“We name time when we say: every thing has its time. This means: everything which actually is, every being comes and goes at the right time and remains for a time during the time allotted to it. Every thing has its time.” —Martin Heidegger
When Leslie MacAvoy lived for a time in Johnson City, Tennessee, she was introduced to Iyengar yoga by her neighbor, Traci Carroll. Traci had been taking classes with Lillah Schwartz at Lighten Up Yoga, and that’s where Leslie started taking classes when she moved to Asheville. When One Center Yoga purchased Lighten Up, Leslie took classes at that studio. And when One Center closed, Leslie signed up for classes at the newly opened Iyengar Yoga Asheville, launched by Randy Loftis and Greta Kent-Stoll. Was it just a lucky coincidence that Leslie and Traci were neighbors, or was it Leslie’s “time” to be introduced to Iyengar Yoga?
If this kind of thinking makes your brain happy, or if you gravitate towards the ideas of the important though controversial German philosopher Martin Heidegger and other existentialists, then you already have much in common with our student of the month, Leslie MacAvoy, who has been a professor, in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities at East Tennessee State University since 2000, and is ending her 12-year position as Chair of the Department this June. Leslie’s Ph.D Dissertation from McGill University was titled “The Dialogicality of Dasein: Conversation and Encounter with/in Heidegger’s Being and Time.”
How, you might wonder, does someone grow up to become a philosopher?
Tree-Climbing Years
Leslie grew up in Ridgefield, Connecticut, in the 1970s. She has two younger brothers. Her father was a management consultant working first in New York City and then in Stamford, Connecticut, and her mom was a nursing professor.
“I was a tomboyish, bookish child,” Leslie admits. “Our house in Ridgefield was situated on two acres of woods and adjacent to open field. I have many happy memories of playing outside and climbing into trees with a good book.” In this idyllic setting, amateur theater took root. Leslie and her brothers would act out scenes from Wind in the Willows, and other books they’d read or movies they’d seen.
It was important to her parents that their children do well in school, and Leslie excelled. “We kids were expected to be good students, in part to ensure we could go to a good college,” Leslie remembers. In addition to academics, Leslie was drawn to theater in high school. “I had taken ballet classes, but I liked theater, even though I was a shy person. I even sang in some musicals!”
From Stage Lights to Inner Light
When it came to choosing a college, her school counselor pointed her towards Swarthmore College, in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, where Leslie received a Bachelor of Arts with Distinction in May 1988, with a double major in philosophy and psychology. “I was a well-rounded student, and I appreciated the liberal arts curriculum and the small size of Swarthmore,” Leslie clarifies. “I was equally drawn to psychology and philosophy, and I was able to write a senior thesis that combined both, although the emphasis leaned more into philosophy. Both subjects dealt with the construction of the Self, with existentialism being the core premise.”
In case it’s been a while since you read any philosophy other than Peanuts cartoons, here’s a simple definition: “Existentialism” is the philosophical belief that we are each responsible for creating purpose or meaning in our own lives. Gods, governments, teachers, or other authorities do not assign individual purpose and meaning to us.
Although both psychology and philosophy examine people’s behavior, they differ in their methodologies, purposes, and whether or not they take morality into account. As Leslie points out, “Humans are meaning makers. I’m intrigued by the idea that we have no fixed nature, which I take to mean that we have the capacity to continually grow and change. Philosophy for me is not about solving problems, but more about making sense of our existence as humans.”
Finding Meaning After College
After college, Leslie’s trajectory was anything but linear, and expressed the wide range of her interests. She still loved music and was a huge fan of new wave and post-punk British bands like New Order and the Smiths. She secured a work visa and moved to London for six months so she could follow the music she so admired. “I found a job working in a restaurant kitchen and discovered that I liked the work.”
When she left England, she moved to Manhattan for a job with CBS Fox Video, but it wasn’t a good fit. She accepted a job with CARE as an administrative assistant to people who supervised staff based overseas who provided technical advice on agricultural and natural resource projects in some 30 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. During the two years she worked at CARE, she also attended cooking school at night at what was then called Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School.
