Jo Westcombe
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Thank you, Jersey. Your post shook me and was (as I replied to Ana) an important reminder for me that, even if a group receives “the same” guided meditation, the responses and the energy required for processing / negotiating what comes up will be vastly different. This is an important lesson for me as a teacher.
Thank you for sharing, and I hope you will continue to find some more moments of rest in the breath.Thank you, Ana. Reading your response after Jersey’s was very helpful. There we all were on Saturday, receiving the same instruction, on the same Zoom wall, for the same amount of time, and however those minutes were going for me, everyone else individually was on their own path, being tripped up by their own trailing burdens and sent down their own meanders and sidetracks, and with some of us navigating some very deep holes.
I’m guessing there will be both mundane and magical intersections as well as supportive company on these individual journeys over the next few weeks. I like the idea of a labyrinth and us all being in it together as we find our separate ways through.Supporting discovery
As a teacher of other things, I have to start with clarifying that the guiding principle mentioned today of “We are not hear to teach, but to help people discover” really depends on your definition of “teach”. If we assume that it refers to the approach of “I know my stuff and am going to tell you how to do it, otherwise you’ll do it wrong,” then no, that is not the way to do any teaching. Instead, helping people to discover is much more likely to bear fruit, and to be rewarding for both teacher (yes, that word) and student. Because we’re on the Buddhist path and therefore love lists, here might be three elements of supporting discovery: safety, structure and space.Firstly, if you want to take anyone on a learning journey, you have to build some sort of relationship. Learners have different needs, but I think trusting the teacher would be regarded as a necessity, especially if the teacher starts the course by saying something terrifying like “I’m not going to teach you, but I’m going to help you to discover xyz yourself.” The learner needs to know that the teacher has some sort of credibility, content-wise, that they seem to be competent in the teaching business, that they show some interest in their students, that they turn up to lessons, are consistent, can tell a good story – these might be important to a learner to different degrees, but make up the foundations for a student to feel that they are in a secure place, in good hands and, because they can relax, that learning can happen.
A feeling of security is also fostered by the “containment” that we heard about today. I love containers. They have a base and sides and the idea is that you can pour or tip all sorts of stuff (from boring to magic) in and keep it in there without it leaking out or getting lost. Sometimes it’s just reassuring to have a row of containers on a shelf that all have the same form or colour. In meditation practice, this structure almost certainly means starting and finishing each meditation session in the same way, e.g. with a bell, or taking your seat and feeling your feet on the floor or bottom on the cushion. In teaching, it can involve including the same phrases or elements of the practice each session, which is in turn a great basis for titrating any new stuff. Students can rely on certain structural things being present in each session, and this, along with the more general safe environment allows them to try new things out – think small bird learning to fly from big branch.
So, to extend that idea, the small bird leaves the security of the big branch to launch itself into the biggest space it has ever encountered. This is where not having some sort of guide would be probably be foolish, but still, the bird “gotta fly”. In meditation, the teacher can be there with suggestions: “If this happens, try this. If that didn’t work, maybe do this instead”. It’s useful to warn against expectations and ambition. It’s essential to remind people that the word “practice” is used for a reason. Ultimately the point is to accompany students on their journey of discovery, to be a responsible teacher, but not to hold ourselves responsible for them.
This ties in with the idea of caring about rather than taking care of students. Even if we are able to think someone else’s thoughts (aka be a good listener), we are not going to be able to be inside someone else’s body, have the day they are having or take the meditation journey they are taking. They are going to be discovering stuff anyway – however we teach, but we can give safety, offer structure and allow space for things to grow.
Hello everyone,
I’m Jo Westcombe. I’m from the UK originally but have lived in Southern Germany (Munich and environs) since my early 20s. I teach English at a small university, and yoga in our village sports club; in both places meditation is involved! I live with a man and a teenager and do dog things and choir things.
In terms of my reasons for doing this course, the expression “open-hearted rigour” has just popped into my head, so I will start with that and see how we go!