Niki Pappas
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Hi Mike — I hope it works out for you to teach meditation classes at your yoga studio, and really appreciate your self-knowledge and intention — “I will make mistakes if I’m not mindful, but I hope not to repeat mistakes.” Applies everywhere in life, doesn’t it? : ) I expect you will find one-on-one teaching/guidance really fulfilling too — it is a gift to focus on and deeply listen to just one other at a time, and to be able to explore the “what do you think?” with them. Thanks!
Hi Erin — you raise such a good point in your second paragraph, and I agree with your planned approach to people’s questions about Buddhism. For me, Susan’s approach is so helpful — she’s incredibly knowledgeable and experienced and shares that, while also conveying the immensity and bottomlessness of the Dharma that we are exploring. It gives me a feeling of comfort, in a way, that we are capable of sharing what we understand, while being held by the teachings that have persisted over millenia, and if we can support others in connecting to that tradition, then we have really been of service. Thank you!
I do feel prepared to begin offering one-on-one meditation instruction and also to continuously learn for and from my students. I am forever a student too, though when I am in the role of guide or facilitator or teacher, I am responsible for maintaining the appropriate orientation and boundaries of that role. I’m grateful for everything we’ve been discussing over the past few training sessions about orientation and boundaries. For the past dozen years I’ve worked one-on-one as a coach and teacher and guide, and with groups as a facilitator, and this course has helped me make sense of and see through-lines in my experience across time.
Regarding meditation instruction specifically, it has been lovely to listen to many of Susan’s daily meditations and hear the variation across sessions. Sometimes her language is very straightforward and to the point, other times it contains more imagery. Sometimes there is a little more psychological distance and other times more playfulness and (inter)personality. However, competence, respect, and warmth always come through, and that’s an appealing and effective combination. As I contemplate working with people as a meditation teacher and guide, I can imagine how my instruction will vary and evolve with my students, depending on them — their situation and condition, their style and type, their experience — and on our relationship working together over time. And of course, this is in parallel to what has taken place and continues to take place, as I work with people in my various roles.
Thank you, Susan, and congratulations on the very healthy relationship you appear to have with money! I see and hear such moderation and realism and respect — for students and teachers, for women and men, for traditions — in your comments.
Beautiful response, MaryBeth, and not surprising since I’m lucky enough to know you quite well! We are each in a stage of life and fortunate position where we are able to be of service without the requirements of charging and business building and all the rest. I’m so grateful for that and I wish I could wave a magic wand and remove the shadows of shame and anxieties about worth and value that commonly pervade our relationship with money.
My intention is to offer meditation guidance pro bono. This is consistent with a decision I made last summer (on my 63rd birthday) to simply offer all of my one-on-one guidance and group facilitation free of charge. I do get paid for a little bit of Enneagram typing work that I do for another teacher, but otherwise my service is on a volunteer or pro bono basis, and I see it staying that way unless something currently invisible unfolds.
It was a relief for me to make that transition. My work life has comprised diverse phases and stages, with diverse paychecks to match — from partnership in a privately held marketing research firm on the high end to yoga teacher on the low end. I have struggled with the way our culture and economy reward certain types of work with huge monetary sums and other types of work — arguably so much more important for the benefit of humanity — with almost nothing. Personally, I remember the dissonance I felt when I stepped out of the corporate workforce for a few years in the mid-90s when my boys were little… I went from being a highly paid yuppie with premium status on airplanes and in hotels (so important!), to a harried mom with a baby in a stroller and a toddler, looked at askance in those same spaces. I remember thinking, but I’m the same person… why does it feel like my value / my worth is so different now?! (And of course my boys were adorable and perfectly well-behaved — ha!)
These days I feel a congruence among my various “roles” — as daughter who moved to be near her aging and ailing father, as life guide to a handful of clients, as facilitator / teacher in various groups, as end-of-life & hospice volunteer, as occasional writer, as mother to two young adult sons, as fiancée to an amazing man, as friend and neighbor, as Buddhist and meditation practitioner — and my soul, and that feels really good.
Hi Elizabeth — wow, I don’t know if I can imagine a situation with more emotional complexity than a retreat with 10+ couples! Kudos to your leader, and to you and all the participants for co-creating a brave and supportive environment.
