Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:00]:

Today on episode number 516 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Presence in the Online World with Karen Robert and Aga Palalas. 

Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential. 

Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak, and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches, so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students. I’m so pleased today to be welcoming 2 guests to the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Karen Robert is a historian of Latin America whose research addresses issues of labor, human rights, and material history in contemporary Argentina. She’s been teaching at Saint Thomas University, a publicly funded undergraduate college in New Brunswick, Canada for over 20 years.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:19]:

Doctor Robert has maintained a long standing personal mindfulness and yoga practice and has spent more than a decade experimenting with contemplative approaches to teaching that help students deepen their personal connection with their learning and with each other. She’s undertaken contemplative education trainings with Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village Community with the now defunct Association For Contemplative Mind in Higher Education and at the Garrison Institute in New York State. In 2020, 2021, doctor Roberts served as remote teaching coordinator at Saint Thomas, helping oversee the small college’s transition to emergency remote learning during the COVID lockdown. Aga Palalas is an associate professor of open, digital, and distance education at Athabasca University, the Canadian online university, and director of the MEd and EDD programs. Drawing from over 25 years of experience as a face to face and online educator, instructional designer, and an IT programmer combined with her 2 decade long mindfulness practice. Her scholarly interests lie in the area of mindfulness and online learning, digital well-being, and contemplative pedagogy, and how these can be integrated into instructional design of online and blended learning. Karen Robert and Aga Palalas, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Aga Palalas [00:03:01]:

Such a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Karen Robert [00:03:03]:

Wonderful to be here.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:03:05]:

Instead of asking you for a definition of contemplative practices, Aga, you have agreed to guide us through 1. So let us welcome ourselves into an experience. If you are in a place where you are safe to do so, you may, you know, you may open up some space to do this or think about returning to this exercise later on when you have time and space and attention to do it. But, Aga, I’m gonna hand it over to you to guide us through a contemplative practice.

Aga Palalas [00:03:37]:

Thank you very much. This practice really focuses on the beautiful part of us, which is compassion. It is a practice that I’m not an author of, but I have adapted to the online space. And I am always glad to share with others. So if it’s accessible to you wherever you are, make sure that you are sitting down comfortably or standing up, whatever is more accessible at this point, and you are ready to go deep into the practice to the degree that is appropriate here now. Select a person either in front of you or in your mind that you want to connect with. You can look at someone’s picture, at someone’s image in your mind. Begin by being aware that there is this person in front of you, a fellow human being just like you, and silently repeat the following phrases while connecting with this person and looking at this person.

Aga Palalas [00:04:55]:

These are the phrases. This person has a body and mind, just like me. This person has feelings, thoughts, and emotions, just like me. This person has, during his or her life, experienced physical and an and emotional pain and suffering just like me. This person has at some point been sad, just like me. This person has been disappointed in life, just like me. This person has sometimes been angry, just like me. They have been hurt by others, just like me.

Aga Palalas [00:05:35]:

This person has felt unworthy and inadequate at times, just like me. This person worries, just like me. He’s frightened sometimes, just like me. This person will die, just like me. This person has longed for friendship, just like me. Is learning about life, just like me. Wants to be caring and kind to others, just like me, and wants to be content with what life has given, just like me. This where person wishes to be free from pain and suffering, just like me, and wishes to be happy, just like me.

Aga Palalas [00:06:21]:

This person wishes to be safe, strong, and healthy, just like me. This person wishes to be loved just like me. And now allow some wishes for well-being to arise. I wish that you will have the strength, resources, and show so social support to navigate the difficulties in your life with ease. Still looking at the person, say, I wish that you’ll be free from pain and suffering. I wish that you will be peaceful and happy. I wish that you’ll be loved because you are a fellow human being just like me. Now give thanks to this person, beard and your imagination, to the person in front of you.

Aga Palalas [00:07:24]:

Give thanks in your heart. Thank you for doing this practice.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:07:29]:

Thank you, Aga. Karen, as I think about being led through that exercise, I notice about myself the difficulty that it is to cultivate the kind of attention. Now we are, of course, recording a podcast, so I have the perfect excuse for why my attention failed me at, certain times, but attention is such a key part of the learning process and also just human development. And how could we think about cultivating mindful attention with students that might avoid some of the things I’ve seen that are more shaming or more control based? What kinds of things come to mind for you, Karen?

