CHAPTER 4

Presence, Form, and Process: Embodiment

In this chapter and the next, we move beyond the MBSR curriculum/protocol into an in-
depth discussion of embodiment and inquiry, of which presence, form, and process are dynamic
aspects. A separation of embodiment and inquiry into two distinct categories is a contrivance
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to facilitate the discussion of these key components of teaching. We need to remember that
embodiment is integral to inquiry and vice versa. Teaching MBSR requires an understanding
and appreciation for the structure of and modular approach to the program while relying on
a teacher’s embodied mindful presence to communicate the various practices and exercises.
While one could simply teach the content of the MBSR program, facilitating mindfulness
calls for the teacher to personify embodiment and inquiry as a mindfulness practice.
Presence, form, and process are concepts we will use to assist the discussion regarding
the nature of embodiment and the inquiry process. Presence is expressed as a dynamic and
fluid attitude, demeanor, and behavior that involves a quality of focused attending, active
listening, and the manifestation of mindfulness. Form consists of the structural elements of
the program, which contain the curriculum/protocol, guidance of the formal meditation
practices, various exercises, and method of inquiry. While important, because of its organiz-
ing functions, form can become restrictive when it overrides the teacher’s ability to maintain
a present moment focus and cognitive flexibility, and to stay in process during guidance and
inquiry. Process, then, is the unfolding movement of the teacher’s and participants’ practice,
fluid and contingent upon the context, what is arising in the group, and the content of the
sessions.
Embodiment consists of a teacher’s embracing of a present moment orientation that
includes the ability to engage in and teach a continuous and steady attention to various medi-
tative foci (objects of interest, such as the breath), open monitoring, and the discernment of
skillful responding. These are expressed through the attitudinal foundations of mindfulness.
Inquiry, which we discuss in chapter 5, is the interactive manifestation of embodiment, the
conversation that takes place between the teacher and the group, about what has arisen
during the mindfulness practices and exercises.
Copyright 2021. New Harbinger Publications.

Aspects of Mindful Embodiment

How a teacher develops mindful embodiment, a tangible quality of being and a specific stance
for teaching MBSR, is developmental and complex. Because this is a process that takes time

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Account: s1229929.main.eds
 Presence, Form, and Process: Embodiment145

and may be expressed and experienced in various ways by different teachers, a discussion of
embodiment requires reflection and sensitivity to its diverse manifestations.
However, the expression of embodiment is visible, both nonverbally and verbally, through
a teacher’s demeanor, behavior, body language, spoken word, tone, and pacing. The culmina-
tion of these qualities we refer to as the teacher’s presence. By embodying key aspects and
attitudes of mindfulness, a teacher is demonstrating and transmitting its core characteristics
and concepts. This has significance for participants’ experiential learning of the practice.
The presence of a teacher and his representation of mindfulness matter because they convey
an ethical way of being and behaving through a kind, curious, and compassionate stance.

Present Moment Orientation

A first step toward embodied mindful presence requires the recognition of and intention-
ally attending to the present moment. While this is an intention that we hold, we recognize
that, in practice, this is not continually sustainable. Inevitably, our attention will get pulled
in a variety of directions (into planning what comes next in the agenda or our own reactions
to what a participant has just said). However, over time, the ability to attend in this way
becomes increasingly available, leading to the facility to spend more time in the present and
less habitual time in the past or future, engaged in repetitive thinking (Farb, Anderson, &
Segal, 2012).
To this end, the teacher needs to learn to pay attention to his own experience, as it is
revealed, and at the same time stay attuned to how the participants are expressing their expe-
rience. Attending to his own experience allows him to recognize and understand how his
own state and reactions may interfere with his ability to be in the present, embody mindful-
ness, and stay with what is happening in the group. Embracing this inner awareness helps the
novice teacher decrease the tendency for his agenda to get in the way of the participants’
experience.
Developing this intra- and interpersonal wakefulness to the present moment—again,
embodying mindfulness—is a skill requiring practice. Indeed, embodying mindfulness
requires the teacher to understand the role of cognitive appraisal, meta-cognition (awareness
of awareness), and the characteristics of steady attention, open monitoring, and discernment
(Woods, Rockman, & Collins, 2019).
Cognitive appraisal is a normal function of the mind to perceive, interpret, and personal-
ize a situation. Meta-cognition (knowing that you are thinking) is part of various traditional
forms of meditation. In mindfulness-based programs, this process is intentionally developed
as a skill and made explicit. Meta-cognition is essential because it supports the ability to de-
center (gain perspective and loosen from a fixed sense of self), providing a different relation-
ship to and understanding of stress. This is an important learning because it allows for flexi-
bility and adaptability in meeting the vicissitudes of life.