And I love how your self-awareness comes through in the less ideal conditions offered by many CEU courses. It makes all the sense in the world that you’ve become more discerning about which ones will be most pleasant and productive for you!Hi Liana — oh I cringed at your descriptions of the (much!) less than ideal learning environments and experiences with your high school chemistry and math teachers. Such mocking of individual students is so unacceptable, and it is also so sad that the math teacher was just sort of accepted in the culture of the school. What a helpless feeling to have no one to talk with about it!
And happy day that you had college experiences that were at the other end of the spectrum! I agree that it’s interesting that you don’t remember so many specifics about how you felt about the teachers themselves, but that you know you thrived in the open and respectful learning environments they created. I wonder whether part of it was that those lovely college teachers somehow made everyone feel worthy and cared for, with no (sadly) memorable cruel and spiky encounters with particular students.
Thank you!I have completed two yoga teacher trainings, a 200hr one and, nearly two years later, a 300hr one that included Thai yoga bodywork. I had the same wonderful teacher for both, Will Brashear, but the settings were completely different. The first training was held at Trihealth Wellness Center in Cincinnati, a very corporate gym facility with pools, classes, bros lifting weights, running tracks, a smoothie cafeteria, and more. It was bright and spacious but also had that smell that large-scale fitness facilities have! Will did his best to carve out space for our circles and teaching and class sessions, but the space made it difficult to feel much intimacy within our group or connect with spiritual energy of any kind. I do remember many of my fellow teachers with affection, though, and the training was clearly enticing enough that I wanted more!
My second training took place in a very different setting called the Lotus Yoga Temple, which lived on the second floor of a former Masonic temple, up creaky stairs into quirky spaces with tiered levels around the main open space, and all carpeted in vivid blue with gorgeous tall windows, colorful wall hangings, and statues all around. Just going in there took your breath away and made you wonder what might happen next! There was a preschool on the first floor, a swingset in the yard, and overgrown trees and bushes surrounding the noble but crumbling building and its inadequate parking lot. I’d never spent time in a building like that before, and it was much easier to drop into a space where our circles for chanting and meditation, our mysore practices, and our lesson sessions felt natural and organic and a little trippy. Will arranged for a famous teacher to come for two evenings (a very special guest!) and I’ll never forgot how all of us students were assembled on the floor, cross-legged and excited, and then how I burst into tears as he arrived and walked up the aisle between us to be seated — a frail yet graceful elderly Indian man with a long white beard, wearing a colorful robe and white tube socks (!), accompanied by his swarthy attendant. Talk about a new experience for me.
Of course, I was in a different place in my first vs. second training too. My dive into yoga training (and Ayurveda and Chinese medicine and Thai bodywork and more) was happening as I was newly divorced, moving to a new home, dating again, an empty nester, you name it. I doubt I would have been ready for the Lotus Yoga Temple in early 2015, but I definitely was by late 2016 and beyond. I can still see and smell and feel the experience now, including a couple of fellow students who lived on a farm and came to class with dirty bare feet, sometimes with their little long-haired kids in tow.
Reflecting and writing on this topic is making me consider the settings I work in now and even what I offer/show to individuals and groups that I work with on zoom. In person here in Santa Fe, I volunteer at a hospice house where (gratefully) a lot of energy and effort is put into the space and environment, and into offering beauty and positive sensory experiences for the residents — open windows, plants and flowers, bedding, hospital gowns (we just got a donation of some soft polka-dotted ones!). And of course this is an ongoing challenge given the sights and smells and sounds of hospice too… And when it comes to my online work, how does my workspace feel to me? What setting am I inviting others into when we connect online? I’m getting ready to move to a larger home in a month, so I have the opportunity to be intentional about the answers to these questions, not to mention about setting up a special meditation space.
Wonderful essay, Clif, and I really felt your story at the end. It is vulnerable and delicate to simultaneously balance our human desire for connection and belonging with compassionate and skillful nonattachment. Thank you!
Wow, Sandie, I got chills reading your essay and am going to reread it a couple more times. The words you used have such power and clarity — first, I resonate with guide and guidance, which imply walking alongside another, accompanying another on their journey. Also, alignment, which suggests the way teacher and student join into something larger than either of them, larger than all of us. And thank you for sharing about your current experience as a teacher of your partner teacher’s child, and the way you describe navigating that multidimensional situation with respect and grace.