Karen Robert [00:08:09]:

Well, the first thing I would say to remind you is when we talk about contemplative practices, they are practices. They take practice. Mhmm. That’s the whole idea. You’re never doing it wrong. You just practice as if you were building a muscle or any other skill. You practice. It’s not it doesn’t mean you’re ever doing it wrong.

Karen Robert [00:08:30]:

In terms of attention, I would say I learned something from a dear friend and colleague years ago who was one of the first people on my campus who was kind of he was a he is kind of a dharma punk, like a kind of old punk rocker who got into Zen Buddhism sort of from punk rock. And so he’s not a kind of, airy fairy, very new agey. He’s quite edgy. And his advice to me when I first told him that I was at long before I met Aga, when I first told him I wanted to try to find ways to integrate my practice into my classroom, and I knew that he did stuff. I’m coming to your question. He said, well, one of the things I do is I never say the word meditation because we teach undergraduates. And many you know, some of them were 18 years old right out of high school. He said, I don’t say meditation.

Karen Robert [00:09:18]:

I don’t say mindfulness. He said, I open a conversation the very 1st week by bringing up the word attend attention and attendance. And he said, I you know, you might think I have an attendance policy that requires you to be here and that I will take attendance and control whether you are here or not. But he said, let’s unpack that word attendance. What else is involved there? Attention, attending to, being attentive. So that’s the language that he would use with students that he found a bit more accessible to say, like, what we need you is not just to show up here, put your Bonni in the seat, but together, we need to be attentive towards each other, towards what we’re trying to learn together. So it’s not a specifically digital, application of that idea, but that stuck with me. That was years years ago that my friend, Andrew, gave me that language, and I think it works really well with, you know, newbies.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:10:17]:

I appreciate the story. And, also, I feel so much that our devices, for so many of us, are such a part of our lives that when we talk about teaching, we tend to talk about it in this very bifurcated way. We’re teaching in person or we’re teaching online, but we’re we’re sort of most of us in societies today are really living in both of those spaces and experiencing those spaces. Certainly, AGA, a time when it can be harder to cultivate attention, either for ourselves or to try to facilitate it for others can be in those online spaces. Tell us about a time you experienced or you know of someone else who experienced a collective sense of presence online?

Aga Palalas [00:11:02]:

Times like that usually occur in the synchronous space online, but they can also, we can feel that connection, Right? Because that’s what it really is. Paying attention, attending to each other, seeing each other, feeling each other. We can Dave that experience also in the asynchronous space. When we are connecting in a more sequential manner and seeing each other’s presence in, in this case, learners generated artifacts. Right? When we are reading the lines that have been put together by one of the learners who really injected their presence and their attention into the piece that they created, we can receive it at the other end from them in a a synchronous way and continue some kind of back and forth sequential collective presence until, you know, this artifact that we’re creating together becomes our own. And it could be will be achieved either even in a simple situation when we are annotating, a reading, a, you know, some kind of journal article reading in a, in an online space. I’ve done that with our students when I encourage them to, collectively inquire into the document. So inquiry is the very important element here.

Aga Palalas [00:12:41]:

I prefer the students to inquire into it in a more holistic way, not only intellectually, but how does it feel in your body with all kinds of prompts. And that very often results in students offering more authentic comments. Those authentic comments lead to a, debate or collective inquiry that is a form of presence. It’s a form of connection. So it doesn’t happen without the attentional muscle that Karen just mentioned. That has to be built. So it is practiced, and it has to be intentional. So students in the cases I’m thinking of were guided by myself as a mindfulness practitioner and other mindfulness practitioners in the room, formal or informal.