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 146 Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

Steady Attention
Part of a teacher’s embodiment is cultivating a steady attention on an intended object
(e.g., the breath) that is a key factor of mindfulness practice. A teacher will be aware of other
aspects of experience, but they will be in the background. Nurturing a steady, unwavering
attention involves the teacher’s awareness of his own experience, while at the same time
actively listening to participants’ questions, reflections, and insights, and their integration of
mindfulness practice into everyday life. When the teacher is in the flow of this “intersubjec-
tive space,” he is deeply curious and able to drop a personal agenda even though he is still
holding the themes of the session in the background, so that they are accessible when needed.
He is aware of how difficult it can be for people to slow down and stay present, to learn to
describe their direct experience, rather than habitually and immediately move into an inter-
pretation or narration (story) of it.
This steady attention is then translated into being able to track the movement of sensa-
tions (thoughts, emotions, body sensations, sounds), encouraging the process of de-centering
from self. De-centering entails the development of a sense of self as process rather than some-
thing fixed that is in need of protection. This promotes a sense of self that is flexible, reducing
defensive reactions or being controlled by such mental activity as comparative thinking, judg-
ment, competition, thoughts of incompetence, worry, caretaking, wanting an outcome, per-
fectionism, or needing certainty. A teacher who embodies such flexibility and openness pro-
vides important learning for participants by modeling a more adaptive approach to managing
stress.
Of course, we do need a view of self in order to function in the world, but what we are
addressing is how tightly we adhere to it. A fixed sense of self results in a more limited view
and choice in terms of how we respond to the present moment. Such an attachment to self as
an entity also limits a teacher’s ability to embody mindfulness. This will also have the ten-
dency to pitch us into more traditional methods of teaching in which we are the experts and
the students are passive recipients of our wisdom.
What follows is an example of a teacher working with steady attention to highlight the
habitual nature of automatic pilot. The following dialogue is taken from session 1 after par-
ticipants have been guided through the raisin exercise.

Teacher: We have just had the experience of being with this object—the raisin—and I
am wondering what showed up?

Participant 1: Apart from this being a weird experience, it made me realize that I wouldn’t
take this amount of time to be with a raisin!

Participant 2: I don’t think I have ever smelled a raisin before!

(Laughter from the group members with the teacher smiling.)

Participant 3: Listening to a raisin was kind of strange!

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 Presence, Form, and Process: Embodiment147

Participant 4: By bringing my attention to looking at the raisin, I realized that it is easy to

think you know something like a raisin that is pretty familiar, but it was as if
I had never seen the raisin like this before.

Teacher: What did you notice?

Participant 4: Well, there was something about being given time to look that allowed me to
see the raisin in a different way—I could see the ridges, the color; it was shiny
and round. And I was really concentrating on the raisin in those moments.

Participant 5: It was as though there was no rush. I was aware of thinking things about the
raisin, but your guidance was a reminder that when we noticed we were think-
ing, that was okay, and we could let go and bring our attention back to the
qualities of the raisin. Thinking sort of went into the background.

Teacher: It’s interesting to notice that here when we took some time to be present in
this way, slowing things down, deliberately paying attention in this way, we
had the opportunity to see things differently. How might this be relevant to
reducing stress?

