Retreat for Mental Health Professionals
Eleanor Rachel Luger
Eleanor Rachel Luger interviews Tamara Engel and Sandra Weinberg
In late December, Eleanor Rachel Luger spoke to Tamara Engel and Sandra Weinberg about the retreat they will lead on January 26. Geared toward mental health professionals, it is entitled “Deepening the Healing Presence: Integrating Insight Meditation and Clinical Practice.”
ERL: At first glance, one might think Buddhist psychology and contemporary therapeutic practices make strange bedfellows. What common ground do they share?
SW: I can express it best in the Buddha’s own words, “I teach one thing and one thing only. The causes of suffering and the end of suffering.” To me, this is what the therapeutic situation is all about and where the two intersect. What is the source of our pain and how can we end it.
ERL: How did the idea of a meditation retreat for mental health professionals come about?
SW: A few years ago, Tamara and I led a workshop on Buddhism and Psychotherapy at the Center for Spirituality and Psychotherapy. We talked about the healing presence of the therapist and did some sitting, and what emerged was the power of silence. The participants realized something changes when you just sit with what is. Later, we decided to offer a retreat through New York Insight so therapists could learn how to sustain the skill of being present in the moment, without being too caught in conceptual thinking. Those of us who sit know because we have experienced it: As soon as you sit, you see this thing, the mind, which we work with, and sometimes against!
ERL: You have emphasized the power of silence--both the silence in yourselves that you have found on the cushion and the silent presence you offer your clients. Could you elaborate further on silence, stillness and quiet?
SW: When the mind gets quiet, suddenly everything is transparent, open, and spacious. When I see that in my own mind, I know that exists in my client’s mind, too. Actually, it’s not IN my client’s mind; it IS my client’s mind. The same clouds and the same storms that prevent me from seeing clearly come to my clients, as well. I sit with them and, for the most part, as broken as they may feel, I see them as whole. I don’t see them as broken. I know they are fine underneath the storm. It is about being with them just as they are.
TE: I feel that my meditation practice, more than anything else, has empowered me to listen. I remember when I was in social work school, and a student asked a very beloved professor, “How do you do therapy?” She answered, “As slowly as I possibly can.” Unfortunately, my training did not help me significantly enough to do therapy as slowly as I possibly could. It was only when I found my own meditation practice that I remembered what this professor said, and I was able to incorporate stillness and silence in my work in a much richer way.
SW: In one of the Buddha’s early talks, he made a point about silence that is pertinent for us. First, he said, “This dharma is not the result of thinking; it is the fruit of experience.” Then he followed with what could have been a message to therapists: “Listen serenely with all of your awareness.” When we do this, when we are fully present with a client, the question--and the answer--follow naturally: “What does this person need?” Often, the first thing he or she needs is to be heard. How we bear witness to our clients’ pain without being caught up in it also teaches our clients to bear witness to their own pain. It actually does something incredible for the therapist and the client. We start to be able to hold the more painful places.
TE: Sandra, you are absolutely right! One thing I am discovering more and more is people need to have the experience of being heard. Being heard equals being seen and being held. This is so significant because clients know we are really present for them when we are listening deeply. I am reminded of a tribe in South Africa where people greet each other with, “I see you.” The response is, “I am here.” The order of the exchange is important: Until you see me, I do not exist.
Your second point is very important, too. Being able to hold--contain what we are feeling can be very difficult, but it is an important capacity to cultivate. We have to find a way to explore a person’s relationship to feeling, which involves making the distinction between what is anticipated and what is real now. I have a client who is 41 years old. Two months ago, she was fine. Today, she has cancer. In a recent session, she said to me, “I am so afraid that I am going to die.” The more she talked about it, the more agitated she became. Her breathing became shallower. I saw her suffering and asked her, “Right now, what is happening right now?” This helped her make the distinction between anticipation and what is really happening right now. Afterward, we wrote this haiku together: “Anticipation / The worst is happening now / Believing my fears.”
ERL: What other ways does your meditation practice affect the way you interact with clients?
TE: There are so many different ways in which meditation informs my clinical practice! A shift in perspective--what the Buddha talks about in The Four Noble Truths--is perhaps the greatest contribution Buddhist psychology has to offer. In sitting with the unknown with conscious awareness, a shift in perspective occurs for the therapist in terms of how we see the client and see ourselves. Knowing is not as important as creating the conditions that allow engagement to happen. More change happens from shifts in perspective than any action or any act of will. The process is not about coming back to a specific idea or technique, but cultivating a way to look at something differently. As Sandra said, the Buddha taught there is pain and there is suffering, and what we can do to end it is shift our relationship to it. Before I had a meditation practice, if someone came to me and said, “I am depressed,” I would say, “Why? How do you understand this?” They would say, “My mother did this, my sister did that….” They would go into the content. Often I would get lost in the content and so would they. Now if someone comes in and says, “I am depressed,” I say, “What is it like for you to be depressed?” And they might say, “I don’t like it. I am a happy person. This shouldn’t happen to me.” Immediately, I get inside the person, and I get a deep look at the person’s self-concept, their attachment to it, and their suffering. Here is where the mind/body connection becomes alive.