Aga Palalas [00:13:36]:

People there are very many learners who have those qualities, although they might not be labeling them as mindfulness based practices.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:13:46]:

Something that comes up so much throughout your work is the idea of presence. And in the literature that I’ve read, it often can be translated to something so transactional, posting every week and having a welcome message. It can start to feel rote. I don’t I don’t wanna completely negate those efforts, by the way. You spoke earlier, Karen, about wanting to develop a muscle. And sometimes to develop muscles for new things, we do need the the structure to help us do that if it’s not something that we’ve ever gone accustomed to. So I hope my I hope it did not come across as judgmental on those efforts, and yet I just I so much experience longing for something that goes beyond transaction and into authentic presence for one another. And you said this earlier, Aga, attending to each other.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:14:40]:

And, Karen, you mentioned that as well. Thoughts around presence, cultivating presence in ourselves to be able to perhaps lead others to have a greater sense of presence themselves?

Karen Robert [00:14:53]:

Well, one of the principles of contemplative pedagogy is that it’s not a technique. It’s not like a a hack. It’s not the same as some oh, I have these 3 productivity hacks I’m gonna bring into my class. At at a at actually a contemplative pedagogy conference, I heard one of the presenters refer to presence as the unwritten curriculum of the classroom. The instructor’s presence is the unwritten curriculum of the classroom. So, you know, a couple of the vignettes and examples that are in the book, not written by me, but by some of our contributors, point to how sometimes just slowing down and grounding ourselves, even in an online space where we’re feeling overwhelmed by technological challenges and we feel disconnected from our students. There’s a lovely one by Margaret Ann Smith who describes being forced to teach online during COVID, and she had one student who was some people could come in person and some people were online. And she described that one student was really having trouble connecting because of their Internet connection, and she finally clued in from her years of personal practice and said, oh, why don’t we just stop? Why don’t we just pause and leave space for this person? Because the more we rush forward, the more they’re excluded.

Karen Robert [00:16:14]:

And she ended up writing about it because she realized it sounds so simple, but it’s not a hack. It’s it’s, it’s, coming back to yourself and remembering, oh, wait a minute. I know I know why this isn’t working. I’m on autopilot. I can always come back to myself and take a breath and take a pause and invite other people to pause. And and the students found it very meaningful, and she felt, oh, we connected. We connected with him.

Aga Palalas [00:16:41]:

And that was thanks to the awareness that she had. Right? Exactly. This is where it all starts. Being aware of what is happening within me and all around me and in our connection with others and the world, and then what my my So fortunately or unfortunately, it is behavioral in that manner. Right? It is something that has to be practiced on a daily basis. That therefore, we call it practice. So back to the, muscle. We can call it, you know, attentional muscle, presence muscle.

Aga Palalas [00:17:27]:

I do say to my students, what happens to you if you’re working on your biceps and then you stop going to the gym? Right? It doesn’t mean you cannot if you take a longer break, you cannot go back. You will go back and your body will remember and will come back to the practice. But it takes intention and habit. And then I wanted to mention that, you know, it sounds all beautiful, but it requires work as well. It requires developing an attentional habit and habit of paying attention. And there are practices that we have to be engaging in offline in order to be able to translate them into the online environment.

Karen Robert [00:18:14]:

And I would also say, I think we’re gonna have some recommendations at the end, but I would also reassure people for whom this is complete jar this makes no sense. This is we’re speaking a whole other language. A lot of those practices are quite informal. They don’t have to it’s you don’t have to make a commitment to, I’m gonna sit on a cushion in a quiet room for 2 hours every day. And the compassion practice that Agha let us in, one way you can incorporate that into your day at any moment, you’re standing in line at the supermarket, and you just you don’t look any different. You don’t sit on the floor. You just look around you, and you pick some stranger out of the crowd, and you send them good wishes. And you catch you notice how your mind actually is just roaming around judging people because that’s what our minds do.

Karen Robert [00:18:58]:

They’re just constantly going, oh, I like her coat. I don’t like him. That kid is loud. And then you just when you have that muscle, you go, whoops. Judging mind again. What can I notice here instead? And so it doesn’t it can be something that you can just just bring awareness to, and there’s techniques. Well, our other co editor, Renita Wong, she uses chimes on her phone all day. She’s trained in the Plum Village community, a tradition founded by the Vietnamese and, master Thich Nhat Hanh.