Here the teacher is summarizing briefly what has been expressed by the participants (a
present moment attentional focus) and is also asking an important question, which is what
might be the relevance of this exercise (the first in session 1) to reducing stress. By picking up
on the themes of attending to the raisin by utilizing the senses, taking the time to slow down,
the teacher highlights the practice of sustained attention, with being curious about what is
present rather than assuming one knows (automatic pilot). These are important building
blocks for future learning.

Open Monitoring
Open monitoring (also known as open awareness) is an embodied, receptive way of being
with experience and a distinguishing feature of embodiment. The intention of open monitor-
ing is to “enhance the capacity to bear witness to experience as well as to how one is relating
to it” (Woods, Rockman, & Collins, 2019). While this refers to both teacher and participant,
our focus here is on the teacher. By maintaining an openness to what is occurring intraper-
sonally and interpersonally as he guides the formal meditation practices, exercises, and works
with the group during inquiry, the teacher imparts a curious, receptive, and clearly demon-
strated way of approaching and being with whatever is occurring. Over time, the participants
internalize this observer stance because it is being imparted by the teacher, which enables
them to increase their tolerance to stress, support their access to the full range of experience
(the joys and challenges), and learn that everything passes. In this way, they can meet their
lives with more equanimity and choice. The following example of open monitoring in action
is taken from session 2 after the body scan meditation practice.

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 148 Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

Participant 1: I had a really hard time listening to your voice during that practice. I stopped
listening to it.

Participant 2: Yeah, I had a hard time too. You kept saying the same things over and over
again.

This is not an uncommon occurrence during the second week and can be challenging for
a novice teacher (Teacher 1), who may personalize the responses.

Teacher 1: I’m sorry my voice got in the way. (Here the teacher has made the discussion
self-referential and doesn’t address the participant’s experience.)

A more seasoned teacher (Teacher 2) will pause before responding, in order to recognize
and accept any thoughts, emotions, body sensations, and urges in reaction to these responses
and maintain a curious and dis-identified stance.

Teacher 2: Oh, can you tell me a little bit more about what was hard? (This teacher keeps
the focus on the participant’s experience, maintaining a present moment ori-
entation, curiosity, and receptivity.)

Social etiquette often entails an apology if one person is having difficulty with what is
said by another. However, when teaching MBSR, this can be counterproductive because it
sidesteps the intention of open monitoring, which is to be curious about participants’ experi-
ences rather than personalizing them. This example also illustrates how an experienced
teacher can skillfully demonstrate the process of open monitoring by staying with participant
responses, not taking them personally, and valuing the investigation of experience rather
than reacting to it.

Discernment
An additional aspect of embodiment is discernment. Discernment can be thought of as
the wisdom and maturity to know what is a skillful response in any given situation. Part of
mindfulness practice is to discover the underlying causes of suffering, and by developing a
different relationship to those causes, create the conditions that contribute to our well-being.
The teacher frames this knowledge by holding attitudes of kindness and compassion that
include himself and others equally. By attending to each moment with open awareness, and
expressing this through his interactions, the teacher creates an environment that encourages
experimentation with novel ways of meeting stress. This in turn changes the participants’
relationship to challenging stressors. In this way, the capacity to hold an experience regard-
less of its charge is enhanced, increasing options around what to do next, if anything. With
respect to stress, sometimes actions are not required or even helpful, and it may be wise to
remove oneself from or intentionally avoid a situation. At other times, it may be more helpful
to simply allow an experience to be as it is or let it go, if possible. These are key points of
instruction that the teacher makes throughout the program, highlighting discernment
(insight) as part of everyday mindfulness.

