The march of mindfulness into the mainstream seems to show no sign of slowing. On balance that’s a good thing. However, I’m struck more and more how an aspect of the approach—long-considered to be crucial in order to make meditation a habit—doesn’t get mentioned very much these days.
An individualistic culture often portrays mindfulness as a solo practice. Maybe that’s no surprise. We imagine a person sitting alone, cultivating attitudes such as curiosity and gentleness. I’ve no doubt that practising mindfulness on your own can be helpful. But traditionally, learners trained in groups and communities. I suspect a large part of the therapeutic benefit of mindfulness for individuals comes from this tradition. Why? Because approaching practice this way enables us to learn with and from other people.
Why Community Can Make Meditation a Habit That Lasts
When people come together for a first session of mindfulness training, it’s common to explore what brings each individual to the approach.
In an opening session, you’ll likely hear others speak of the stress arising from common problems such as:
- busy, uncontrolled thoughts
- physical or emotional pain
- the strain of personal and professional commitments
- the speed of a world that demands a dehumanizing degree of consumption and acquisition
There often dawns a first recognition that the real problem doesn’t just lie in me as an individual. Instead, people see the common burden of living a human existence, with human frailties, in a human world.
Suddenly, often from a place of feeling alienated and alone, there comes a realization: We’re all in this together, and we’re not feeling bad because we’re defective, but because this is the way of things in the world we share.
Suddenly, often from a place of feeling alienated and alone, there comes a realization. We’re all in this together. And we’re not feeling bad because we’re defective, but because this is the way of things in the world we share. It’s not all our own fault. This lessens and lightens the pressure to have it all together. The journey into mindfulness—together—has begun.
Over time, as a group of people cultivates mindfulness in this way, the feeling of connectedness and commonality usually grows. There is a sense of mutual support that enables us to learn, love, laugh at ourselves, and let go together.
It may well be that this way of being together as a group is just as, or perhaps even more important, than the formal meditation practices we undertake as part of the work.
Especially when facilitated by a good teacher, people discover it’s easier to open up to ourselves and one another. Also, as it happens, I’ve found that meditating in a group on a regular basis is also one of the best ways to encourage people to practise on their own. It’s counterintuitive, perhaps, but that togetherness makes meditation more meaningful. That, in turn, makes meditating alone more manageable. The togetherness helps make meditation a habit, whether done solo or in community.
More Research Is Needed
In my opinion, this hypothesis—that mindfulness as a group activity is much more powerful than practising on your own, with a book, with an app or a CD (good though these may be)—hasn’t been explored enough in mindfulness research.
We don’t really know what the specific benefits of learning mindfulness together are. However, related research which shows that people’s attitudes and behaviours are strongly primed by the environments in which they operate offers some clues.
It seems logical that a meditative community will be a more inspiring and influential learning zone for mindfulness than a place where speed, greed, and “going it alone” are the norm. But this isn’t what’s being offered to most people, at least not beyond the first eight weeks of a mindfulness-based stress reduction or cognitive therapy course. There are still few fully secular options for ongoing training available to graduates of such courses, and no retreat centers (so far as I know) completely devoted to a non-doctrinal mindfulness approach.
If we want the current surging interest in mindfulness to become more than a drop of sanity in an ocean of materialistic madness, we will need to create communities capable of curating the core attitudes and approaches whose preservation protects the practices from perversion, dissolution, and misappropriation. We want to make meditation a habit for more people…and we want to do it in a healthy, supported way.
This is not an easy task, and it won’t happen perfectly. We live in a messy world, with messy minds. Taking a preaching, purist line is likely to be counter-productive.
Mindfulness is entering a mainstream in which feeling like we have to go it alone is part of the problem, not the solution.
I reckon we have a better chance if we name the issue. Mindfulness is entering a mainstream in which feeling like we have to go it alone is part of the problem, not the solution. Yes, the pressure for a primarily do-it-yourself, self-help approach to mindfulness is strong. But down that road, we might actually end up with something that’s a pale imitation of the powerful force for good that mindfulness can be.
If we compassionately acknowledge the social and environmental obstacles we are all collectively responsible for, and lean on each other for support, we can make a lasting, positive impact.
