Retreat is a gift, not a burden
A five to seven-day silent retreat is the minimum prerequisite between each phase of the MBSR teacher training pathway. Some people, usually newer to mindfulness, approach this requirement as something to simply check off the list. It is a serious misconception that once this requirement is fulfilled, the need for retreats is over.
Facing the ‘unknown’ with integrity
The first residential retreat I’d ever attended was at a local convent. The setting was lovely, with rolling hills and stately trees. The building was made of cement blocks and my room was a bit shabby – and it was just perfect. I have memories of feeling transported during the group walking practice, and feeling crazed, too – convinced on the first day that everyone hated me and that someone had stolen my shoes!
A Path Through Suffering to Waking Up
Medical training and athletics taught me to push through pain, even to ignore it. And so I learned to numb myself, to not fully feel the pain of my toddler sobbing as I left him at daycare while I went on to my job as a medical resident. I practiced rising when my beeper went off after two hours of sleep instead of the seven my body needed. This worked for eighteen years until it all fell apart: my job, my house, my mentor, my health, my child’s mental health.
Finding Healing on this Coronavirus Retreat
In 1999, I moved to Cincinnati to start a Neonatology Fellowship and during a call night in my first month, I was asked to take a baby off life support for a family that I had gotten to know. Despite being well-trained in the medical and procedural aspects of why this was an appropriate plan of care and the steps needed to withdraw support, I was not even remotely prepared for this experience. It was months of internal inquiry and six baby deaths later before a state of grace found me.
The jigsaw puzzle of teaching MBSR
Like others, my wife and I started doing jigsaw puzzles during the pandemic. Unlike most puzzles, it can be hard to identify the edge pieces in these puzzles - so the strategy of putting the edges together first doesn’t work. One is forced to “think outside the box”. I’ve been noticing lately that this engagement with jigsaw puzzles is influencing the way I think about teaching MBSR…
Letting the Beauty We Love Be What We Do
Have you felt a pull to share the transformative experiences you have had through mindfulness practice with others? Do you long to take the MBSR course again, and again— studying it, practicing, diving deeper into this way of being that brings you back in touch with what’s best in you? If your answer to either of these questions is ‘yes’, MBSR Teacher Training may be a way for you to “take down a musical instrument” and begin to play. This path isn’t easy, and it isn’t fast, and it isn’t inexpensive.
Leaning into the unknown
Of course we get angry… Of course we feel despair... Of course we have a preference for outcome. How grateful I am that practice is here so that everything can be my teacher. I don’t know what to do or what will happen in the next decade or even next week, but with mindfulness, if I remember to pause, despair is not “driving the bus” and I can know what is skillful right now. If you are reading this post, you, too, are longing for less suffering and more joy in yourself and in our world.