Jana Sample
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Yes, Ginny, I absolutely agree! I often feel like I am receiving so much, it is such a gift. So glad to have shared this experience with you, too!
David, I love this – “not everything depends on how well you prepare your work, but that attention to the group and making people feel recognized and welcome is essential.” It is so true, the presence and attention of a teacher can be much more valuable than the course material. Creating space for a real relationship between teacher and student is such a special thing. I can still remember some of my teachers as a child and how much their care and encouragement helped me feel confident and safe to express myself authentically. It really does make a difference. It’s wonderful to know that kids are being supported by teachers like you.
It’s been lovely to share this experience with you. 🙂Anne, I also sometimes catch myself in this place of working to meet everyone’s needs and tipping into inauthenticity. I’m happy to know that I can catch myself if I get here, though, and take a pause to recenter. Staying with a regular practice helps so much.
I love what you say about admitting your mistakes and your willingness to be goofy! For me both of these qualities are key to a successful learning environment. 🙂A sense of humor, so important! I’m so glad you mentioned this, Helene. As a student this is one of my favorite qualities in a teacher, it really makes all the difference in my learning process.
I’ve really enjoyed your writing throughout these weeks. Thank you for all that you’ve shared.Let’s do it! Could be so lovely. My email is jana.sample@gmail.com. Let me know if you want to explore some ideas and try to get it going. 🙂
David and Helene, I can relate so clearly with what you’ve expressed. I usually think of how, when with my family, I keep it really surface level. There is not much real intimacy there, and the few times in my adult life that I have attempted to find that place of depth it has ended in a lot of disappointment and frustration. What you say, David, “knowing others have felt the same way also makes me feel much less alone,” is naming my current feeling exactly. It’s been such a pleasure to share this experience with you all. <3
First of all, it is hard to believe we are already here! This experience has been, dramatic as it sounds, life changing for me. The best way I can find to describe this is, it feels like I have remembered a part of myself that somehow I forgot along the way.
I have found the essay writing exercise each week to be a profound experience in contemplation and feeling into my experience in this life. And reading everyone’s essays has been often equally profound! There is so much widsom in this group. Our Saturday sessions have been so lovely, it has been such a pleasure to set aside those hours for presence and community. I am so grateful for our time together. Thank you all, and thank you Susan, so much, for creating this incredible opportunity.And now, my gifts and challenges as a teacher…
I find that I have a gift for creating a calm and safe space for people to feel grounded and secure, I often get this feedback from patients and students. It is a joy for me to listen to people and be fully present for them. I feel this is something that every human needs and many do not often have, so I am so grateful to be in a position to offer this. And to receive this! The relationship that comes from being present for another is beautiful, I cherish the realness of the interactions.
It has also become clear over the years that I have a strong intuitive sense as long as I am present and quiet enough to let it through. Sometimes I don’t feel that the words coming out of my mouth are mine, it almost feels like I am a conduit. I’ve learned that if I am not sure how to respond the best thing to do is take a breath and pause, and often the right words or sentiments come.I believe my biggest challenge is insecurity. It’s not even that I don’t feel confident in what I know to be true, but I guess it’s more about wondering how what I share will be received. This is a deep shadow that exists in many aspects of my life and it shows up full force when I’m teaching anything or sharing in a professional situation. I do not know that it presents itself obviously in an outward way while I am teaching but it is definitely present for me, and maybe even more in my preparation and leading up to the actual time of teaching than during. Over the years I have learned to acknowledge its presence and work with it, but it can still be an almost immobilizing factor sometimes.
Specifically in the context of teaching meditation, I notice that I sometimes over-do it with instruction, like saying too much. I am trying to keep it more simple and take plenty of time, this seems to help.Over the last week I’ve felt a range of emotions leading up to this ending… a bit of grief and also relief and joy, mostly deep gratitude. Again, thank you all for sharing this experience.
Erin, what an intense experience this must have been, both in difficulty and beauty. I love what you say here, “The clarity of the teachings are the scaffold and love is the determination, the force that keeps my momentum. I painfully learned that this practice is alive, it doesn’t depend on any one person.” This is so touching and powerful. Thank you so much for sharing. Also I am totally with you in your loneliness as a practitioner. If you ever want to be in a small practitioner group to talk about the stuff that no one else wants to hear, I would be so happy to be part of it as well! <3
Rena, I love what you say: ‘…our deepest teaching presence emerges not despite our struggles, but through them.’ And I fully agree that vulnerability is such an asset when working with others and cultivating connection. And such a gift! And can also be a tricky dance of navigating boundaries. I feel like I’m sitting with this challenge every time I work with someone in a practitioner / teacher role, but through this course I’ve been so much more aware of it. Thank you for your words, I fully identify!
Staying fully present for others can sometimes be a challenge even when I am not having my own intense experience, and obviously even more so when I am. 🙂
This happens in varying degrees for me in my work as a Chinese medicine practitioner as I often sit and listen to my patients as a significant part of our sessions. I can remember having a difficult time more than once when I was working with the Veteran’s Affairs office and seeing many patients who were coming with intense experiences from their time serving in the US military. So many of these people had been in circumstances that I could never imagine, and would recount these instances with such composure. I, on the other hand, was not always feeling so composed (on the inside at least).
One time I remember very clearly was while treating a man who had been in a terrible explosion in a war situation and somehow made it out alive. His story was incredibly hard to hear. I was able to listen fully and even ask a few questions while keeping myself together. After our intake I left the room to give him a chance to make himself comfortable before his treatment, and I remember the tears coming so fast as soon as I was on the other side of the closed door. I had to let myself cry for a few minutes, then regain composure and go back into the room and finish the treatment.
I’m quite certain my experience enabled me to be even more present for his experience in the end. We had many sessions together and he always seemed happy to be there with me. It was an honor to be able to work with a population of people who are so often forgotten by the health care system. Even though it was often difficult for me in the moment, overall I found it to be such an enriching experience to have the opportunity to hear these stories and offer care and compassion.Another specific instance that comes up is when I was seeing patients throughout a time of great heartbreak. My ex decided to break it to me that he was no longer interested in continuing our nearly 7 year relationship as I was on my way out the door headed to work. I remember a daze of weeks of sobbing in between patients. Much later some of my more longterm patients who sometimes asked me about my life were very surprised to hear that I was now single and living alone, and wondering how I had been dealing with the breakup and ensuing heartbreak during the past months without them knowing. I realized that during that time, in the depths of my grief, I was able to focus so clearly on my patients’ experiences and be so fully present with them because it was a brief time in my day when I could put my own suffering aside. I think it was therapeutic for me to keep remembering that I was not the only one in pain because I was listening and feeling compassion for others’ experiences. And after all I think it was a great way to find compassion for myself and my patients. You really never know what someone else is going through.
David, what a wonderful idea to have this time for students to share their experiences. It makes me think, what would the world be like if we all had someone to take time and listen like this? It’s so important, and especially for children whose experiences are often overlooked. Thank you for your work. 🙂
Thank you, Kate, for sharing what you found. I also feel like I don’t know so much about this topic of trauma and I really appreciate the feeling that we are learning together.
I love this idea of journaling the experience of each sense, so lovely. So often we frame experiences with only one or two of our senses. It’s such a great way to really be present in the experience by feeling it through each sense.
And thank you for the Jung quote, this is brilliant. 🙂Rena, I feel your smile and the gratitude of your last paragraph so fully! I am smiling with you and feeling also so thankful for the magnetism that brought me here, with all of you in this course. Thank you!
