My Journey

"The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is a choice."

Brian Herbert Embark

Often one hears the same question – I would like to meditate, but how do I even begin? And more relevant, what should I do? I had the same questions several years ago – and the very first time I sat down to meditate almost three decades ago, with a group of teachers, I sat in silence, and shut my eyes, looked around, or tried not to, as I waited for a torturous hour to end so that we could start speaking again!

Today, I feel very differently about meditation, and I would like to first share my personal journey, how this then extended into my training and development, and then explore how I may be able to share at least some parts of my experiences with other individuals, in a spirit of compassion and loving kindness, so that I may enable them to understand the value of practice and mindfulness.

My primary profession is that of a school leader, however I like to think of myself as a teacher at heart, always. I am constantly seeking and learning, and in fact resonate very much with the phrase, infinite learner! During my experience as a teacher, I often found that the students did not often remember the content knowledge of the subjects I was teaching, however, they seemed to relate to the way we made them feel in the classroom, the relationships and the nuggets of how to deal with life situations emerged during the instructional time. With the years, I realised that this was classified in the realm of what we call social-emotional learning, which is what we are looking at implementing in schools today.

Most of my journey in the classroom was intuitive. I was deeply influenced by the Principal of my first school, who was a Buddhist practitioner. She ensured that all of us shared meaningful stories to the students, helped them reflect during homeroom time, and meditate. We soon brought in Yoga to schools, and I could see this as a transformative exercise for the students beyond the asana practice and classroom, and how this contributed to showing students ways to develop skilful ways of living. 

My first explicit engagement with a social emotional curriculum was when I was introduced to the SEE Learning curriculum developed by Emory University. I was fortunate to experience an in-person training in 2020, and we took this into our classrooms across all the sections of the school. In addition I also experienced the training in cognitively based compassion training, CBCT ®also developed by Emory. 

Just as we were moving along with trying to work with our students, we experienced lockdown during COVID. This was both a very challenging time, but also a time when we were able to spend time developing the skills we had learned – practicing how to stay resilient during lockdown. At this time, we developed our facilitation skills, and I completed the training to be a CBCT® facilitator, as well as an L1 facilitator for SEE Learning. 

Becoming a mindfulness meditation teacher and my challenge:

It was simply a random decision that I decided to enrol for the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training Programme – MMTCP, which is offered every alternate year. 

After I started the MMTCP course in February 2023, I went for a routine health check up with a friend, and the mammogram revealed a lump! When I think about the events of the past year, it sometimes feels like a blur, sometimes surreal, and sometimes extremely tangible. I tried to write about the experience and navigating this through the modules of the MMTCP course, but it was difficult while I was going through the experience. Now that time has created a little distance, I am going to try and articulate what the year felt like, and how having a practice helped me stay resilient and therefore enabled my family and friends to be able to support me.

Since March 2023, I have been through a surgery, four cycles of chemotherapy, and 20 sessions of radiation treatment. I completed all of this almost a year ago, and for me, it is a good time to reflect on the events and my responses.

Starting with the first module of the course, what is meditation, this took on a different trajectory. For me, meditation had become the muscle memory, that I had practiced, and so at this time, when I needed it the most, the cells literally responded to my need. The day I got the news was my sister’s birthday. I had planned to have lunch, straight after the check-up. On the way from the hospital, I called my husband to let him know about the news of the lump.

“I’m on my way to have lunch, and for now, I am not even going to think about the lump they told me about. I cannot do anything right now, and no point thinking about it till the evening. Just letting you know!”

I KNEW all through the afternoon that if even a flicker of a thought of this news would waft through my mind, my sister would look at me and say – “what’s happening?”. So, every time a thought came, I let it be, I did not even need to name it, I just let it be the cloud in the sky and I was the sky. As the evening came to an end, I realized, I had practiced Viktor Frankl’s quote – “Between the stimulus and the response, there is a pause, and in the pause, there is growth.”

I was mindful, I was present, maybe this was the performance that my years of practice was leading to! A performance for me to accept the news, to flow with the medical experts, and surrender to the process that they were taking me through. But to do so with loving kindness to myself and others around me.

As I went through the treatment of physiotherapy, radiation and oral hormone therapy, I was able to take each step of the way with resilience and therefore even carried my family and friends with me. Of course, there were few moments of slumps, even some tears, but overall, I did not become the illness, nor did I at any point feel fear or despair. I saw myself as much larger, and as my daughter said, “before you know it those six months will be over, and you can get on with your life.”

And here I am - getting on with my life, with an intention to share this experience.

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Photo by LOGAN WEAVER | @LGNWVR on Unsplash