SW: I want to piggyback on the mind/body connection. We in the West separate the mind from the body. We take the mind to one professional, and we take the body to another professional. In Buddhism, we talk about namarupa, the body/mind. The two are not separated. As Tamara was saying, when we work more experientially and in the moment, we are able to observe what thought does in the body. When we experience what is happening in the body, we aren’t caught in the mind. When we are in the mind, we are dealing with the conceptual. We are locked in the content of our thoughts and carried away by our commentary. However, as soon as we address the whole person, we’ve connected with what healing is about. Healing is not about curing or fixing something; it is about being present to the whole experience as it is in the moment. That in itself is healing.
ERL: Are there specific Buddhist teachings that you relate to your work?
SW: For the most part, when I sit with clients, I feel like a spiritual friend, kalyana-mitta. Spiritually, I feel we all are in this life together. I learn so much about myself as I sit and listen. I have learned how to pace myself, which takes away from the striving. Every once in a while, I do get caught! But I am much more relaxed now. There is also a meditation in the Brahma-Viharas that is very important to me. Brahma-Viharas is the Pali word for “heavenly abodes.” The heavenly abodes are among the most beautiful and powerful states of consciousness that we can experience. They are: metta--lovingkindness, karuna--compassion, mudita--sympathetic joy and upekkha--equanimity. The meditation that is important to me is the one on upekkha. It says everyone is heir to his or her own karma. As much as I want happiness for my clients, I cannot make them happy. That takes a load off me as a therapist. However, it also allows me to let myself be as present as I can be with whatever I do know.
TE: I know there are times when I am with somebody, and I see their attachment and their suffering, and I, like Sandra, say that meditation to myself. At those times, it helps me to be open to the person. Another way that the Brahma-Viharas have influenced my practice is through a better appreciation of mudita. The Buddha said that is the hardest quality to cultivate: To be happy for someone else’s happiness. When I heard that, I felt so vindicated for the times I have felt envy. My understanding of mudita has helped me be more compassionate toward my clients when they are expressing envy. Sharing the Buddha’s insight with them about envy helps them feel more compassionate toward themselves, as well.
SW: Therapists know about past, present and future. But one of the key things that the Buddha said over and over again was the only place we can live in is now. Most suffering that I have brought on myself, and I hear from other people, is the endless replaying of the past. We catastrophize and think that whatever is happening now will never end. One of the most significant things that the Buddha taught is that there is no such thing as stuck. No one, no thing is stuck. Everything is constantly unfolding. I think the biggest gift we can give to our clients is the understanding that we, as therapists, cannot always make the pain go away, but we can change our relationship to the pain. The Buddha talked at length about our fears, about what we try to avoid and about just letting it be. When we learn to “just let it be,” we learn to become fearless in the face of great pain.
ERL: What are your plans for the retreat day?
TE: Because we are talking about a retreat model, there will definitely be sitting and walking meditation. Some of the sitting meditation will be guided. We’ll probably include simple exercises to build awareness and bring home the power of getting quiet. We may talk about the healing presence and the shift in perspective from Western to Buddhist psychology. Also, there will be plenty of time for questions and answers.
SW: The retreat will include a lot of silence. People might have some aversion to this, but all the more reason to come! We talk and talk and talk to avoid our feelings. We run circles in our minds to avoid dealing with difficult issues. But the answers are deep inside us. It is not as if we don’t have the answers. We may not want to know the answers. It may be that the answers are not “fair.” But it is only in silence that answers can be found. That is an important message.
ERL: Can you be both therapist and meditation teacher to a client?
TE: There is some debate among mental health practitioners around the issues of boundaries. To me, it depends upon the client. I told a client who was interested in meditation that I would be happy to show her how to meditate, and I gave her information about New York Insight’s beginner’s classes. She decided she wanted to know something about sitting before she took the class, so I gave her one session of instruction. While she was taking the six-week NYI course, some of the time in her therapy sessions we spent meditating together. This helped her to clarify some of the questions she had. It was quite enlivening.
SW: I have no problem teaching clients how to meditate. However, I always give them the New York Insight catalog, too. I have a few clients now who ask to sit at the beginning of their sessions.
ERL: Are there any pitfalls in teaching meditation to clients?
TE: I think one potential pitfall is that we tend to overlook the shadow in ourselves and in people. Carl Jung said we become enlightened not by looking in the light, but by seeing the shadow. I think there is a danger of idealizing meditation and looking for, and only seeing, the goodness. It’s Larry Rosenberg who said, “Don’t wallpaper your anger with lovingkindness meditation.”
SW: That comes from a misunderstanding of what practice is about; it is a lack of discerning mind. There are people who are looking for a way out. People will go into deep samadhi, concentration, not to feel their feelings. This is a defense that is similar to turning to drugs or alcohol. They have ignored the basic instruction: To be with what is, fearlessly, without judgment.
TE: Also, like any other therapy, meditation doesn’t work for everyone. I see a client who tried therapy twice a week, 12-step groups for her addictions, and meditation. She felt none of these things had made all that big a difference in her life, and I agreed with her. And it’s not that she hadn’t put in hard work. These therapies, including meditation just haven’t changed things for her all that much.
ERL: It is fascinating to think about how people regarded the teachings of the Buddha in his time. The nature of our mind is no different now than then. Some 2500 years later, what would the Buddha think?
TE: That’s a great question. What would the Buddha think? I think the Buddha would be happy and encouraged. We are doing as he said: We are seeing for ourselves.
