The jigsaw puzzle of teaching MBSR
Like others, my wife and I started doing jigsaw puzzles during the pandemic. Someone turned us on to Liberty Puzzles and we got hooked (in a good way).
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”. How do the puzzles come together? There’s the usual strategies of following the picture’s design - sky, trees, houses, paths, etc. There is another strategy: in these puzzles, there are “whimsy pieces” - they could be leaves, or pieces in the shapes of animals, people, bicycles, birds, etc. We found that focusing on these pieces and building out around them creates enough of a center to see more clearly how they connect to each other.
I’ve been noticing lately that this engagement with jigsaw puzzles is influencing the way I think about teaching MBSR and Foundations in MBSR seminars. Funny, right?
I find myself pausing, noticing, asking, similar to how I might when working with a puzzle:
What’s the missing piece here?
What is the shape of this experience?
What is emerging?
How does this experience fit into what is already in place?
How do all these people and experiences come together forming a pattern from moment to moment?
In a room of participants in an MBSR course, whether as a teacher or as a trainee engaging as both a participant and an observer, this jigsaw puzzle mentality leads to curiosity, to noticing the more subtle nuances of interactions; to seeing individuals and the patterns created as we come together as a group; to seeing individuals within the context of the emerging moment; to a capacity for holding space for the “missing piece”; to experiencing how in the space of what is “missing” meaning emerges.
Have you ever done a jigsaw puzzle with others? Have you experienced the increased clarity that arises when there are extra sets of eyes looking together?
In the Foundations in MBSR seminar this jigsaw puzzle mentality also serves.
Of course we reflect upon what happened in class, but more importantly, we pause to notice what is happening within ourselves. We reflect on the explicit curriculum, but also on how the curriculum is manifesting in each of our lives right now. We search for the whimsy pieces - where do the principles of Buddhist psychology and contemplative practices show up in class? How is the holding environment created? How are practices guided and interactions entered into in inclusive and trauma sensitive ways? How do we build around these underpinnings and frameworks in a way that allows them to remain hidden except on close inspection? We puzzle this out and piece it together. And, unlike in a boxed jigsaw puzzle, we participate in co-creating a unique picture - unknown, never before expressed, and always evolving …