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 Presence, Form, and Process: Embodiment149

What follows is a demonstration of how to work with discernment where the teacher is
leading an exercise from session 7—interacting with the world, skillful choices, and self-care.
In this part of the session, the teacher facilitates a general discussion about environmental/
world stressors that participants identify, with a focus on their relationship to them. In this
example, the teacher uses technology as the vehicle to explore the impact of such stressors.
After participants have had some time to discuss with each other how they use technology
and its effects upon them, they then examine how they might bring the practice of mindful-
ness to their relationship to a particular aspect of technology. This is then translated into a
concrete “behavior” that they commit to working with for the following week. Behavior here
refers to a skillful response, whatever that might be, which will often be different for each
person.

Teacher: I’d like to hear how you’ve chosen to work with technology and how you are
going to change your relationship to it this coming week.

Participant 1: My issue is the number of emails that come in every day and how often I
check them. I recognize that I’m constantly checking my email on my phone
and this gets in the way of whatever I’m doing and whoever I’m with.

Teacher: Great. How are you going to bring mindfulness to this, and then how will you
work with it?

Participant 1: I realize that as soon as I wake up, I check my phone for emails! So, I am going
to turn off my phone at night and when I wake up, I’m going to do a mini body
scan before I turn it on. This will help interrupt my automatic need to check
my phone, bring a pause, and let me decide what I do next. I may even wait
until I get to work to look at it. That would be a relief. It will be interesting to
see whether I can actually do it this coming week.

Teacher: I look forward to hearing how it went when we meet next week.

Participant 2: I realize that I’m a news junkie, particularly while I’m in bed at night, and then
that affects my sleeping. I’m going to stop and bring awareness to the craving
to know what’s happening even though I just checked the news earlier in the
evening. I’m going to attend to my breathing and notice what I’m thinking,
the emotions and body sensations that are present. Then I’m going to turn out
the light and go to sleep.

Teacher: By stopping and bringing attention to the urge to watch the news and then
focusing on your breathing, you are intentionally avoiding what is usually a
habitual behavior. Sometimes avoidance can be a really good thing!

These two examples show how discernment can be used to work mindfully with chronic
world stressors. One person used body awareness to interrupt habitual behaviors. The second
person used breath awareness of internal experience, followed by avoiding the stressor. The
importance of bringing the practice of mindfulness into the “real” world cannot be stressed

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 150 Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

enough. In this example, the teacher has chosen to focus on our ubiquitous relationship to
technology as a stressor, but equally the focus could encompass other areas of interest to the
group.
Central to the practice and teaching of mindfulness are specific attitudinal foundations
of mindfulness, as they play a significant role in the development of the teacher’s presence
and mindful embodiment. And it is to these that we now turn.

Attitudinal Foundations of Mindfulness

Rooted in and informing the embodiment of mindfulness are attitudinal foundations that
include such qualities as patience, trust, beginner’s mind, nonjudging, acceptance, non-­
striving, and letting go (Kabat-Zinn, 1990, 2013). To this list we would add two others: curios-
ity and compassion (Woods, Rockman, & Collins, 2019). When one internalizes these quali-
ties, they become part of a lived and dynamic experience rather than solely an intellectual
pursuit. And it is through the expression of these attitudes that a teacher brings life to the
practice and teaching of MBSR. They influence the presence of a teacher (authenticity, self-
awareness, empathetic attunement), impact the form of the teaching (the method, how he
structures his approach), and contribute to the process (the practice) of teaching. Of course,
these attitudinal foundations are not only applicable to teaching MBSR but are also relevant
to how we engage in everyday life.

Presence
Presence is a state, a trait, and an ongoing process that entails a teacher being fully present
(Farber, 2008). As Parker Palmer suggests in his book, The Courage to Teach (2007, p. 1): “We
teach who we are.” In MBSR, teaching who we are (presence) means embodying one or several
of the attitudinal foundations in any given moment. Being fully present starts with a present
moment orientation. This anchors the teacher and the participants in the here and now, pro-
moting an intersubjective space (Buber, 1958), which in this case is harnessing mindfulness.
For an MBSR teacher, this means embodying patience (it takes time and effort to pay
attention in this way) and imparting trust in the process as a participant struggles with a
practice, discovering what is to be learned. In another moment, a teacher will emphasize
acceptance (seeing things as they are, and not as we might wish them to be) and letting go of
the tendency to hold on to something long after it has passed. A brief example of this follows.

