
Introduction
When I think of the biggest changes in my three decades of teaching, at the top of the list is the role that mindfulness has come to play in education. In the watershed year of 1979 Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn first introduced his now famous 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course to chronically ill patients at a hospital in Massachusetts. The startling results of the program initiated what has become a global movement implementing meditation and other mindfulness practices to reduce stress.
My own first memories of mindfulness came in the mid-90s when I visited the towering spiritual giant Father Basil Pennington, who was commissioned by the Pope to bring contemplative Christianity’s version of mindfulness called Centering Prayer to a global audience. Despite my initial interest, it wasn’t until 2012 when I traveled to Assisi to meet Cynthia Bourgeault, representing a new generation of Centering Prayer advocates, that I finally committed to meditation, which had transformative effects in my life in short order. Yet a year into my practice I wrote, “I still don’t know what I am directly ‘achieving’ with my daily practice; little seems evident in my 20 minutes of silence.” I still wholeheartedly credit meditation with a major life shift, which has impacted everything in my life, including the entire second half of my recently published The Wisdom Way of Teaching. But in the back of my mind I was frustrated by not being able to explain how and why meditation works, limiting the effectiveness of my teaching.
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