Karen Robert [00:19:27]:

And at the Plum Village Monasteries, there are ring there are bells that ring throughout the day. And it’s just a reminder, no matter what you’re doing, you just stop and pause while the resonance is in the air. And she just works that into her day, whether it’s when the red light turns red and she’s in a car or any any kind of she just any repetitive action that’s gonna happen throughout the day, she goes up, Dave a couple of breaths, pause.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:19:52]:

The other thing I was reminded of as in in reading the book is, as you mentioned it, a lot of this was language that I would not have necessarily used, but that I had been doing some things yearning for the kinds of things that are described there. And I try to be self aware to recognize when I am attempting to control other people and when I am trying to foster things or cultivate things and and to really work to distinguish between them. And it is difficult because many of us teach in a context where you might have more students in a residential program, but statistically speaking, it might be that that one out of every 4 or 5 classes that they take will be an online class, but it becomes one of those, oh, that’s gonna be my easy one that, you know, that that’ll that’s not the real thing. And and so I found that students would try to jam other things into the time that we might spend together on Zoom, And so they might be working. What one that I recall as a student fondly would would worked for a car dealership, and so a lot of his job would be driving one car from one of the dealer locations to another, but would show up to the Zoom. And that that I will tell you, used to am I I’m a human being, used to make me a little angry, and now I just I so much of it is now it’s a choice to be there. There are other options for students who either can’t or choose not to be there, so there is a thread of fully asynchronous opportunities so that, therefore, when people come to the Zoom, it’s much more coming out of a choice. And I recognize I’m I’m using some judgmental language as I describe this, but but truly but but for those who do come, there’s always a Google Doc that or Google Slides or something that is a template that helps them attend to what they’re doing and record their thoughts and and be more contemplative versus seeing that as a easy way to get my x for the I’ve been here this week, if that makes any sense.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:22:02]:

So it’s it’s reduced some of that feeling of transaction and more to paying attention to what is before us in that in that moment. So I I I I liked that.

Karen Robert [00:22:15]:

I mean, I think as instructors, it also puts the onus on us to try to create meaningful experiences. If we offer rote materials, it’s gonna feel transactional. So it’s hard to do, but we all know when we are hitting or when we’re we’ve done something meaningful in the classroom. So it requires us to design some meaningful experiences for students to get them to do more than just click a button.

Aga Palalas [00:22:42]:

And in order to make them meaningful, we can expect that everybody in the class is going to find meaning and relevance in that particular material and that particular design of a class. But we always try to do the best job possible in allowing students to personalize, right, that particular learning event. So there is room for choice. There is room for flexibility while there is what I call this gentle flexible structure that helps them and guides them, a very important element. But, also, I love what you just, mentioned in terms of there is this landing page when they come into the asynchronous space where they can pause for a moment and ask themselves questions. Right? And this is a really good start into it. I I often have arrival practices both in synchronous not often, always. Both in synchronous and asynchronous spaces where I ask for for students to, for example, pause and think, okay.

Aga Palalas [00:23:51]:

What is my intention? Why am I here right now? And students are very open in sharing that. They don’t have to, but they’re very open to share their intentions. And I’ve heard from students, I’m just here because I don’t want to be spending time cooking dinner for my husband. So it’s better to be sitting in front of the computer and pretend that I’m studying and thank you for this opportunity. Fair enough. Enjoy. Right? But at the same time, you know, if we constantly repeat this arrival activity and the question of what is your honest, genuine intention why are you here, students eventually might develop a habit of asking themselves, should I be going there? What is my intention? Is it the right time? So these are the questions that I would be asking students. You know this even when I was inviting you into the practice Dave, I said to you, if it’s accessible to you.

