Integrating Personal Well-Being with Teaching Innovation

 

November 17, 2021
 

Along with most everything at UVA, the Contemplative Sciences Center’s Contemplative Practice Faculty Group was forced to adopt a virtual meeting format in 2020. Rather than stifling the group, however, the movement from in-person to online meetings coincided with a boost in numbers. The group now has more than 30 members from across UVA who meet on Zoom every Wednesday at noon to engage in 15 minutes of mindfulness, gentle movement, and observational practices. Karolyn Kinane, Associate Director of Pedagogy and Faculty Engagement at the Contemplative Sciences Center, convenes and manages the group. 

 

The online format no doubt made it convenient for faculty to attend the sessions; however, another likely driver of increased membership has been a desire for connection and stress relief during these extraordinary times of social distancing and uncertainty around the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

“Practicing contemplation with colleagues can support each of us in our ongoing personal work of rest, healing, rejuvenation, and transformation,” says Kinane. 

 

“Further, practicing with colleagues across UVA can provoke systems-level change as we all build capacities for awareness and connection, embody values-alignment in our professional contexts, and create healing spaces that celebrate the dignity and worth of all beings,” she says. 

 

Alicia López Operé, a faculty in the department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, says: "Being part of the weekly Contemplative Practice Faculty Group has opened up another community for me, within the UVA community.” 

 

Another group member, Frank Dukes, who is a lecturer at the School of Architecture and a Distinguished Institute Fellow at the Institute for Engagement and Negotiation, calls the group’s 15-minute practice sessions the “highlight” of his week and says the investment is low but the return high. 

 

“I always leave the sessions refreshed physically and mentally, more alert, and appreciative of myself for having taken the time to focus on my well-being,” says Dukes. “I think my well-being is reflected in my work and is helping make me a better colleague, teacher, and facilitator,” he says.

 

For Michael Swanberg, faculty in the School of Nursing, the regularity of the group practice sessions has been key. “Meeting once a week like this helps me to get into the habit of establishing a regular and sustained contemplative practice,” he says. 

 

“It’s the frying pan fire analogy—you don’t wait until you’re engulfed in flames to go out and buy a fire extinguisher. By practicing together we’re preparing ourselves for whatever happens, to keep the fire extinguisher ready when needed. I’m thankful for my colleagues who help me sustain a contemplative practice over time, and I’m hopeful that when a fire erupts, I’ll be ready,” says Swanberg.

 

Despite the short time commitment, participants in the Contemplative Practice Faculty Group experience both depth and breadth in their contemplative practices. For example, sessions in September focused on cognitive awareness-based practices; October offered somatic-based practices, and November’s theme is “radical interconnectedness.” 

 

Group members say the regular contemplative practice sessions have supported their personal well-being as well as influenced their work in the classroom. 

 

“I look forward to the 15-minute meetings in the middle of a busy day,” says López Operé, “because it always recharges me and teaches me a new [contemplative] practice I can do with my students in class.” 

 

In her Spanish for Medical Professionals course, López Operé helps her students explore the idea of self-care before approaching different ways to care for the Spanish-speaking communities in a U.S. healthcare context. She begins each class with a contemplative practice (meditation, breathing and stretching, lectio divina), and has students reflect on these practices, through writing several times during the semester. Because the practice groups sessions also put her back in the shoes of a student, López Operé says they offer her a fresh perspective on teaching and a “beginner’s mind” approach to contemplative practice. 

 

“Regularly pivoting from the role of the student to the teacher, or from the giver to the receiver, brings a very comforting and humbling experience to my soul; it makes me feel supported on my learning journey," she says.

 

Lucy Bassett, Associate Professor of Practice of Public Policy at the Batten School, also says that regularly participating in the Contemplative Practice Faculty Group has been transformative. 

 

“Without even consciously thinking about it, my experience in these sessions has seeped into my teaching,” she says. “I have always done an opening mindfulness practice in my classes. It’s been a basic clearing minds/centering practice. This semester, however, I have started incorporating new practices from the CSC sessions into this opening moment—from non-dominant hand drawing to a more embodied grounding practice,” says Bassett, who adds that participating in the group has affected her pedagogy in more discipline-specific ways, too.

 

“I have also been inspired to build in some new practices of my own,” Bassett says. “For example, in my Feminist Public Policy class I asked students to reflect on someone in their life who embodies feminist values and practices. We then shared stories, and this helped students make connections between the feminist theories we were studying and their application in real life,” she says.

 

Dukes, too, sees strong connections between contemplative practice and his academic work. “During the past several years I have become increasingly aware of the role that stress and even trauma plays within so many of the projects that our Institute works on,” says Dukes. “At the same time, I recognize the value of mindfulness as a key component of self-care, not only for myself, but for students that I teach and the many participants in trainings that I lead and projects that I facilitate,” he says. 

 

CSC’s Contemplative Practice Faculty Group is open to anyone teaching at UVA regardless of rank or position. If you’re interested in joining the group for the spring 2022 semester, contact Karolyn Kinane at kk7av@virginia.edu by February 4.