Stina
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Hi Erin – I also had the experience of realizing that I forgot something in my instruction (oh no, I forgot to tell her what to do with her hands!). Fortunately, my partner clearly knew where her hands needed to be and I could see that, so I could tell that I didn’t need to give her that reminder.
Hi Liana! I can definitely relate to the experience of thinking about how I would give instruction as I am sitting. When I practice on my own, I definitely have an internal voice that I give myself instruction to take my seat, establish my posture, and focus my attention on my breath — sometimes my own “voice” and sometimes echoes of those who have given me instruction in the past, or a mix of the two. For me, I feel it’s actually really helpful to have that initial self-instruction rather than just jumping right it to the practice as a way of initially grounding and setting my intention and, reflecting on last week’s subject of lineage, I think I’m also connecting with those who have instructed me when I hear their voices in my self-instruction monologue.
I have given meditation instruction before, so I didn’t have the same kind of nervous energy that I did when I was first starting. This is also such a lovely group of fellow learners that it is easy for me to feel at ease, even if I hadn’t had prior experience. As I brought up after, my main uncertainty is when to speak again after giving the initial instruction. I’m looking forward to practicing more with using my intuition to sense whether to do more/less of this depending on who I am instructing.
This particular experience was a little challenging because I’m dealing with the worst sinus infection of my life and I can’t hear out of my left ear, which makes my own voice echo in my head in an uncomfortable way. So giving instruction while feeling all the congestion in my head left me a little out of sorts, but I was glad to hear that my partner didn’t pick up on any of my physical discomfort and it was so nice to hear that she felt like I was able to be very present with her during the experience.
I really enjoy doing this, and afterwards I feel an incredible sense of gratitude for the people who have allowed me to share this experience with them.Liana, this is such a beautiful story and what a wonderful gift to have connected so deeply with your aunt’s artwork. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you so much for the book suggestion Rosie! I will definitely check that out. And I definitely resonate with the experience of being renamed to “Annabelle and Owen’s mom” 🙂
There are two lineages that resonate most powerfully for me.
The first is the lineage of mothers. I came to meditation practice through the Mommy Sangha, which created a container for practice that was flexible enough to adapt to the utter chaos of new motherhood (where none of us were getting 20 minutes of alone time to sit and anyone who had a shrine before kids likely had to convert that precious space into a changing table). The story of Siddhartha’s journey to becoming the Buddah begins with him leaving his wife and children (way to go deadbeat dad). As mothers, we are the ones who remain and do the work day in and day out of nurturing the next generation, being present, and dealing with the challenges of the world as they come – often with no break, no time to go on meditation retreats, and practice that is frequently interrupted by requests for goldfish crackers. That, my friends, is it’s own path of warriorship. At times, teachings from the great male teachers can feel so out of touch with the mother’s reality, so finding teachers who can speak to our lived experience is a challenge, but there are a few. Our Mommy Sangha jokingly refers to Pema Chodron’s “Comfortable with Uncertainty” as the mother’s bible.
The other lineage I claim is that of only children. It is a unique experience to grow up without siblings. It has been particularly challenging to be an “only” who is trying to navigate the unexpected death of one parent and failing health of the other without sibling supports. The term “lonely only” definitely resonates for me, although loneliness is just as pervasive among people with siblings and even those who have siblings don’t necessarily have positive relationships with them. I have found it helpful to have a loving kindness practice where I think about fellow only children navigating similar challenges to mine and it has made me feel less alone in difficult moments.
Octavio, I definitely resonate with your experience. Remaining humble, open, and skeptical in search of truth.
My early years were heavily influenced by eternalism. I went to church every week (by force far more than choice) and lived in a community that was heavily dominated by another Christian faith, which affected everything in the town from politics to the structure of the public school system. I did not enjoy this environment.
I was the kid who asked all the difficult questions in Sunday school. I couldn’t get on board with accepting things on faith. I wanted to know why, how we could trust the source was reliable, what the teachings of this faith meant about what would happen to those who followed other religions (e.g., were we supposed to believe they were all going to hell?). I wouldn’t say I was coming from it from a nihilist perspective, but I had a strong skeptic’s mind.
As a teenager, I gravitated to the new age section of our local bookstore and immersed myself in learning more about pagan traditions, astrology, tarot, etc. My interest came from a place of feeling like there was something more than what could be easily observed and explained (i.e. not nihilism), and tuning into things like the energies of nature and my own intuition seemed more authentic than what I learned in Sunday school.
I still have a skeptic’s mind, one of the reasons I love Susan’s frequent “don’t take my word for it” reminders, and I enjoy the process of learning, questioning, and seeking to discover what resonates for me.Octavio – I just read your essay after writing mine and love how you link “comfortable with uncertainty” with the case method of teaching. So many of my students get frustrated with me when I won’t give them a “right” answer because we are frequently talking about topics where there is a lot of gray area — the goal is understanding how to analyze the problem because there is “no one answer”.
One of the tools I use to “support discovery” as a teacher is to ask a lot of questions. In US law schools (where I currently teach), we call this the Socratic method.
Asking questions, as opposed to lecturing on a topic, allows for a dialogue between the student and teacher that encourages examination of underlying assumptions and fosters critical thinking. The teacher’s role is knowing which questions to ask to best facilitate the student’s exploration and ultimate discovery.
For this to be effective, we need to create an environment in which the student feels safe and supported on this journey. It is very vulnerable to be “on call” (as we say in law school). If we have an environment in which the student is afraid to be “wrong” or unsure of their answer, then answers are short and discussion is limited. By contrast, if the student trusts that their responses (however correct or incorrect they may be) will be met with kindness, then we can really dig in and go on a journey toward deeper understanding.
Finally, the teacher also needs to have some awareness as to what the student does or doesn’t know to be able to guide their discovery process effectively. I can tell pretty quickly if my students haven’t done the reading for class that day. That doesn’t mean we can’t still have a dialogue, but I may need to be the one that explains the facts of the case before we start the conversation so that everyone is on the same page. It’s the same for meditation. If my student has read half a dozen Pema Chodron books and has been meditating for 5 years, we are likely going to have a very different conversation than if the student’s only experience is trying out the guided meditations on the Headspace app for a few days. One is not better or worse than the other; I can have a wonderful dialogue with both students, but I need to begin by asking questions so that I can discover where my student is coming from so that I can meet them where they are as we continue the conversation.
Hi everyone!
I go by Stina (short for Christina) and I live just outside of Boston, MA with my spouse and two kids (ages 6 and 9).
I started my meditation practice 9 years ago when my daughter was born and the yoga studio I attended for “Baby and Me Yoga” started offering a mommy meditation group meet-up through the OHP Mommy Sangha. What started as an outlet for a lonely new mom on maternity leave became a regular practice that I have been delighted to continue and I am so excited to join you all in this training.