Participant: This practice was really hard. My mind was all over the place. Even when I
heard the words you said about noticing when the attention wanders, to let go
and come back to what we were focusing on, I found it really hard to do that.

Teacher: It takes a lot of energy to pay attention in this way.

In this example, the teacher is being supportive without being overly reassuring, reflect-
ing patience, trust, and acceptance.

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 Presence, Form, and Process: Embodiment151

Form
When teaching is based on a curriculum/protocol, there is a method or form for its deliv-
ery. This is important for quality assurance and useful for training future teachers. It is there-
fore an asset and provides an organizing principle and guidance for the teacher. But we can
get too attached to form itself. It becomes a “thing” to which we rigidly adhere. In MBSR, if
a teacher relies entirely on the structure of the program and loses sight of the attitudinal
foundations, he risks reducing his responsiveness to the needs of the group and the teaching
becoming reductive.
The MBSR curriculum/protocol is a living document. This means that in any given
moment, while a teacher is informed by the structure of the session, he is also responsive to
the participants, utilizing any number of the attitudinal foundations when required. In this
way, the teacher embodies flexibility, adapting his responses when appropriate, rather than
rigidly adhering to a structured approach. He retools the form as needed, using it as a conduit
to express presence and process, but maintains the structure of the program to minimize
confusion and drift from MBSR’s central tenets. An example follows from session 4. The
teacher has taught a sitting meditation practice where participants have had the opportunity
to work with challenging physical sensations.

Participant 1: I wasn’t uncomfortable in this practice! This is the first time I haven’t had
some kind of ache or pain!

Participant 2: I decided to lie down for this practice. That really helped. I was more
comfortable.

Participant 3: Focusing on the breath was really helpful. When I was uncomfortable, it made
it easier.

Participant 4: Were we supposed to be focusing on the breath?

Participant 5: I thought we were focusing on the body!

The novice teacher might well want to respond by reviewing the instructions for this
practice or addressing specific themes (the form). And although that would be useful, it
would not be in the spirit of embodying the practice by responding to what participants are
noticing, addressing their confusion, or taking the opportunity to employ the attitudinal
foundations. Let’s see what an experienced teacher might offer.

Teacher: So, noticing there wasn’t discomfort this time, and making a choice to lie
down seemed to make a difference; focusing on the breath as well as a focus
on the body was also helpful. Lots to look at here, which is great (acceptance
and non-striving). This is our practice; whatever shows up is of interest. I’d
like to hear more about this experience from you all (curiosity and
nonjudgment).

The teacher has let go of any need to review the practice or explicitly discuss one of the
themes for session 4 (working with challenging components of stress—in this case, in the

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 152 Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

body). He is staying with what is being presented (present moment orientation) and is indi-
rectly expressing several of the attitudinal foundations through his encouragement and curi-
osity. He also keeps participants close to their direct experience of the practice during the
inquiry, implicitly addressing relevant themes.

Process
The attitudinal foundations (and the practices of mindfulness) provide a flexible under-
pinning for a teacher to attend to his interiority as well as maintain awareness of the outer
world. This awareness is receptive, curious, compassionate, and adaptive, and it is this that is
conveyed to participants. It is a radical act of kindness to stop and turn toward oneself. By
being curious, nonjudgmental, and accepting of experience—acknowledging the challenges,
the self-criticism, and the anxiety—a process can unfold in which we develop a sense of being
an observer of (de-centering), rather than the protagonist in our own story.
Understanding self as process is important for a teacher, as it allows him to let the ses-
sions unfold, rather than requiring that he control the program or be too attached to his role
as the teacher who maintains ownership of “his” group, imparting his expertise. If we end up
believing the story of who we think we are, we are operating in a way antithetical to the
practice. Hence, there is a focus on everything as sensation. This promotes a loosening from
a fixed identity and enhances attention to experience as an ongoing process, rather than
something reified, already known, and with a “right way.” It is in these moments where the
attitudinal foundations can be so helpful. An example follows from session 5 after the sitting
meditation practice.

