Teaching as a Form of Contemplative Practice

Maybe you’re like me–the pairing of  the words teaching and contemplation is about as harmonious as fingernails on a piece of slate.  My response to that pairing is rooted in my early experiences with contemplative practice. My great-aunt was a Sister of the Good Shepherd and lived in a cloistered convent. When I questioned my mother about what the word cloister meant, she told me that the sisters could not leave the convent and that all of their visits were conducted from behind a screen.

“What do they do all day?”, I asked my mother.

“Pray,” was her simple response.

To a little girl who loved people, that  isolated life of prayer and seeing visitors from behind a screen made no sense.  Contemplation seemed to be reserved for nuns in a cloister–it had nothing to do with the outside world where I lived. My early experience may have clouded my understanding of the riches waiting in contemplative practice, but half-a-lifetime later, I am finally discovering contemplation’s gifts.

I began meditating in earnest about eight years ago when I was working in a challenging teaching situation. The angry woman I taught with  often used sarcasm with the students. Sometimes she was openly hostile and contemptuous of my ideas. I never knew what I would find when I worked with her, so I often found myself in a state of hyper-vigilance.

A friend suggested that I try meditation to help me calm my mind, especially at night when I began to dread the next day and replay all kinds of awful scenarios from our interactions. At first, the only effect I could see was that I slept well after I meditated. But as time passed, I found myself calmer in the face of my colleague’s tirades. I began to observe her behavior and to notice how I felt inside. I breathed more easily. And I was able to choose my words and actions rather than shutting down or fleeing.

Another gift of mediation was that I began to talk back to my initial judgments. If I saw my administrator, I sent her love instead of negative thoughts. When I had a challenging student in the class, I paused for a moment before I spoke. I was more tuned into my bodily sensations and how my inner state was affecting my actions.

Meditation
The Tree of Contemplative Practices

I began to realize that all of the skills I practiced during mediation were slowly showing up during my work hours. Just as I had learned to observe any  thoughts that arose during my sitting practice, I was now observing thoughts during the day, reigning in my wandering mind. In that brief space between observation and awareness, I found some clarity and calm. Teaching was actually becoming a form of contemplative practice.

Mirabi Bush, a mediation teacher, was recently a guest on Krista Tippett;s radio show, On Being. Bush discusses how she learned mediation in India doing the 1960s, and how she returned to the United States, “… when I came back two years later, I was pregnant and married and had a child then. So I couldn’t — when we first came back, meditation — we still had the model of it[meditation] being monastic. And so having a child and being a meditation teacher was just — no one could imagine that… ” (from On Being, 9-2016).

But Bush goes on to talk about her work in the world now and how she creates mindfulness programs in businesses such as Google, where she teaches a program called “Search Inside Yourself.”  The program blends a cultivation of mindfulness and emotional intelligence to help Google’s engineers bring a deeper awareness to the human dimensions of their work and their own role in the experiences and policies they create for people.

But back to the classroom—back to the place where kids daydream and  teachers count the minutes until the class ends. In that crowded space, mindfulness can be as powerful a tool as a smart board, benefitting both teachers and students.   I leave you with the words of William James, writing in The Principles of Psychology from 1890:

“The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again is the very root of judgment, character, and will.”  

Holding on, and Letting Go: Mindy Abbott on Joy and Pain

I’d like to welcome Mindy Abbott to my blog. Mindy and I met a few years ago at Howard Community College’s Blackbird Poetry Festival, the college’s annual celebration of poetry held every April.  More recently, Mindy and I have worked together in an informal critique group, punctuated by homemade meals shared across our kitchen tables.  Mindy brings a wealth of experience as a counselor, teacher, writer, and of course, a wonderful friend. Welcome, Mindy!

“It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.”
Billy Collins ~ On Turning Ten

Mindy Abbott, Montepulciano, Italy
Mindy Abbott, Montepulciano, Italy

In my earliest memory I am sitting in cool, soft grass on a hot day, peaceful in a big, white tent. Big kids’ voices sing. I am too young to know all the words, but these I remember: “Yes, Jesus loves me…” I am safe, part of a community, and loved.

