Finding the Correct Approach to Teaching Contemplative Practices

“Meeting People Where They’re At”

In the process of teaching contemplative practices to their constituents, interviewees stressed the importance of “meeting people where they’re at.” They pay great attention to the language and framework in which practices are presented to make them accessible to as many as possible. There was a strong commitment to being non-judgmental and respectful about diverse approaches to spirituality (and to non-spirituality).

Interviewees are eminently flexible when it comes to choosing the appropriate practice for the appropriate setting. Gary Cohen, of Healthcare Without Harm, said that he is especially sensitive to how different groups respond to practices that focus on silence: “Some people don’t do silence. There are different cultural issues that come up, and you’ve just got to be sensitive to those things.”

Many interviewees were clear that it was more important for people to be touched by the heart of contemplative practice than it was for them to “get it right.” Soren Gordhamer of the Lineage Project offered this story about a young man who attended a class for inmates:

A guy named Michael was in for a gang-related murder and used to come to the classes. But during the yoga, he would never really do the yoga very much. During the meditation, he would just kind of look around. He wasn't very involved. But afterwards he gave me a big hug and always thanked me.

Over the weeks I started to get frustrated with him. Like, “Why do you show up to class if you're not interested in practicing?” And then one day it hit me: he didn't come for the meditation or the yoga—he came for the hug.

…If you never formally sit and close your eyes and meditate, but [if] you're creating a space that supports people where compassion can come forward and where they feel accepted, that is actually more the central issue, and really maybe the heart of contemplative practice.

Language

A number of research studies and essays have explored the difference between the words “religion” and “spirituality” (Fetzer Institute/National Institute of Aging 1999, p. 2), with the general distinction that spirituality is the more all-encompassing and less excluding term.

One of the most striking findings of our interviews is that a number of interviewees find even the term “spiritual” to be constraining in certain sectors and settings. Linda Stout, of Spirit in Action, told about an exercise she did with a group of media professionals:

We did a lot of attention and focus on what I would call spirit, even though we didn’t use the word. [We asked] people to bring in an item that had meaning, that was representative of what inspired them to do this work. So even though we didn’t use the word ‘spirit,’ we have had people each telling their personal source of inspiration…It was absolutely astounding, breathtaking what happened with this group of people…

Robert Gass said the language he uses

is probably more in the world of simply being human beings rather than the world of spirituality. In fact, I make a great effort to use very everyday commonsense language, which is why I continually have people at the end of these say, “You know for ten years or twenty years, I’ve been totally turned off to do anything spiritual.” And all of a sudden I get – “This helps our life so much.” I’m deeply committed to a spiritual path, but I’m not wedded to the words of spirituality. It’s the thing itself…it’s not the words.

Interviewees made strategic decisions to use different words or terms to help them to bring the practices into the sector in which they worked. These phrases functioned like code words, allowing entry into settings where there might be resistance to contemplative practices. For example, Rachael Kessler, working in education, uses the phrase “strategies for learning readiness” rather than “contemplative practices” to describe the practices she teaches her students to increase their ability to concentrate, pay attention, and listen. To make these practices more palatable in the business sector, Joe D’Arrigo uses the term “writing exercises” rather than “journaling” and “stretching” rather than “yoga.” A number of interviewees used the word “tools” rather than “contemplative practices.”

A number of the organizations included in our study are grounded in a multifaith approach. These organizations have made numerous efforts to adapt their language so that people of different faith traditions would feel comfortable doing contemplative practices together. Pat Harbour told us that she chose the name of her organization, Healing the Heart of Diversity, in response to this challenge because she realized that what was really being healed was the heart. Other organizations have similarly turned to more “heart-based” language to convey spiritual and contemplative principles.

Eugene Callender, Senior Minister at St. James Presbyterian Church in New York City, told us that when he attends political and activist meetings,

I never use the name of God in those meetings. But if I can talk in terms of love and wisdom and understanding and make a contribution and move this thing along in a healthy way, God is using me. That is the result of staying in the flow. The contemplative mind is the mind that is in the flow.