Touching the Earth: Mindfulness as an Embodied Social Practice in Community – Bill Gayner

Motivation & problem: How can we cultivate safe, egalitarian meditative communities of practice that reflect the values and perspectives of our professions and humanistic therapies in order to support ourselves in developing mature mindfulness meditation practices for lifelong healing, growth and flourishing?

The theory/practice method: Touching the Earth is oriented to the perspectives and values of Emotion-Focused Mindfulness Therapy (EFMT), adapted for peers practicing mindfulness in community rather than as psychotherapy. EFMT integrates mindfulness into Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) to expand how mindfulness can enhance emotional intelligence, help people address internal conflicts and unfinished business, navigate their lives, and cultivate growth and flourishing.

In developing a community of practice for long-term self/life cultivation, we are finding it is helpful to shift from a psychotherapeutic focus to orienting to the psychotherapy’s broader principles, theory and philosophy. Touching the Earth communities of practice orient to EFT’s neohumanistic principles, emotion theory and dialectical constructivist epistemology, as well as Eugene Gendlin’s philosophy of the implicit.

Touching the Earth draws on the format of Focusing Changes groups to cultivate emotion-focused mindfulness in communities in which members meditate, journal, share and explore meditation experience, and reflect on what they are learning together. Our members are currently all psychotherapists and counsellors. Touching the Earth is a style of mindfulness meditation that integrates the inter-related aspects of genuine relating with self and others, such as empathy, compassion, responsiveness, positive regard and congruence.

We value our roots in contemporary and secular Buddhist practice as well as the richness and diversity of our global philosophical and spiritual heritages. We seek to develop and share mindfulness training and practice programs to help psychotherapists, counsellors, other health professionals, and the general public develop caring, accountable, egalitarian communities for supporting one another in cultivating healing, growth, and navigating life in deeply valued, fulfilling ways.