Guest post by Sara Protasi (Puget Sound)
My use of meditation in teaching philosophy has gradually grown out of my own, alas still too sporadic and inconsistent, personal practice. I became acquainted with mindfulness meditation through both yoga and psychological therapy, and through a workshop that I attended as a graduate student.
When I started teaching a class on human nature, in 2015, I introduced the students to meditation through two readings. One is a difficult, but in my view rewarding, scholarly article about the role of sati (mindfulness) in classical Buddhism (Bhikkhu Bodhi 2011). The other is a short paper presenting some studies on the (positive) changes in the brain brought about by a consistent meditation practice (Davidson, R. J., & Lutz, A. 2008)
It was natural for me to start the class discussing these readings with a short meditation exercise. Students liked it, and one group of students in particular asked me for repeated sessions throughout the semester. That inspired me to incorporate meditation in the class more regularly.
I should say that at my institution (University of Puget Sound, a small liberal arts college in the Pacific Northwest) I have found that almost all students are at least superficially acquainted with the practice, and some meditate regularly. Thus, I haven’t encountered much resistance when asking the students to meditate in class (more on possible resistance later). I also found that having students meditate helped with heated discussions or tense moments that arose in the class when discussing delicate issues such as racial discrimination.
After my initial experiments in this class on human nature, I’ve started using meditation in other classes as well, as a tool to help students cope with stress at particularly hectic times in the semester. In those contexts, I don’t talk about it as a theoretical topic, nor do I try to integrate it into the curricular activities; I simply present it as an anti-stress tool. Again, as I said, students are mostly familiar with it already.
Much more recently, however, I’ve attempted to develop a sort of “emotional approach” in my pedagogy. This attempt organically stems from my research: I work on the emotions, and I believe that healthy emotional responses are an integral part of our wellbeing. Therefore, when last Spring I taught for the first time a class on the philosophy of emotions, I experimented with various ways in which I could ask students to not just think about emotions, but also feel and introspect them directly. Meditation was, again, a useful tool: not simply a way to make students feel better, or a way to introduce the topic of mindfulness itself, but a way to have them sit with their emotions without attempting to escape from them, or intellectualize them.
Incidentally, it was interesting to see that for some philosophy students, in particular, simply sitting and observing nonjudgmentally their emotions, and then talk about what they felt rather what they thought about, was quite hard.
With regard to implementation, here are some details. I generally lead the meditation myself, experimenting with slightly different kinds. I usually start with the common technique of “focused attention”: I ask students to focus on their breathing and invite them to engage in a body scan and relaxation exercise. After they have reached a more relaxed state, I ask them to engage in “open monitoring”, the activity of observing nonreactively and nonjudgmentally one’s thoughts and emotions. I have sometimes proposed other visualization exercises (such as visualizing an ever-expanding internal light) or used loving-kindness scripts.
A note of caution: a few students have had negative experiences with meditation or are resistant a priori. Furthermore, there are people for whom meditation can have negative effects, such as triggering nightmares or depressive feelings. Thus, while I encourage all students to participate, it is not a mandatory activity. I set it up as an opt-in by default, because I want the skeptics to give it a try, but I tell them that they can stop if they feel uncomfortable. I do not let them do anything else, though, other than sitting there quietly for a few minutes. Generally, only one or two students choose to opt out.
My plans for the future is to experiment with shorter but more frequent sessions in all of my classes. I would love to hear from other philosophy teachers on this topic.
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