Aga Palalas [00:24:53]:

To the students that I know better, I would say, you know what? Are you ready? Are you present? Do you want to do this? If not, you know what? I’ll see you tomorrow. Anyway. Right? So you can play the recording, asynchronous recording, video recording with a phrase like that. Listen to my invitation and go, yeah. Maybe I’ll play it tomorrow instead.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:25:18]:

I love that invitation to be present and and real, true to ourselves, and, therefore, true to you as you invite us to those exercises. About 4 or 5 years ago, we had some leaky pipes in our house and had to go stay in a local hotel for a few nights while our entire house was repiped. That was quite the adventure. And my husband and 2 kids were staying there in the hotel room, and I needed to work. And for whatever reason, they weren’t they weren’t gonna be going anywhere as early as I was. And so when my alarm went off, I was just gonna do everything I could to let them keep sleeping. So I bolted out of bed, but was not properly oriented, so completely lost my balance, fell over, cut the back of my hip on the nightstand, knocked the lamp. I mean, I could not have made more noise trying to not make noise, and this story makes me chuckle now at the time I was crying because it hurts so bad, but it makes me chuckle for my next question.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:26:26]:

I can always use always use the advice on how to slow down a little bit. I have learned that as I am now in my fifties, that we don’t get to just pop out of bed anymore. We we we we, by necessity, need to be more mindful in the morning, but, other, advice for those of us that have trouble slowing down.

Karen Robert [00:26:47]:

Well, practice is good. I mean, the the long term benefits of a regular practice, as Aga mentioned, are the opening up of this space of awareness. So there’s a wonderful meditation teacher named Tara Brock, who I could recommend probably at the end, and she had a series on YouTube of first person descriptions. I wasn’t thinking of recommending this, but this is relevant. First person accounts, just short 3 minute videos of people talking about how meditation practice had impacted them. And some of those people had been meditating for 20 or 30 years, and some of them were relatively new. And some of the reflections were deeply personal and emotional, and and some of them were extremely pragmatic. And your example reminded me.

Karen Robert [00:27:36]:

1 man said, before I meditated, once I got in a terrible car accident on the highway, and it was like a multi car pile up, and it was and I was lucky to be alive. He Goes on and tells more of the story. Then he goes, then for whatever reason, I started meditating. And he said, I think it was only about 3 years into trying to maintain a relatively, consistent meditation practice, he said, I found myself in another really hairy situation on the freeway. And he said, I was stunned to see how I calmly, without panicking, maneuvered around it. And he said, I I just came out unscathed. I never panicked. I just sort of made choices, as we say.

Karen Robert [00:28:19]:

We instead of reacting, he responded. That’s usually what the language is. Instead of reacting, he responded to the situation. And he said, I can’t prove it, but I would chalk that up to my meditation practice that gives me that regular space of awareness where my my my skills just kicked in as they needed to do, and I swerved right around us and kept going. So, I mean, it’s another another pitch for practice. Another thing, Aga and I met at a wonderful training for in, contemplative pedagogy for higher ed higher education professionals. And there was a lot of modeling there of people intentionally slowing themselves down because there were people their teaching. And they kept modeling, you know, and, you know, they kept modeling, you know, and, you know, they kept modeling, you know.

Karen Robert [00:29:02]:

Or they kept running us through practices that they use in their teaching. And they kept modeling, you know, an arrival practice. Oh, as I get 3 or 4 slides in, I put a blank slide up or I put a sunset up. And that’s not just for the students. That’s to slow me down. You know? And people were saying, I’m not naturally wanting to take these pauses, so I build them in. So I think that we can create structures and routines that help us, but we’re all gonna I mean, I’m in Canada. We fall on the ice all the time.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:29:36]:

I love I love that you just reminded me of in the book. You invite us to do that as well. A little picture of Kat saying, slow down, pa this is a time to take a pause. Although you did not take the pun and spell the word p a w s as my husband Dave would have wanted you to do. But other than that, a a wonderful, perfect invitation to take those pauses. Alright. Aga, as we wrap up this portion of the show, I would love to hear you share a little bit specifically about digital wellness as it comes to our mindfulness and slowing down.

