mouth and nose covered in cling film or like a carrier bag, and you’ve got a few tiny pin pricks in it to let the air in. (Eve, 20s, football, cycling, swimming)    JAC 11 • I can by now detect the exact moment that signals when my breathing will tip into wheezing and asthma – or rather to be more precise, the exact exhalation.  There is something about the quality of that outward breath that alerts me to an imminent bout, a tightening of throat and upper thorax, a tight squeak on exhalation, and I know at that point I have to act… It’s difficult to describe exactly, but I’ve learnt how to steady my breath, to drop the pace, just fractionally, to think calm…reduce the friction in my intake of breath and relax the small depressed area between my clavicles.   • (Autophenomenography, February 2008)  JAC 12 3 Somatic learning & control • With benefit of lived experience & developed attunement to body’s reactions to EIB, some participants learned to expect & predict (to some extent) somatic reactions, engendering feelings of being more in control:  • I’d start the run and within 5 minutes, I’d notice that my breathing’s a bit restricted, but after about half an hour and 25 minutes, it goes away… (Betty, 30s, marathon runner)  • I can think of [when] asthma was a real nightmare. Loads of times, when I’ve been running with X, and going whoa, I’m really wheezing here at the end… I’d be going [heavy wheezing noises] and waiting for it to calm down, but knowing that that’s what you do… we’re both struggling hard, trying to beat each other … lungs burst, legs burstin’, everything’s burstin’… (Nick, 30s, runner, martial artist) JAC 13 • They are really motivated the ones I have come across, they manage themselves so well because they are dedicated to training they know their bodies, they listen to their bodies so they are the best managed ones. (Nurse practitioner)  • I think that’s where your treatment plan comes in, because if you can devise your treatment plan with your patient you have got them on board, they are fully aware then what to do and when to do it. You are giving them the control with the right information and education to go and be independent which is what we are trying to promote. And a normal lifestyle. (Nurse practitioner)   JAC 14 Patient & practitioner co-working Why sociological phenomenology? Extends/challenges conceptualisation of ‘object body’ (Körper) of much biomedical science – acknowledges ‘subject body’, the lived body (Leib)  Important for healthcare professionals, coaches, et al. involved in support of athletes/sportspeople to listen to, respect, seek to understand the ‘insider’ perspective Sportspeople have often developed high degree of attunement to somatic signals Treatment plan as co-production between patient and healthcare professional  Implications for better, tailored treatment modalities & programmes – potential for enhanced adherence over longer time-frame  15 Bibliography   • Allen-Collinson, J. (2009) Sporting embodiment: sports studies and the (continuing) promise of phenomenology, Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise, 1 (3): 279-296. • Allen-Collinson, J. (2011a) Intention and epochē in tension: autophenomenography, bracketing and a novel approach to researching sporting embodiment, Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise & Health, 3 (1): 48-62. • Allen-Collinson, J. (2011b) Feminist phenomenology and the woman in the running body, Sport, Ethics & Philosophy, 5 (3): 287-302. • Allen-Collinson, J. and Leledaki, A. (2014) Sensing the outdoors: a visual and haptic phenomenology of outdoor exercise embodiment, Leisure Studies. Online early. At:http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02614367.2014.923499  • Allen-Collinson, J. and Owton, H. (2014) Take a deep breath: asthma, sporting embodiment, the senses, and ‘auditory work’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 49 (5): 592-608. http://irs.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/11/04/1012690212463918 • Hockey, J. and Allen-Collinson, J. (2007) Grasping the Phenomenology of Sporting Bodies. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 42(2): 115-131. • Leder, D. (1990) The Absent Body. Chicago: University of Chicago. • Owton, H. and Allen-Collinson, J. (2014) Conformers, contesters, and creators: vignettes of asthma identities and sporting embodiment, International Review for the Sociology of Sport. Online early . • Owton, H.,  Allen-Collinson, J. and Siriwardena, A. N. (2015) Using a narrative approach in clinical practice to facilitate change in asthma patients, Chest. Online early: http://journal.publications.chestnet.org/article.aspx?articleid=2210009 • Synnott, A. (1993) The Body Social: Symbolism, Self and Society. London: Routledge.  16 

It’s scary, scary, scary …”: the lived experience of asthma.

http://oro.open.ac.uk/46267/1/Allen-Collinson.Owton.Siriwardena.Lived%20experience%20of%20Asthma.Research%20forum%202015.pdf

It’s scary, scary, scary …”: the lived experience of asthma.

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Open Research Online (The Open University)