Skip to content

Do You Need Support With Attending a Course?

Members Login

Apps

Find a Teacher

Facebook page opens in new windowTwitter page opens in new windowInstagram page opens in new window
Mindfulness Association
Being Present | Responding with Compassion | Seeing Deeply
Mindfulness AssociationMindfulness Association
  • Mindfulness Courses
    • 4 Level Mindfulness Pathway
    • Start Mindfulness
    • Level 2 – Compassion
    • Level 3 – Insight
    • Level 4 – Wisdom
    • Mindfulness Teacher Training Courses
      • Supervision for Mindfulness Teachers
      • Teaching – Level 1
      • Teaching – Level 2 (MBLC)
      • Teaching – Level 2 – (MBLC-YA) Teens
      • Teaching – Level 3 (CBLC)
      • Mindfulness Based Healthy Living (MBHL) Teacher Training
      • Teacher Training Package
      • Mindfulness Teacher Continuing Professional Development
      • Fundamentals of Inquiry Course for Teachers of Mindfulness
      • Developing Enquiry Skills For Teaching Compassion
      • Train to Supervise
    • Mindfulness for Life
      • Online Christmas Retreat Days
      • The Wonder of the Everyday- Online
      • Mindfulness Based Healthy Living- Online
      • Mindfully Journaling into the New Year- Online
      • Compassion in Action- Samye Ling
      • Mindfulness meets Mystical Poetry – Online
      • Living Well to Die Well Mindfulness Course
      • Mindful Qigong Courses
        • Mindful Qigong Level 1
        • Mindful Qigong Compassion – Level 2
        • Mindful Qigong Insight – Level 3
        • Mindful Qigong & Yoga Retreat Weekend
    • Online Courses
      • Online Taught Courses
      • Online Mindfulness Courses by Email
        • Free Online Introduction to Mindfulness
        • Introduction to Mindfulness
        • Introduction to Compassion Course
        • Introduction to Insight
    • Masters Degrees
      • MSc Studies in Mindfulness
      • MSc Mindfulness & Compassion
  • Mindfulness Retreats
    • Online Christmas Retreat Days
    • Free Spring MA Members Weekend (Online)
    • Spring Membership Retreat for MA Members (Online)
    • Spring Membership Retreat for Mindfulness Teachers (Online)
    • Naturally Being Meditation Retreat
    • Mindfulness Practice Days
    • Weekend Retreats
      • November Practice Day- Mystical Poetry and Mindfulness for Serenity (Online)
      • Christmas Practice Day- Gratitude (Online)
      • Christmas Practice Day- Grace (Online and Edinburgh)
      • Mindfulness for Stress (Samye Ling and Online)
      • Trauma Informed Mindfulness (Samye Ling and Online)
      • Mindfulness In Nature (Samye Ling)
      • Naturally Being Meditation Weekend (Samye Ling and Online)
      • Mindfulness, Qigong & Yoga Retreat Weekend (Samye Ling and Online)
      • Mindfulness In Nature Weekend (Samye Ling)
      • Introduction to Compassion (Samye Ling & Online)
      • Compassionate Imagery for Resilience (Samye Ling and Online)
      • Tonglen Weekend (Samye Ling and Online)
    • Mindfulness for Life Retreat
  • Words & Blogs
    • What is Mindfulness?
    • Science of Mindfulness
    • Heather’s Musings
    • Mindfulness Poetry
    • Meditation Challenge
    • Mindfulness and EDI Research
    • Sits and Teachings
    • Mindfulness Research
    • Mindfulness Recommended Reading
  • Membership
    • Members Free Retreat Weekend
    • Members Retreat
