Contemplative Practices in Higher Education: Powerful Methods to Transform Teaching and Learning
“Contemplative Practices in Higher Educationrepresents an instant classic in a growing movement that promises to bring greater depth, resonance, and engagement to college students’ learning experience. Dan Barbezat and Mirabai Bush document a stunning array of contemplative applications, revealing a robust and innovative field of pedagogy.”—Daniel Goleman, author,Emotional Intelligence“In this book, Dan and Mirabai do an excellent job in demonstrating how these transformative contemplative practices can be sensitively introduced to academia. I didn’t develop contemplative practices until I was middle aged. I wish I had had such practices in my college days.”—Ram Dass, teacher and author,Be Here Now“An inspiring report from the frontlines of academe by two quiet revolutionaries. A must-read for anyone who cares about the future of college teaching and who seeks a vision of what it could be.”—Jerome T. Murphy, research professor and dean emeritus, Harvard Graduate School of Education“This engaging and informative reflection on the uses of introspective and contemplative practices in higher education reveals a quiet revolution whose time has come. Barbezat and Bush have brought us a path-breaking book that speaks from and to mindful educators intent on helping students focus their attention and resist distractions, find more of themselves in their academic work, and bring more of themselves into the task of crafting lives of meaning, purpose, and compassion.”—Diana Chapman Walsh, president emerita, Wellesley College“This book is a hugely inspiring and practical resource for educators, giving them a whole other dimension of experience from which to bring to life the beauty of their subject and engage their students in discovering that beauty for themselves. Contemplative practices, integrated into the curriculum of higher education in the ways the authors describe and advocate so skillfully and compellingly, have the capacity to transform our relationship to learning itself, in all its mystery, intimacy, difficulty, and wonder.”—Jon Kabat Zinn, author,Full Catastrophe LivingandMindfulness for Beginners“Contemplative Practices in Higher Educationis truly a breakthrough book, showing how profound attentiveness, intellectual rigor, and self-knowledge can be seamlessly woven together. It offers us a transformed view of a student, a teacher, the academy, and the world.”—Sharon Salzberg, author,LovingkindnessandReal Happiness“Visionary, yet immensely practical and thorough! Can enhance the skill, understanding and well-being of students and provide the missing half of education.”—Jack Kornfield, author,A Path with Heart“At long last we have a comprehensive overview of the burgeoning field of Contemplative Pedagogy written by two of its leaders and pioneers. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the theory and practice of Contemplative Education.”—Harold D. Roth, professor of religious studies and founder and director, Brown University Contemplative Studies Initiative“Barbezat and Bush set forth a blueprint for a quiet revolution in education—placing student experience at the center of our learning objectives, supporting students in reconnecting with themselves while enabling them to feel their connections with an ever more diverse world. As our problems grow in complexity, the urgent need for such a revolution becomes clear. These pages hold the most practical approach yet for a way forward: transforming what happens in our classrooms, and actually changing the world—one student at a time.”—Rhonda Magee, professor of law and codirector, Center for Teaching Excellence, University of San Francisco“This book tells the wonderful and creative way of expanding and increasing the possibilities of higher education through contemplative practices. The authors clearly reveal and express the important and meaningful ties between teaching and learning and the power of contemplative practices, better connecting education to life. The best educators often seek ways to expand and broaden their reach and knowledge—this book will help them achieve that goal.”—Bradford C. Grant, director, School of Architecture and Design, and associate dean, College of Engineering, Architecture, and Computer Sciences, Howard University“A great guide to developing contemplative courses. ‘Poetry and Meditation,’ the experimental course I taught in Spring 2000 at West Point as a Contemplative Practices Fellow, changed much of what I thought I knew about teaching and learning, and by doing that, changed my life.”—Marilyn Nelson, chancellor, Academy of American Poets“The work represented in this book has been influential and inspirational in opening the doors to a new dimension of learning. The Institute for Jewish Spirituality has brought these contemplative practices—text study, reflection and yoga—into courses in a leading rabbinical school in New York, and thus magnified the impact of its program of spiritual formation of future rabbis and cantors enormously, as well as bringing faculty members together in generative cross-departmental study.”—Rabbi Rachel Cowan, Institute for Jewish Spirituality