Contemplative Practices in Higher Education


Book Description

Contemplative pedagogy is a way for instructors to: empower students to integrate their own experience into the theoretical material they are being taught in order to deepen their understanding; help students to develop sophisticated problem-solving skills; support students’ sense of connection to and compassion for others; and engender inquiries into students’ most profound questions. Contemplative practices are used in just about every discipline—from physics to economics to history—and are found in every type of institution. Each year more and more faculty, education reformers, and leaders of teaching and learning centers seek out best practices in contemplative teaching, and now can find them here, brought to you by two of the foremost leaders and innovators on the subject. This book presents background information and ideas for the practical application of contemplative practices across the academic curriculum from the physical sciences to the humanities and arts. Examples of contemplative techniques included in the book are mindfulness, meditation, yoga, deep listening, contemplative reading and writing, and pilgrimage, including site visits and field trips.




Contemplative Pedagogies for Transformative Teaching, Learning, and Being


Book Description

In our current systems of education, there is a trend toward compartmentalizing knowledge, standardizing assessments of learning, and focusing primarily on quantifiable and positivist forms of inquiry. Contemplative inquiry, on the other hand, takes us on a transformative pathway toward wisdom, morality, integrity, equanimity, and joy (Zajonc, 2009). These holistic learning practices are needed as a counterbalance to the over-emphasis on positivism that we see today. In addition to learning quantifiable information, we also need to learn to be calmer, wiser, kinder, and happier. This book aims to find and share various pathways leading to these ends. This book will describe educational endeavors in various settings that use contemplative pedagogies to enable students to achieve deep learning, peace, tranquility, equanimity, and wisdom to gain new understanding about self and life, and to grow holistically. Embodiment is a central concept in this book. We hope to highlight strategies for exploring internal wisdoms through engaging ourselves beyond simply the rational mind. Contemplative pedagogies such as meditation, yoga, tai chi, dance, arts, poetry, reflective writing and movements, can help students embody what they learn by integrating their body, heart, mind, and spirit.




Contemplation in Action


Book Description

This book, designed for bedside devotion, offers the best of Richard Rohr's "Radical Grace" newsletter.




Joy Unspeakable


Book Description

Joy Unspeakable focuses on the aspects of the Black church that point beyond particular congregational gatherings toward a mystical and communal spirituality not within the exclusive domain of any denomination. This mystical aspect of the black church is deeply implicated in the well-being of African American people but is not the focus of their intentional reflection. Moreover, its traditions are deeply ensconced within the historical memory of the wider society and can be found in Coltrane's riffs, Malcolm's exhortations, the social activism of the Black Lives Matter Movement and the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama. The research in this book-through oral histories, church records, and written accounts--details not only ways in which contemplative experience is built into African American collective worship but also the legacy of African monasticism, a history of spiritual exemplars, and unique meditative worship practices. A groundbreaking work in its original edition, Joy Unspeakable now appears in a new, revised edition to address the effects of this contemplative tradition on activism and politics and to speak to a new generation of readers and scholars.




Contemplation in a World of Action


Book Description

The American trappist monk outlines means of reorganizing monastic life to meet the needs of contemporary man




Mindfulness-Oriented Interventions for Trauma


Book Description

Grounded in research and accumulated clinical wisdom, this book describes a range of ways to integrate mindfulness and other contemplative practices into clinical work with trauma survivors. The volume showcases treatment approaches that can be tailored to this population's needs, such as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), and mindful self-compassion (MSC), among others. Featuring vivid case material, the book explores which elements of contemplative traditions support recovery and how to apply them safely. Neurobiological foundations of mindfulness-oriented work are examined. Treatment applications are illustrated for specific trauma populations, such as clients with chronic pain, military veterans, and children and adolescents.




Every Thing Is Sacred


Book Description

In this companion to The Universal Christ, Richard Rohr and Patrick Boland offer forty reflections and practices exploring what it means to live “in Christ.” In his landmark book The Universal Christ, Richard Rohr articulated a transformative view of what it means to recognize Jesus as “Christ”—as a portrait of God’s constant, unfolding work in the world. Now, in partnership with Patrick Boland, a psychotherapist and member of Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation community, he invites readers to engage with the themes of the book through spiritual practice. Each reflection in this book draws on a key passage of The Universal Christ, paired with prayers, journal prompts, and embodied exercises that invite readers into a more personal encounter with the truth that the presence and compassion of the Christ are in every thing. Whether read daily for the season of Lent or explored over the course of a year, Every Thing Is Sacred is a hope-filled journey into the love at the heart of all things.




The Heart of Centering Prayer


Book Description

The best-selling author of The Wisdom Jesus and The Meaning of Mary Magdalene demystifies the popular Christian meditation method rooted in contemplative prayer Centering Prayer is the path to a wonderful and radical new way of seeing the world. It is not, as is sometimes thought, simply an act of devotional piety, nor is it simply a Christianized form of other meditation methods. Cynthia Bourgeault here cuts through the misconceptions to show that Centering Prayer is in fact a pioneering development within the Christian contemplative tradition. She provides a practical, complete course in the practice and then goes deeper to analyze what actually happens in Centering Prayer: the mind effectively switches to a new operating system that makes possible the perception of nonduality. With this understanding in place, she then takes us on a journey through one of the sources of the practice, the Christian contemplative classic The Cloud of Unknowing, revealing it to be among the earliest Christian explorations of the phenomenology of consciousness. Cynthia Bourgeault’s illumination of the Centering Prayer path provides compelling evidence of how important the practice has become in the half-century since it first arose among American Trappist monks, and of its maturation and refinement over the ensuing years of sincere study and practice. It will resonate with beginners on the Centering Prayer path as well as with seasoned practitioners.




Interoception, Contemplative Practice, and Health


Book Description

There is an emergent movement of scientists and scholars working on somatic awareness, interoception and embodiment. This work cuts across studies of neurophysiology, somatic anthropology, contemplative practice, and mind-body medicine. Key questions include: How is body awareness cultivated? What role does interoception play for emotion and cognition in healthy adults and children as well as in different psychopathologies? What are the neurophysiological effects of this cultivation in practices such as Yoga, mindfulness meditation, Tai Chi and other embodied contemplative practices? What categories from other traditions might be useful as we explore embodiment? Does the cultivation of body awareness within contemplative practice offer a tool for coping with suffering from conditions, such as pain, addiction, and dysregulated emotion? This emergent field of research into somatic awareness and associated interoceptive processes, however, faces many obstacles. The principle obstacle lies in our 400-year Cartesian tradition that views sensory perception as epiphenomenal to cognition. The segregation of perception and cognition has enabled a broad program of cognitive science research, but may have also prevented researchers from developing paradigms for understanding how interoceptive awareness of sensations from inside the body influences cognition. The cognitive representation of interoceptive signals may play an active role in facilitating therapeutic transformation, e.g. by altering context in which cognitive appraisals of well-being occur. This topic has ramifications into disparate research fields: What is the role of interoceptive awareness in conscious presence? How do we distinguish between adaptive and maladaptive somatic awareness? How do we best measure somatic awareness? What are the consequences of dysregulated somatic/interoceptive awareness on cognition, emotion, and behavior? The complexity of these questions calls for the creative integration of perspectives and findings from related but often disparate research areas including clinical research, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, anthropology, religious/contemplative studies and philosophy.




Radical Grace


Book Description

This collection of 408 meditations by America's foremost retreat master and preacher follows the Church's liturgical cycle, striking the spirit of each season.