Aga Palalas [00:30:13]:

Thank you for this opportunity to speak to the practice and research that I’ve been involved in for over a decade. And by digital wellness, what I refer to in my work is using digital technologies in the specific on online and blended learning space, using those technologies to the benefits of everybody involved, the learner and the teacher. Right? And to avoid harms that might be coming with the usage of the digital technologies and digital digital spaces. And in in terms of these challenges in the digital world, I have to mention some of them here. It’s like it’s the hyper personal dimension of digital communication that I always talk to. It’s the privacy and safety, issues and concerns really making the online space very often insecure, at least feeling that way. It’s often expressed by online learners and online users’ feeling of isolation in the world that actually is hyperconnected. Right? And what comes out of it quite often and research confirms is mental, physical, holistic burnout and fatigue.

Aga Palalas [00:31:41]:

Right? That often leads the users with time to, you know, all kinds of mental and, holistic health issues, but also behavior of avoidance and withdrawal. So and there are so many other issues related to the misuse and overuse of digital spaces, but also the design, the inherent design of digital technologies that really are reflected in this attention economy. Right? So persuasive design, algorithms to catch our attention. You know, and really rob us of that attention if we don’t have the, practices of choice, deliberate use, selection, saying no to, digital offerings. I basically have been talking about 9 dimensions that we all have to work in in the design of online learning, And these 9 dimensions being opportunities for learners to practice awareness, balance, attention, to present themselves and their identity in an authentic and genuine way, to build spaces that are safe holistically and to support self regulation, emotional self regulation, learning regulation, and the agency of the learner, as well as really build communities that support each other so that we can together work as learners and teachers towards learners’ achievement. Not necessarily productive productivity measured in measured in effectiveness that is supposed to be supposedly measured in grades and percentages, but really achievement that is a process of learning that has beautiful moments that we celebrate. And if you focus on on this process and you are really engaged in your community and individually, that does lead to achievement that we all human beings need to experience in order to be mentally and otherwise happy and and feeling fulfilled. And that’s the short story.

Karen Robert [00:34:03]:

Say that just as the outsider, not part of this research, but someone who interacts with AGA regularly online, AGA, this some of this translates into very, very simple things like beginning a Zoom meeting or an sis a synchronous meeting with students or with colleagues and saying, let’s close some tabs. Let’s shut down anything that is not relevant to our current activity. Let’s look around our physical space. Do we have everything we need before we get started? Again, it’s that pause right at the beginning. And, like, you think about your physical space, and then Aga will say, well, think about the digital space we’re in right now. Is there anything here drawing your attention away or stressing you out? Can you put things away? Can you turn off notifications? So that’s a baby piece of the puzzle, but it’s very-

Aga Palalas [00:34:50]:

Decluttering. Decluttering. I always say you have to declutter your space, your physical, your mental, your digital space, closed all the windows, put the phones away, and now take care of yourself. Do you have the glass of water or iced tea that you need to be sitting here for the next 20 minutes? Because after 20 minutes, I’m going to invite you to get up if it’s accessible and maybe look around. Are you still feeling space? I’m ready to continue. So, you know, these pauses don’t take a lot of time, but they make a mega difference in the experience of learning or being together.

Karen Robert [00:35:27]:

And, also, I would say it even it just gives students also a sense that you see them as whole people. They they just appreciate it. These small pauses that are like, are you okay? Do you need a break? Do do do we only need a break right now? And that can work in person and also digitally, I think.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:45]:

This is the time in the show where we each get to share our recommendations, and I wanted to read a poem. I had to go back and make sure I hadn’t recommended this before. I do share it often when I give talks, but but I have not to my knowledge, I have not recommended this poem in the past. It’s by Mary Oliver. It’s called wild geese. You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a 100 miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:36:21]:

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile, the world goes on. Meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile, the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting, over and over announcing your place in the family of things. And, Karen, I will pass it over to you for whatever you would like to recommend.

Karen Robert [00:37:12]:

That’s lovely. That actually I was just at a sort of contemplative creativity workshop, and that was one of the poems that we got to work with.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:37:19]:

That is so fun. What a nice nice coincidence. I love that.