Participant: This was hard. I found it really difficult to pay attention for all of that time.

Teacher: What showed up in this practice? (Here, the teacher has avoided the person-
alizing aspect of the comment and is focused on the experience itself, reflect-
ing curiosity.)

Participant: I think in the beginning it wasn’t too bad, but as it went along my attention
drifted and I got anxious.

Teacher: So, you noticed the attention shifted and anxiety? (The teacher is checking
in, emphasizing the emerging process, naming it, and demonstrating trust,
interest, and acceptance.)

Participant: I’m not very good at this.

The participant has moved to narrative self-referencing and a judgment about self, not
uncommon when we believe we are not doing something “right.”

Teacher: A bit of judgment has crept in here! Might I ask, how did you know the atten-
tion shifted? (The teacher has simply identified the judgment but is not fixated
on it, which is key to dis-identifying from a view of self as incompetent. He

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 Presence, Form, and Process: Embodiment153

returns to the experience itself without a fixed agenda and reflects the atti-
tude of non-striving.)

Participant: I noticed feeling anxious.

Teacher: Ah, where?

Participant: (Pauses) My breath was faster, and I had butterflies in my stomach. I can sense
it now.

Teacher: (Pauses) I wonder if it would be possible to bring attention to these sensations

in this moment? (The teacher models turning toward, acceptance, and
compassion.)

Participant: (Takes a few breaths and shifts position) It’s there; it’s like a fluttering.

Teacher: That’s our practice. Noticing, acknowledging, being present for.

The teacher has allowed the practice to reveal what was present for this participant by
staying with what was expressed and showing interest and trust in what might emerge. There
was no agenda, no desired outcome, and by tracking the sensorial experience, the context
was not personalized (“I’m not very good at this”), but was instead about an unfolding process
worthy of attention. This lessens the attachment to a fixed sense of self because it reveals the
components of experience as fluid events, with sensorial components, rather than as reinforc-
ers of who we believe we are.
How a teacher orients and speaks to the present moment, delivers the program, facilitates
group process, manages individual learning, and relates to participants as they engage with
the material is very much a part of his embodiment. Presence, a way of being, needs practice,
requiring an openness and vulnerability to self and other, one that offers teacher and partici-
pant the opportunity to be more fully human. Form provides the medium for transmitting
mindfulness as a skill. Process is the moment-by-moment practice of mindfulness.

In Closing
In this chapter, we have discussed embodiment using the concepts of presence, form, and
process to explore a present moment orientation, of which we highlighted the components of
steady or sustained attention, open monitoring, and discernment. We included an explora-
tion of the attitudinal foundations that we see as critical to embodiment. We now turn our
attention to inquiry, the mindful dialogue between teacher and participants that requires a
teacher’s presence, has a form, and is also an emergent process.

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 CHAPTER 5

Presence, Form, and Process: Inquiry

A book that addresses the heart of teaching in reference to mindfulness would be incomplete
without giving attention to inquiry. While there are a number of definitions for inquiry in
mindfulness-based programs (Crane et al., 2008; Santorelli, 2016; Woods, Rockman, &
Collins, 2016, 2019; Brandsma, 2017), we see it as “a contemplative dialogue between teacher
and participant(s) that supports the investigation of experience arising from the practice of
mindfulness” (Woods, Rockman, & Collins, 2019, p. 124).
Contemplative dialogue here refers to an intentional process of observation, exploration,
and consideration of both internal and external experience. As such, it can be viewed as
having active and receptive components. The active component consists of the MBSR teach-
er’s guidance of the post-practice conversations. How participants internalize these conversa-
tions is the receptive component.