“The school emphasized the techniques of French cooking and was pretty comprehensive,” Leslie explains. “We learned many techniques for preparing and cooking proteins and vegetables, as well as sauces, pastry, and bread. I started in the avocational program and then switched to the vocational evening program. To pay for my classes, I was enrolled in their work-study trainee program; I started out washing dishes, and after I’d taken some classes, I was allowed to assist the chefs teaching those classes.”
Leslie was involved with the cooking school from 1989-1991. After she received her professional cooking certificate, she fully intended to find work as a chef. And then, you guessed it: change was on the horizon (remember, if we have no fixed nature…change is part of our journey).
Philosophy Calls Her Back
“During my time in Manhattan, I took a graduate philosophy class at The New School,” Leslie clarifies, “and it renewed my interest in the field. I decided to apply to graduate school.” With suggestions from her college professors about where to apply, she decided to accept an offer for a spot at McGill University in Montréal, Québec, where she focused on 19th and 20th-century Continental philosophy.
“One of the advantages of McGill is that you are a teaching assistant right away, so that helped pay for this program. I had fellowships and scholarships as well, and I also worked as a caterer to make ends meet.”
As you might imagine, jobs at the college level for philosophy teachers are scarce. Fortunately for Leslie, her accomplishments at McGill resulted in her being hired as a Visiting Assistant Professor to teach there from 1998 to 2000, at which time, she was hired by East Tennessee State University.
How a Philosopher Clears Her Mind
When Traci Carroll introduced Leslie to Iyengar yoga, she appreciated how its emphasis on alignment cleared her mind. “As you might imagine, I spend a lot of time in my head, and yoga helps me clear out the overthinking and the stress I might be carrying. Sometimes, if I’m wrestling with a philosophical question, a yoga class actually helps me solve it later after my mind is more relaxed. And the getting out of my head part helps me feel like a more integrated human being.”
Physical activity outdoors is helpful in this way, too. “I find that things that get me outside and moving are pretty grounding and help clear my mind.” In the warmer months, Leslie rides up Elk Mountain or Town Mountain Road twice a week, with a longer ride in the countryside on the weekend. In cooler months, she does more hiking, preferably in Pisgah National Forest. She also plants a vegetable/kitchen garden every spring so she can grow many of the things she wants to cook and eat.
Leslie starts a year of sabbatical this summer. Her main focus is to produce a first draft of a manuscript based on her decade of research on Heidegger’s phenomenology. She also plans to travel.
Homework for Beginners
She encourages students in her introductory philosophy classes to think about conceptual problems to which they think they already know the answers, or that they think are unanswerable. The goal is to get them to examine their views and the implicit assumptions that might be informing them. “These aren't beginning problems because they are easy or because there is only one right answer,” Leslie clarifies, “but because they are among the classic 'big questions' that most people think are worth pondering and are a good way to introduce students to the philosophical practice of self-examination and the challenge of having to provide reasons to support a position.
If you want a chance to exercise your mind in philosophical terms, here’s one of Leslie’s assignments:
“Most people have an intuition that they have a 'free will', but what is that? Many people hold that a will is free if it is not subject to causal determination. However, if the world operates according to a complex network of causal mechanisms, this suggests that everything in the world, including the will, is determined by some set of causal forces. Does this imply that the will is not free after all, or is it possible to reconcile these positions through a more complex understanding of the will and of freedom? If there is no free will, what implications does this have for thinking about individual agency and moral responsibility?”
This assignment will not be graded, but if you see Leslie after yoga class, you are welcome to share your insights with her. With the clarity she’s gained after savasana, she might (or might not!) be delighted to listen to your ideas. You both might discover that existentialism and yoga philosophy have much in common. No matter your personal views about Heidegger, we know for certain that Leslie—tree climber, music lover, chef, gardener, philosopher, yogini, and lifelong learner—is a terrific member of the Iyengar Yoga Asheville community. And given her attraction to the concept of the constancy of change, there likely will be many more surprising chapters to Leslie’s story.
“What is it that makes you you? What is the most fundamental aspect of you, present in everything that you do, value, desire, think, and hope? What is, at its core, your being, your existence? What is it to exist as a human being?” —Martin Heidegger
“Change is not something that we should fear. Rather, it is something that we should welcome. For without change, nothing in this world would ever grow or blossom, and no one in this world would ever move forward to become the person they’re meant to be.” —B.K.S. Iyengar
