Stewardship: Deeper Structures of the Co-created Group

• Published in: Resources for Teaching Mindfulness pp. 3 - 24
• Main Author: McCown, Donald
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing
• Subjects: Aesthetics; Atmosphere; Beauty; Co-creation; Confluence; Contingency; Corporeality; Cosmopolitanism; Ethical space; Ethics; Friendship; Gergen; Ingold; Interoception; Mindfulness; Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT); Mindfulness-based interventions (MBI); Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR); Multi-being; Non-hierarchical; Non-instrumental; Non-pathologizing; Pedagogy; Polyvagal theory; Porges; Proprioception; Relational; Relationship; Resonance; Skills of the teacher; Steeping; Stewardship; Sublime; Teacher
• ISBN: 3319300989; 9783319300986
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-30100-6_1

What is it like in the room right now? This question is the key, the core, and the constant one for teachers in the mindfulness-based interventions (MBI). It is a question of , which in everyday speech refers to vague, indeterminate, intangible characters of persons, objects, and environments (Böhme, 1993, 2011). Yet somehow, despite this vagueness, we can still answer the question quickly and easily. We all walk into the room and know, through body sensation and affect, that the atmosphere is tense, or friendly, or calm, or maybe a little sad. And furthering the mystery, we find that we have a very rich vocabulary at hand to describe it. Atmosphere is not something objective, entirely “out there,” although the experience comes to us in that way. Nor is it something entirely subjective, available to oneself alone. Rather, it is available to us from both without and within, through an undivided relationship between self and other (Böhme, 1993, 2011; Bollnow, 2011; Ingold, 2015). Thus, a group can agree on, and even engage in dialogue about, what it is like in the room at a particular moment. Atmosphere, then, is what we attend to as MBI teachers, while tracking the unfolding of a class session moment by moment. The character of atmosphere is evident not only to teachers but also to participants, making it a valuable and valid measure for the relational state of the group, which the teacher tends through stewardship activities.