Inquiry
As a contemplative dialogue, inquiry has a specific intention. Its main objective is to assist
participants in their exploration of mindfulness and in the learning of certain concepts and
skills. Inquiry is anchored in reflecting on the experience of mindfulness practice and how
that might relate to helping people manage stress differently. As each weekly session builds on
the previous one, inquiry follows a similar trajectory. It provides an important platform, where
what is showing up as a result of mindfulness practices can be articulated. In reflecting on
this in the group setting, the teacher explores with her participants the synthesis of experien-
tial learning with cognitive understanding. Although there may be specific topics that get
addressed in each session, there is considerable overlap between them from session to session.
This is helpful because it reinforces the learning.
Inquiry in the early sessions will tend to focus on the universality of experience, with an
emphasis on increasing participants’ ability to use descriptive language for this. In the early
sessions, a teacher directs participants to use the anchors of the breath and the body to begin
to develop directed and steady attention, which promotes a present moment focus. In the
middle of the program, the teacher’s focus expands to helping participants acknowledge how
they are relating to and exploring experience, highlighting and supporting the development
of the participant-observer stance (meta-cognition). The later sessions tend to reinforce equa-
nimity, stability of attention, and the applicability of mindfulness to everyday life. This sup-
ports resilience, distress tolerance, and the practicality of mindful awareness.

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 Presence, Form, and Process: Inquiry155

In order to unpack the inquiry process further, we will discuss how it relates to the
dynamic aspects of embodiment and teaching we have been discussing: presence, form, and
process.

Presence
Embodying inquiry is a practice of present moment orientation, incorporating sustained
attention, open monitoring, and discernment, and entails that the teacher express the attitu-
dinal foundations verbally and nonverbally. Inquiry is an expression of the teacher’s embodied
mindful presence using the medium of speech. It will also be demonstrated through body
language that reflects an openness and ease with participants’ responses, whatever they are.
What’s more, along with a sustained attentive focus when conversing with an individual,
the teacher will have an awareness of the group as a whole. And in her oral presentation to
the group, a teacher demonstrates an interactive and inductive process, where she helps the
group deconstruct experience following the specific mindfulness practices that include formal
and informal meditations and various exercises. Through this process of examination, the
teacher is acting as a guide, supporting and helping participants to observe and investigate
their own experiences as their practice evolves. This is an awareness practice and a cultivated
ability that is ultimately generalized to everyday life. This is where participants learn to use
mindfulness for intrapersonal and interpersonal stress reduction, increasing adaptive coping.

Form
There is an inherent tension in using the word “form” to describe the inquiry process. If
we believe—and we do—that inquiry is an organic, dynamic engagement and exploration of
the experience of mindfulness practice, then by its very nature it does not rely on a structured
approach. We see inquiry as an ongoing investigation; as a dialogue that has been defined in
various ways; as a conversation, an exploration, or an investigation into the experience of
another that has been outlined extensively elsewhere (Woods, Rockman, & Collins, 2019;
Segal, Williams, & Teasdale, 2013; Crane, 2008, 2017).
However, having a form or method can be valuable, particularly for the novice teacher.
Crane (2008, 2017) describes inquiry as consisting of three layers. Each layer outlines specific
categories, reflections, and intentions. In the first layer, such questions as “What did you
notice?” and “What showed up in this practice we just did?” are asked. This points to the
primacy of attending to experience itself. It also supports the building of a descriptive vocabu-
lary about one’s experience where the content or story is de-emphasized.
In the second layer, questions such as “How might this be different from how we usually
pay attention?” are asked. The teacher is suggesting that paying attention mindfully is indeed
different from how we attend habitually and encourages evaluation of this tendency. This
enables participants to develop a different perspective about how they might typically view
experience. It also offers an alternative way of attending to what is in awareness. This is
important because when we meet challenging moments, we are often subject to automatic
judgments, self-critical thoughts, doubt, anxiety, confusion, and impatience, of which we are

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