The “terrifying joy of being vulnerable and authentically me” — wow, Djuna, your words cracked my heart open. You have come so far and become so open to it all, despite such difficult early and formative experience. I resonate with feeling so much care for the people I work with and being so compassionate to their suffering, and yet, somehow, and supported by the container, we can find a way to be with people, open to them and their experience, and let it flow through us in a nourishing and not debilitating way. Thank you!
I have really taken to heart the guidance about this from our training sessions… Looking back at my notes: “We need to be deeply connected and also completely separate, as teachers. We need to be both intimate and distant. We need to care about everyone, and not take care of anyone.”
My first-half career comprised 20+ years in marketing research, on both the client and supplier/consultant sides of the business. I remember way back in my first job at Quaker Oats, my manager praised something I’d written up that included results but also some context and perspective on the particular technique. He said I was a good teacher — I guided the reader through the material to enable their understanding. Today (over 35 years later!), that memory feels good, smooth, like I invited, shared, described, offered, and then somehow let go. Like it’s up to me and I am responsible to a point and then I relinquish control (not as though I ever had it!!).
One of my phrases for the year a few years ago was Trust the Process, which is something that has certainly come up in our training too. We approach the teachings, dipping our toe into the flow, contemplate, practice, integrate. Then we are able to invite others to join us, prioritizing faithfulness to the teachings and process.
All of this sounds so clean and clear! And sometimes it is and sometimes not. For the past 15 years my work (by design) has shifted to being more personal — supporting and guiding others as they work on themselves, as an integrative health coach, yoga teacher, bodyworker, enneagram practitioner, life guide, and death doula. Everything I learn about and practice and experience becomes part of the “package” that I offer to others I work with, but selectively, of course, and shaped and limited by their situation and needs and interests, and their own boundaries too. It has been a stepwise and profound shift to move from offering/selling products & services outside of myself (completed research studies, consultation) to my initial health coaching and yoga and bodywork (six-month structured wellness program, yoga class, thai bodywork & craniosacral) to my current more organic and customized interaction with people wherein all of my “tools” come into play. It was also a meaningful shift (and perhaps more squishy) to decide not to charge money anymore, beginning at my birthday last August.
And sometimes relationships shift into new spaces. Sometimes this feels comfortable, and sometimes not. I’m remembering one woman named Emily, who approached me about health coaching about 10 years ago. We had coffee, talked about some of her issues, really hit it off, and she said, “How about if we become friends instead?” And we did. There are a couple of times when I worked with men in health coaching, and one particular one with thai bodywork, and it got uncomfortable because they wanted to be more friendly, and I definitely did not. Two more situations come to mind… I began coaching a woman named Christine about four years ago — she was really suffering with covid and adjacent health problems and had struggled with weight all throughout her life. We worked very closely on her relationship with food and with herself, her family relationships, work issues, etc. We had a very strong connection and also very clear roles — I was her coach. Yet at some point, maybe two years ago, we began to shift. Many of her issues had resolved or at least she had way more clarity, and we had become close. I’m sure I had shared more and she had asked more. At some point we decided to make our sessions more mutual, where we’d each share what was going on — I’d never considered the term “soul friend” before, but that’s what we are with each other. We’re not friends in the “hang out together” sense, but we meet weekly on zoom and are each nourished greatly by those conversations.
I think I’ve written enough for now, but thank you for the opportunity. I spend a lot of time and energy on the nature and quality of my relationships of all kinds and in all contexts, and I am encouraged and inspired to continue doing so, applying the experience I have learned over my life so far, and that we are learning together here in meditation teacher training.
Hi Dawa — well I don’t know how to draw in this format but it was extremely simple… from the bottom or starting point, I drew arrows slanting up and outward toward either side of the word Generosity (to symbolize expansiveness), and then from either side of that word, arrows slanting upward and inward toward Discipline (representing focus), then outward again toward Patience, and inward again toward Exertion, etc. Does that help? 🙂
Hi Ana, and thank you for your essay. I especially appreciated the way you connected generosity and patience at the end, reminding us that the paramitas interact with and rely on each other in the larger space of human potential. Our article briefly described this in the comments about 36 paramitas — 6X6.
I think your comments about conditionality are also really important — for example, when you say that generosity comes easily and that you are working to expand the situations and ways you can be generous and, later, that you are patient “for certain things.” Pushing our limits, expanding our comfort zones — I think that is the work! Thanks again!