Karen Robert [00:37:23]:

Yeah. Isn’t that lovely? So I’m gonna give a couple of recommendations relevant to our conversation. One is if someone wants to know more about contemplative practice geared to postsecondary education, there is a wonderful edited book, Contemplative Practices in Higher Education, Powerful Methods to Transform Teaching and Learning, edited by Daniel Barbasat and Mirabai Bush. And what’s wonderful about this book, it’s like a nice, big, meaty handbook, and it has chapters written by people from extremely varied disciplines describing I mean, including hard disciplines like economics and law and chemistry about how they how and why these academics blended their personal practice into their teaching and and what benefits they saw. So that’s nice for for that more pragmatic side. The other thing I would like to recommend is more sort of in your free time. If anyone has never practiced and thinks this is all very woo woo and, you know, it’s like, yeah, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where would I even begin to learn about this stuff? I would highly recommend the 10 Percent Happier podcast hosted by Dan Harris.

Karen Robert [00:38:39]:

Dan Harris published a book 10 years ago by the same name, and people maybe know his story that he used to be a news anchor and he and a overseas reporter, and he suffered from a massive panic attack on live television, and that sent him into a whole search for self knowledge. And, anyway, what I love about the podcast is he’s a great interviewer. He’s a journalist by trade, and he brings on all the top people ranging from Buddhist teachers to neuroscientists and gets them to share and put into very plain language their teaching. So it’s it’s kind of fun. It’s irreverent Dave very informative.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:39:21]:

Thank you so much, Karen. That that 10 Percent Happier podcast has been recommended before, and I love when things get recommended multiple times because that’s just nudging me closer to putting it closer to the top of the list, and it does sound like a really, really good podcast. And, thank you for bringing it to our attention. Aga, what do you have to recommend for us today?

Aga Palalas [00:39:41]:

I’m going to then invite you to work on your own practice. Whenever you’re ready, you might want to deepen it and give chance to mindfulness based practices. I would mention here one of many apps that are out there, mobile apps for your phone, that are available out there. And the one that’s always served me well is Insight Timer app, offers gazillion of wonderful resources for free starting with music that would be just, you know, heartwarming, or energizing you according to the selection that you pick. You can pick your own type of meditation, workshops, resources that are available for you for free and that you can choose from according to your needs. Obviously, you could also use the paid version. I’ve been using the free version, and it’s plenty. So Insight Timer, it is a lot.

Aga Palalas [00:40:52]:

Definitely something for everybody. And so that was my plug into you gotta start with your own practice. And another also digital resource that I know that in our community and amongst my colleagues here, we’ve been using this website for many years, Greater Good in Education. I don’t know if that has been recommended before.

Aga Palalas [00:41:22]:

It’s coming to us from Greater Good Science Center at Berkeley University, and the Greater Good in Education offers all kinds of resources that would help you with leading others and yourselves into practices. Again, mindfulness based and other practices that are basically really a collection of and they claim here 350 plus practices related to social emotional learning, character education, and mindfulness drawn from the latest research. That’s the beauty of it. Every single practice offers you not only the opportunity to actually test it with yourself, but also gives you a script and research behind the practice, as well as options how to adapt the practice into your own educational context. So definitely definitely recommend that website and the resources on it as well.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:42:18]:

Thank you both for your writing and your editing toward the presence in the online world, a contemplative perspective and practice guide for educators. Throughout it, I felt so welcomed. I felt edified, encouraged by things that have gone well for me and challenged by those things that have not. And to all of your cowriters, what a what a great work that it is, and it’s just such a joy to get to talk with you today. And thank you, Aga, for starting us in such an unusual way. I I so appreciated that opportunity. I hope, to hear from people who took that chance to do some mindful practice with guided by you. Thanks, Karen.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:43:00]:

Thanks, Aga, for being here today.

Karen Robert [00:43:02]:

Thank you so much, Bonni.

Aga Palalas [00:43:04]:

Thank you very much. And I also wanted to say thank you on behalf of our coeditors, Lesley Bonni Jeffrey and Renita Wong. They’re here with us in their writing, in their practice, and in their heart as well.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:43:21]:

It was such a joy today to speak with Karen Robert and Aga Palalas for today’s episode. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak. It was edited by the ever talented Andrew Kroeger. Podcast production support was provided by the amazing Sierra Priest. 

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