Hey there!
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always felt a little bit weird about joining meditation groups and courses.
I’ve tried plenty. Like the Zen dojos where you can only walk around the room in a certain direction, everyone sits facing the walls, and if you don’t have perfect posture or you fall asleep, you get smacked with a stick.
Or the Buddhist monasteries or centers where you have to sit super still in rows and pay close attention to the master at the front of the room who’s dressed in robes and surrounded by their loving disciples.
Or the new age circles where everyone is dressed in white and there’s a lot of dancing around and singing and group hugs.
I’ve nothing against any of the above—I appreciate a group hug and a good smack with a stick every now and again. But the thing is, if you just want somewhere where you can go and learn about and practice meditation, all this stuff can be a little off-putting—to say the least.
In fact, it’s these strong cultural associations and rituals and characters that come along with meditation that can make non-religious and more practical-minded and introverted people (like me) think the practice isn’t for them.
Interestingly, though, today there’s a new movement that’s disrupting tradition and allowing us to question the ways meditation is typically taught.
This is the emerging world of online meditation courses.
You could even say it’s the start of a new tradition, one that’s rooted in the technological outputs and digital lifestyles of the Western world.
I mean, that would be to see it in a positive light.
The reality is, there seem to be few things further away from meditation than the internet and video conferencing.
The dodgy connections, the trolls and Zoombombers, the kids and pets in the background, the disconnectedness of often being thousands of miles away from the people you’re talking to.
All of this spells disaster. And that’s without even mentioning the fact that many of us today spend too much time online anyway, and so adding more to that doesn’t seem the most “mindful” or wisest thing to do.
After studying mindfulness meditation for the past two years at university, which involved many online meetings and meditations, this was exactly the conclusion I came to.
The two just seem completely incompatible. To name a few of the biggest issues:
There were always unexpected interruptions. The instructor would be giving a talk or guiding a meditation and, after forgetting to mute someone, a car alarm would go off or we’d hear a kid running into the room screaming I WANT A SANDWICH.
There would only ever half of us paying attention. As many people are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with video conferencing, half of the time people would be trying to figure out Zoom or generally detesting it and wondering if/when the internet was going to cut out.
The vibe was either too informal or too serious. There’d be the ones lying on their sofas in their pajamas and giving everyone a nice view of their nose hair. The ones with the distracting virtual backgrounds of the seaside or the interior of a spaceship. And the ones sitting staring intently at the screen for three hours without moving an inch.
People would switch into passive consumer mode. Because of the barrier of the screen and how it’s generally associated with consumption, when there was little interaction, people would seem to fall into a passive and disengaged mode, as if they were watching a YouTube video or a TV show instead of participating as if it was a physical space.
With all this in mind, I was ready to write off teaching and practicing meditation online.
But then, the pandemic hit. Suddenly everything was online. Including…
Meditation retreats.
I’d booked a week-long mindfulness meditation retreat a few months prior. It was going to be set in an old farmhouse in a beautiful, quiet town on the Costa Blanca in Spain.
But now, it would be on my overheating laptop in my living room on the seventh floor of an apartment building in the middle of a busy, noisy, smelly city.
I could have canceled and got my money back. And at the thought of doing it online, I was fully ready to.
The only reason I didn’t was that it was easier not to. Also, I didn’t know when the next time we’d be able to do retreats in person would be.
And so, even though I was 100% certain I was going to hate it, I kept the booking and did it anyway.
Although I think a week (or even a day) on Zoom is too long, after doing the online retreat, I’ve completely changed my mind about practicing meditation online.
I saw and experienced that it could work—when done well. Simple things like acknowledging the limitations (and advantages) of the medium instead of trying to pretend it was the same as a physical space made all the difference.
It’ll never fully replace the in-person equivalent (hopefully). But it was clear there were way too many benefits of teaching meditation online to ignore. Overall, it could offer a convenient and effective way for people to dip their toes in, learn more, and find people to practice with from home.
So, with that in mind, I decided to jump on the bandwagon. With no idea of where it’s heading or if it’s really going to work, I decided to run my own online meditation course.
It’s based on the 8-week Zen Mindfulness & Meditation For Health & Wellbeing course run by ZenWays, London (find out more about it here).
As well as studying an MA in Mindfulness-based Approaches, I’ve been in training with ZenWays since 2019. This will be the first time I’ve taught the course fully, but for this reason, I’ll be offering it at a heavily discounted rate.
Stay tuned for my next email to find out more about the course (due to begin early March). You can also express your interest or reserve your space by leaving a comment on this post or contacting me on the email below.
Contact: info@mindfultrainingcamp.com
Speak soon!
Joseph