What Would a Rhythmanalysis Of a Qualitative Researcher’s Life Look Like?

Rhythmanalysis (Lefevbre, 2004) is a particular approach to qualitative research that asks us to consider the rhythms, the pauses, the discordant notes and the eurhythmic moments. As explained and utilised by Dawn Lyon (2016) it is an embodied approach to research, that incorporates a holistic, reflexive researcher, aware of their physicality and occupation of space, and positionality within their research. Like other embodied approaches to research (Leigh 2019), rhythmanalysis allows us to live, breathe and tune into the layered pattern of rhythms in our own bodies and the world around us, and in our own bodies in reaction and response to the world around us. As such, it requires a level of self-awareness, and conscious self-awareness of our embodied and reflexive processes (Leigh & Bailey 2013) similar to that sought in autoethnographic research (Bochner & Ellis 2016). However, a longitudinal rhythmanalysis would not be possible without a history of embodied practice.