    • Mindfulness Teachers Retreat
  • About Us
    • Mindfulness Association Tutors
    • Mindfulness Association Training Venues
  • News & Events
  • Mindfulness Freebies
  • Mindfulness Courses
    • 4 Level Mindfulness Pathway
    • Start Mindfulness
    • Level 2 – Compassion
    • Level 3 – Insight
    • Level 4 – Wisdom
    • Mindfulness Teacher Training Courses
      • Supervision for Mindfulness Teachers
      • Teaching – Level 1
      • Teaching – Level 2 (MBLC)
      • Teaching – Level 2 – (MBLC-YA) Teens
      • Teaching – Level 3 (CBLC)
      • Mindfulness Based Healthy Living (MBHL) Teacher Training
      • Teacher Training Package
      • Mindfulness Teacher Continuing Professional Development
      • Fundamentals of Inquiry Course for Teachers of Mindfulness
      • Developing Enquiry Skills For Teaching Compassion
      • Train to Supervise
    • Mindfulness for Life
      • Online Christmas Retreat Days
      • The Wonder of the Everyday- Online
      • Mindfulness Based Healthy Living- Online
      • Mindfully Journaling into the New Year- Online
      • Compassion in Action- Samye Ling
      • Mindfulness meets Mystical Poetry – Online
      • Living Well to Die Well Mindfulness Course
      • Mindful Qigong Courses
        • Mindful Qigong Level 1
        • Mindful Qigong Compassion – Level 2
        • Mindful Qigong Insight – Level 3
        • Mindful Qigong & Yoga Retreat Weekend
    • Online Courses
      • Online Taught Courses
      • Online Mindfulness Courses by Email
        • Free Online Introduction to Mindfulness
        • Introduction to Mindfulness
        • Introduction to Compassion Course
        • Introduction to Insight
    • Masters Degrees
      • MSc Studies in Mindfulness
      • MSc Mindfulness & Compassion
  • Mindfulness Retreats
    • Online Christmas Retreat Days
    • Free Spring MA Members Weekend (Online)
    • Spring Membership Retreat for MA Members (Online)
    • Spring Membership Retreat for Mindfulness Teachers (Online)
    • Naturally Being Meditation Retreat
    • Mindfulness Practice Days
    • Weekend Retreats
      • November Practice Day- Mystical Poetry and Mindfulness for Serenity (Online)
      • Christmas Practice Day- Gratitude (Online)
      • Christmas Practice Day- Grace (Online and Edinburgh)
      • Mindfulness for Stress (Samye Ling and Online)
      • Trauma Informed Mindfulness (Samye Ling and Online)
      • Mindfulness In Nature (Samye Ling)
      • Naturally Being Meditation Weekend (Samye Ling and Online)
      • Mindfulness, Qigong & Yoga Retreat Weekend (Samye Ling and Online)
      • Mindfulness In Nature Weekend (Samye Ling)
      • Introduction to Compassion (Samye Ling & Online)
      • Compassionate Imagery for Resilience (Samye Ling and Online)
      • Tonglen Weekend (Samye Ling and Online)
    • Mindfulness for Life Retreat
  • Words & Blogs
    • What is Mindfulness?
    • Science of Mindfulness
    • Heather’s Musings
    • Mindfulness Poetry
    • Meditation Challenge
    • Mindfulness and EDI Research
    • Sits and Teachings
    • Mindfulness Research
    • Mindfulness Recommended Reading
  • Membership
    • Members Free Retreat Weekend
    • Members Retreat
    • Mindfulness Teachers Retreat
  • About Us
    • Mindfulness Association Tutors
    • Mindfulness Association Training Venues
  • News & Events
  • Mindfulness Freebies