My educator parents, adorable younger siblings, and extended family made my young life beautiful. Mom created my hand-smocked dresses. Both my father and grandfather cuddled me while reading books of rhymes and fairy tales. I lived my life with my senses, playing among lilies of the valley, inhaling their scent, exploring their tiny white bells and surprisingly sturdy little stems. I stretched out with my dad on the beach of a Maine lake, naming the constellations and seeing, for the first time, the dancing pink and green aurora borealis – the northern lights. Life was magical. Our family was not fancy, but was rich in things that really mattered. We gave thanks.

As I grew, life became more, well, life. That freckled kid down the street stole my hat and threw it in the highest branches of a maple. I learned to climb tall trees. Sometimes my mother’s body was present while her mind traveled circular paths, but the reading she modeled let me instead travel by tesseract, feel the sting of paint from Michelangelo’s ceiling in my eye. Later, when a real big, bad wolf waited for me on a path one night, I discovered ferocity, and a strong, loving man who would be there for me. So how is it that, when I married and started my own family, I somehow believed that I could keep us all in the big white tent?

“Life is brutiful. The brutal and the beautiful cannot be separated, we must embrace both or neither.”
~ Glennon Doyle Melton, Momastery, 12-23-2011.

I laugh a lot. I thrive in nature, literally stopping to “smell the roses”. That’s the way I was as a young mom. But I believed myths: bad things wouldn’t happen if I were good enough; if I experienced pain, I should “tough it out”; and the big one, that I was in charge. Ha! I picture God laughing at this, saying “Isn’t she just the cutest?” I thought that diligence would protect me and my little family. But, of course, life came along, not as I had pictured it, but the way it really is: surgeries, loss, heartbreak, being transferred by employers from the people and places we loved. I tried to foresee and prevent pain for myself and my family, but it still snuck in, no matter how hard I worked or sincerely I prayed. I tended to react with “well, could be worse!” That was true but, finally, constantly discounting stress and pain wasn’t working for me. Nor, actually the people I loved. Some pain is too important to be cheered up. It needs to be heard, held gently, and honored. There had to be a better balance. I couldn’t control life.

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
~ Rumi

As a sailor, I know that I do not control the winds, nor the waves; I can only adjust my sails. I was introduced to mindfulness meditation as a pain and stress management technique. As a teacher, the science of mindfulness results appealed to me. The formula “pain x resistance = suffering” made sense. For example, the first sensation when I lifted a stubborn rental car headrest and heard something in my shoulder pop was pain! But why add worries about future activities that might be affected, images of a year with a non-functioning arm, or self-blame? It just makes things worse. Applying self-compassion to the shoulder, then doing a meditation on the rest of the body parts that were doing just fine, helped me keep my physical pain in perspective, reduce my blood pressure, and relax.

Mindfulness turbocharged my religious beliefs with deeper awareness, and a stillness that lets me better hear the holy guidance that sometimes comes in a whisper or a nudge. Mindfulness helped me learn patience, acceptance, and peace.

I have retained my childhood sense of awe, adventure, gratitude, unconditional love, and the seemingly paradoxical senses of belonging and independence. I still laugh, bury my nose in roses, and draw on nature the way that deep roots draw nourishment from the earth. But pain has helped me grow. I found and released my myths. I no longer expect prayer to “fix” things, but feel the Holy Spirit with me through the most difficult moments. I listen more intently. I am more sensitive to the way that my energy affects others. My prayers now include a blessing:

May we all be free of suffering;
may we remember that we are truly known and deeply loved;
may we give and receive compassion and respect;
may we laugh; and
may we be at peace, come what may.

If you’d like to explore mindfulness meditation, try these talks by Tara Brach http://www.tarabrach.com/talks-for-beginners/ , guided meditation by Elisha Goldstein https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvbm4ITpAR0, an MBSR course or mindfulness group, or visit the Insight Meditation Community of Washington.

Melinda “Mindy” Abbott, BSW, M.Ed., worked in adult and pediatric long-term care before teaching public school in three states. An award-winning teacher in Maryland, she later co-taught mindfulness for children, trained in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in Mind-Body Medicine, and published poems as Melinda Bennington. Her heart resides in family, friends, and nature.