Growing Courage

You are here:
  1. Home
  2. Latest News
  3. Growing Courage
May102019
Latest Newsgrowing-courage
growing courage

When we think of mindfulness and compassion in action, we often jump straight to thinking about gestures of kindness, or caring interventions, or supportive acts, and usually aimed at someone other than ourselves. I sometimes feel there can be something a bit ‘Tom and Jerry’ about this – you know the thing – Tom chases Jerry, who stays well ahead of him, but then Jerry dashes straight out off the edge of a cliff – and Tom follows him. Their sheer momentum keeps them suspended in mid-air and propelling themselves forwards – for a while. Then they suddenly look down, realise they’ve been running on empty, and crash downwards.

It can be easy to get focussed on our momentum, but how often do we look down to check that the supporting geography is still in place? How often do we really step back and invest in the self-care that sustains us?

We can forget ourselves. Perhaps there’s some false humility at work, or a sense of ‘this isn’t about me – I’m doing this for others’.  I was reading a website recently that described some wonderful mindfulness work in prisons and how to get involved, but there was no information at all about the project’s author. It felt rudderless – who was issuing this invitation to me? I didn’t feel I was being engaged with.

When it comes to our mindfulness teaching, maybe we’ve got the green light from our teacher training, we’ve got our head around the curriculum and how it all fits together, and we know the practices really well. We’ve hired a room, got the workbooks together, convened a group. All great, of course. But where are we in all of this? Where is the person of the teacher and how are they connected with the work they are preparing to offer?

At the end of October, 24 of us gathered at Samye Dzong in London for a first ‘Courage to Teach’ weekend retreat-workshop for mindfulness teachers and teachers-to-be where we made space to tend to the person of the teacher. Over the weekend, with the help of poems, writings and metaphor, we gently asked ourselves deep questions about the challenges we face in our teaching and work, what sustains us during these times of challenge, ‘who we are’ as teachers and what parts of ourselves are we reveal when we teach, and our experiences of vulnerability and authenticity.

These are not questions that you ask yourself – or each other – casually or directly. They are deep and delicate matters. When you spot wild deer in the woods, if you move and they get wind of you, they’ll be off in a flash. It can be the same with our deeper truths and the process of taking time to access them. Care and gentleness are needed. The approach we take in ‘Courage to Teach’ work is based on contemplative talking circles, called ‘circles of trust’, a method developed by Parker J. Palmer, the American educationalist and social activist. Just because we call them circles of trust though, doesn’t mean that automatically happens. So we build up the architecture of trust for these weekends step by step, using our mindfulness and compassion practice alongside principles and practices that are part and parcel of the circles of trust approach – an invitational style, spacious programming to allow for inner work and for our inner voice to be heard, a range of different modes of reflection, open honest questioning and empathetic listening, non-fixing, and exploring intersections between personal and universal stories of experience.

Seeing our teaching life and work clearly means acknowledging a wholeness that we may sometimes be very tentative or even awkward about naming. I was recently on a monastic-led retreat where the monk who was teaching confessed that he’d always struggled with mindfulness of the breath practice, and found it easier to observe body states and mind states. It was an important piece of sharing where he decided to show up – his onstage persona and his off-stage or more private persona where his doubts resided. It gave us permission to admit to ourselves that we also have bright spots and shadows.

Wholeness underpins our teaching though: we can’t really teach unless we are willing to show up – with our successes, our struggles, our uncertainties and our knowings – our darkness and our light. They are part of all of us. 

We are running another ‘Courage to Teach’ retreat-workshop in May 2019 at Samye Ling, where we’ll once again co-create a circle of trust for the purposes of exploring our inner lives as teachers (or teachers-in-training). The weekend will be led by Barbara Reid (who’s a facilitator for the Center for Courage & Renewal which developed the circles of trust approach) and Heather Regan Addis.  Barbara builds each workshop programme from scratch so although the approach taken in circles of trust is always the same, the content, metaphors and questions are different each time. for more information and to book a place, go to….

Here are some things people said about this last one…

“…. [a weekend] that allowed/invited me to express what was alive for me personally in real depth.”

“The permission to truly trust the process to allow insights to arise respects each individual experience with validity and a real sense of wholeness…”

“In two days I got clarity on something I’d been contemplating for a while…”

“The content was not easy, but the way it was presented, with each element being guided, made it feel very manageable…”

“Supports inner learning and helps on the journey of embodying the teaching of mindfulness.”

“I know that I am deeply, deeply nourished by the weekend.”

“Please run it again!”

For more information about circles of trust and the Courage to Teach, the following are helpful:

  • Website: www.couragerenewal.org (website for the Center for Courage & Renewal which created the circles of trust approach)
  • Book: Parker J. Palmer (2017 edition): The Courage to Teach – Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life; San Francisco: Jossey-Bass (available on Amazon)
  • Facebook: @couragerenewalukireland

growing-courage

You are here:
  1. Home
  2. Media
  3. growing-courage

growing-courage

growing-courage

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Post comment

  • FAQ’s
  • Privacy Policy
  • Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy
  • Terms and conditions

58 Thirlestane Road
Edinburgh
Midlothian
EH9 1AR

Contact us at
info@mindfulnessassociation.net

  • © 2008 - 2023 Mindfulness Association
Go to Top
Accept Cookies
We use cookies on our site. Please click accept or review the cookie settings Cookie settingsAccept
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT