Contemplative Group Dynamics: Its inter-relationship with mindfulness training and therapy groups

Contemplative Group Dynamics is a practice initiated by the second author in 2007 and developed in the years since in co-operation with mindfulness practitioners in the U.S., U.K., and Europe. The practice has developed within secular and Buddhist mindfulness communities interested in the shared or intersubjective dimension of meditative experience. The practice in its present form is the result of the openness and generosity of these practitioners who helped to shape it.

The initial impulse to develop this exercise was the struggle after an extended period of silent group meditation for practitioners to speak in a way that honoured the hours of preceding silence. Aversion existed to quickly entering the social roles which speech induces and maintains. On the other hand, attraction existed to wanting to share experience in words. This struggle was the seed of the Contemplative Group Dynamics exercise which integrates the communication within the group space with the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness:  body sensations, feeling tone, mental events and experience. Members remain present to and resonate with these foundations both subjectively and intersubjectively.  In this way it provides a transitional arrangement between the silent practice and familiar sociality so that a practitioner may observe how mindfulness-awareness is sustained or interrupted.

Along the way we began to understand that speech, as such, is not the hindrance; rather the problem is that the practitioner has not fully taken on board the power of speech. A mindfulness retreat is enclosed in silence as a way for the mind to not repeat through speaking what is already known or habitual. Because we readily do this is not an inherent problem with speech but with one’s repetitive or habitual mind.

In this article we describe mindfulness, followed by a description of Contemplative Group Dynamics, before suggesting how it relates to and potentially complements traditional and secular mindfulness training. We then consider Contemplative Group Dynamics in relation to group specialists and group members who hold the group situation as a vehicle of change and healing. If one visualizes a Venn diagram (see Figure One) with two of the circles being mindfulness training and group therapy, the third circle of Contemplative Group Dynamics would intersect with the first two and yet suggest its own domain of practice.

Figure 1. The intersection among mindfulness, therapy, and the contemplative group.

Contemplative Group Dynamics is not a therapy nor a substitute for individual mindfulness training. The practice has a formal sequential approach to articulate each foundation This contrasts both with contemporary therapeutic and mindfulness groups which emphasize the narrative or explorative. This formal restraint on the narrative (past-present-future) and the explorative (developing a theme) is replaced with speech on a given object of mindfulness. The emphasis, as with individual mindfulness, is on the placement of attention and the nature of awareness rather than the content as such. Speech then functions as an anchor for attention in the present which when stable unfolds into a complete situational awareness.

What is mindfulness

There are different ways mindfulness as a term has been defined in the West after being translated from its original Pali sati used by the Buddha. Georges Dreyfus (2011) in an effort to distinguish the contemporary from the classical definitions quotes the Theravadin scholar Buddhaghosa (c. 450 CE): “Thus it is mindfulness (sati). Its characteristic is not wobbling; its function is not to forget. It is manifested as guarding or the state of being face to face with an object” (p. 45). Within the secular domain of stress reduction and therapeutic application the non-evaluative and present moment focus of mindfulness has been emphasized. Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as “the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally” (2003, p. 145).

These two definitions, a contemporary and classical one, are what Joseph Goldstein (2013), referring to the Dzogchen tradition, calls fabricated mindfulness when effort is required to sustain, remember, or pay attention. This mode can be distinguished from unfabricated mindfulness which is the natural capacity of mind to attend and reflect, as a mirror effortlessly reflects (p.18). He goes on to say that these two modes interact during mindfulness practice: sometimes effort is necessary at other times we rest with ease. These modes of mindfulness also convey how the means and end of practice may be enfolded. When we are making an effort there is an intending, for example, to be calm; on the other hand when we are resting, there is a sense of being or presence without struggle.

With various mindfulness practices one observes the emotional, physical, and cognitive reactivity that distracts and diminishes attention. Meditation and contemplation have been a feature of many religious practices throughout time. A secular application of the mindfulness practice was created by Jon Kabat-Zinn (2013), as an 8-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programme for symptom management in physical health settings. In addition to public classes, specialised classes for clinicians have been developed, for example, there are applications in medical contexts for doctors and medical schools (see Mace, 2008). Mindfulness was introduced into mental health treatments by Segal et al. (2002) as Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) which was found to be effective in recurrent depression in clinical trials. In addition to health context applications, there are many other presentations of mindfulness from different schools of Buddhism or other religious practices of meditation for the public, both in weekly courses and in retreat settings.

Mindfulness developed as integral to Buddhism over 2500 years ago. It consists of various practices anchored to an ethical psychological philosophy. The contemplative understanding of mind is as embodied and that human suffering stems in large part from attachment to conceptual conditioning and desire. Thereby an emphasis is placed on perception as a means of valid knowing rather than conception (Coseru, 2011). This is operationalized when the mindfulness practitioner returns attention time and again to non-conceptual objects of mindfulness such as the breath and body sensation.

Traditional mindfulness-awareness practices are solitary and silent. Silence supports dismantling individual habit patterns, thus avoiding how these patterns are perpetuated and compounded by conventional sociality and speech. Whilst mindfulness training is typically delivered in groups and indeed the group setting and climate is thought to be supportive for the development of mindfulness, existing training models do not use the group process in a formal way. Rather guidance and instruction are provided by a teacher utilising a psycho-educational model. This approach has been successful as evidenced by the proliferation of mindfulness into many Western contexts of health, education, business and culture.

Contemplative Group Dynamics expands and complements this initial training process by focusing on the impact we have on one another, our sociality and interdependence. Such a focus is best appreciated and studied when the group itself is dedicated to such an intersubjective reflection. Contemplative Group Dynamics provides the context to deepen individual mindfulness-awareness practice while benefiting from the joint attention of group members to the various objects of mindfulness.

What is Contemplative Group Dynamics

The Contemplative Group Dynamic (hereafter, the contemplative group) approach is a formal mindfulness practice using speech within the group where the speech is anchored to immediate sensing, feeling, and perceiving. This can be distinguished from narrative or conceptual approaches which abstract and consolidate the particular momentary movements of mind into ‘self’ and ‘other’. The contemplative group emphasizes a phase of attention prior to the focus on a practical purpose; that is, to become familiar with non-conceptual awareness prior to it assuming (as it must) practical purposes of goal achievement. The concern is more how we create our world to begin with rather than getting by in that world. The two (creating and getting by) are inherently related; however, the focus of the contemplative group is not practical in this way of getting by.

The group develops through members exchanging communication based on the four foundations or abidings of mindfulness. In the first foundation, the focus is on body sensation in its elemental forms: temperature, tingling, pulsing, aching or pressure. Hence individually and as a group, using speech we ground the group attention and presence by starting with this basic level of body sensation.

The group then proceeds sequentially to feeling tone, mental events, and experience. These four, namely 1) body sensation; 2) feeling tone (pleasant, unpleasant or neutral); 3) mental events (attraction and aversion and indifference); and 4) experience as a whole, are the four foundations of mindfulness. This gradual approach of patiently working on sharing body sensation first, then adding the other foundations of feeling tone and mental events in a disciplined way, accustoms one to using speech to describe moment to moment experience rather than engage in story or narrative.

One’s experience of self and other has embodiment as the “common denominator” (Zahavi, 2005, p.160). Embodiment enables intersubjectivity. Group members inhabit a shared rather than enclosed or private environment. This shared group environment has grounding and meaning (i.e., context) by virtue of our embodiment. The mind then, is conceptualised within the contemplative group as a circulation between body, brain, and group environment (see Varela et. al, 1991; Fuchs, 2018).

Speech brings forward the common ‘appearance’ of the group. This appearance is changing moment to moment. The contemplative group practice supports the cultivation of non-distracted attention which helps one observe the changing individual and group appearances. Such seeing discloses the transparency and impermanence of the seemingly solid conceptions of “individual” and “group”, “self” and “other”. Rather than reify the sense of individual self and other selves, the composite and context dependent nature of these designations are recognized.

Attention, Distraction, Reactivity, and Resonance

Attention is cultivated in mindfulness training. At the beginning the attention may be placed on the breath, as body sensation. As the attentional field is expanded, with the second and third foundations of mindfulness, we can observe our reactions to stimuli. We experience a sensation as pleasant or unpleasant, and then we have a reaction to it of withdrawing or wanting more of the experience. This is our reactivity. When we work with complex experience and look at our relationships, we can see our reactivity at a larger scale, as it manifests in how we want to push away those aspects of ourselves that we do not like. Equally we are attracted to certain characteristics in ourselves or others. This reactivity, which if it is happening outside of awareness, repeats potentially harmful patterns which are usually what brings people into therapy. Group therapy in particular is where it is possible, in the here and now relatedness, to observe and become conscious of the patterns.

Distraction is when we cannot keep our attention on the focus, we have set for ourselves. If we are at work but are preoccupied by a fight we had at home with our partner, we are not fully attentive to our work task. Mindfulness training is firstly attentional training, with a here and now focus, using bodily sensation as the anchor. The instruction in meditation is to gently bring back the attention to the breath, once we notice that it has wandered. The fact of our attention wandering, our mind’s distractibility is taken for granted. The practice is to notice and then gently bring back the attention to what we have set out to do. One can imagine the irritation with the task, internal fights with authority, with one’s own authority, that take place during hours of meditation practice. However with gentleness and persistence, discipline develops, as well as compassion. Importantly we become more aware of when we are distracted.

The habitual reactivity to a situation is automatic. It can be seen as the action rather than awareness of the impulse to act. In the everyday situations, this would look like an automatic acting on impulse of blaming or consuming, targeting or withdrawing, without the ability to see that the action is not inevitable and can be paused and considered. A clear overlap with the therapy situation exists. Martin (1997), for example, has suggested that mindfulness may be considered a common factor in any change process, transcending theoretical orientations, because attention to the learned habit pattern and its consequences is a necessary step for behaviour change. In the contemplative group, practitioners learn together the cost of distractibility on one’s capacity to be resonate with oneself and others. One sees that presence is necessary for resonance. And from this resonance the manner in which we are affecting one another becomes increasingly apparent as undistracted attention stabilises. The fabricated and unfabricated dimensions of mindfulness are at play in the contemplative group. As members recognize and say a given sensation there is some effort involved, then as one hears what is said one observes an effortless resonance where awareness discerns the presence or absence of the same.

What happens in a contemplative group?

During a practice session of the Contemplative Group, the group works alternating silent and speech practices. Each section begins with silent individual practice of 10-20 minutes, followed by speech practice of a foundation of mindfulness, usually for 25 minutes. The experiential periods are followed by reflection for 10 minutes, which serves to integrate the experience.

Body Sensation: The First Foundation

Below is a typical section from the first foundation of body sensation:

A: I feel coolness on my hands

B: My palms are warm; I feel the warmth of my palms on my legs where they are resting

C: My legs feel heavy

D: I am aware of the pressure of the chair on the sitting bones

B: My feet are solid on the ground

A: My shoulders are aching

C: I feel tension on the right side of my back

The speech continues in this way, sometimes with periods of silence. When the members become distracted in thought, they reset themselves and the group by bringing their attention back to a sensation present for them and saying it aloud in the group. Thus the speech of the group sounds like a body scan (which is a mindfulness exercise, guiding attention around the body by an instructor), but a body scan guided by the group. Members notice that attention immediately goes to the part of the body named to check one’s own sensations there. Sometimes there is a sensual empathy (Stein, 1989/1917) where the mentioned area of body and the sensation there is felt (either as similar or different) in resonance by another member.

Feeling Tone: The Second Foundation

We then introduce the second foundation, and this time people add the feeling tone of the sensation as below:

A: I have an ache on the right side of my shoulder, it is unpleasant.

C: I have pain on the right mid back, unpleasant.

B: I am aware of movements of my chest with the breathing, I think it is neutral.

D: I feel the pressure of the cushion on my siting bones, neutral to unpleasant.

E: I notice the tension in my back is releasing and that is neutral.

A: There is a sneeze coming….

B: Bless you, I feel the smile forming on my cheeks, it feels pleasant.

C: Me too, smiling, pleasant to smile.

Mental Events: The Third Foundation

The third foundation is attraction, aversion or indifference. Usually we are attracted to sensations which are pleasant and aversive to those unpleasant. This is the foundation when members begin to notice how a judgement of pleasant or unpleasant then, determines our reactivity of whether we like something or not. Sometimes we refer to this as a movement towards for attraction and away for aversion. Indifference usually follows neutral. Attraction, aversion, and indifference are also known as passion, aggression, and ignorance in Buddhist teachings. The group practicing third foundation may be as below:

A: I have an ache in my lower back, it is unpleasant, and I am aversive to it, I want to move to ease it.

B: I have a sharp pain in my left foot, unpleasant and aversive.

D: I feel my hands on my lap touching each other, neutral I think, and I feel attraction to the sensation, it catches my attention.

B: The pain has gone now, no feeling, pleasant and attraction, I am curious.

C: I feel settled in the body, pleasant or neutral and neither attraction or aversion.

Passages during the third foundation also articulate when the attraction, aversion, and indifference have no purchase and a feeling of equanimity is conveyed by members.

We introduce yoga inspired movement for 10–20-minute sessions to aid the body during a day’s practice. The movement also heightens awareness of bodily sensations and supports a centred sitting position during the practices.

Experience or Phenomenon: The Fourth Foundation

Fourth Foundation is experience (or phenomenon) as a whole. Sometimes this foundation has some similarities to an experiential group, but the difference is that the attention is on present experience and the discernment of its qualities. No intentional effort is made to find or develop a theme although some themes may cohere spontaneously. Memories or thoughts which arise in the present can be brought in, including the observation of reactivity and feeling tone of accompanying sensations. We include dreams and images when working with the fourth foundation. Dreams are prototypical objects of mindfulness of phenomena in their ephemeral quality. They show how a complex scenario is produced by the mind from nothing, generating strong feelings, only then to fade away in the morning, not even able to be remembered sometimes. We treat the dreams as belonging to the group rather than making personal interpretations, seeking to facilitate dreams and images speaking and linking to one another. We have benefited from training in the Social Dreaming method and have adopted it for contemplative practice. A contemplative group working with the fourth foundation may be as follows:

A: A dream last night, I was travelling somewhere on the train, I had to change trains at this station, but the connecting train was arriving in another part of the station which was a long way off. There were others also needing to do the change. I knew the way and we had to run, crossing a road, to get to this train which had arrived already on the platform, could see it at a distance. We were running fast not wanting to miss the connection. I felt angry why they had not made it easier to make the change knowing there were a lot of passengers all having to make the same connection.

C: I had a dream last week of travelling on a train, an underground train which was full of people dressed up for something like a fancy-dress party. I wondered if there was a carnival in the city. There was this one guy with a clown’s outfit white and his face was made up like a clown. The train became very full and then I couldn’t get out at my station, I remember feeling very frustrated and angry pushing people out of the way and shouting to make way!

B: I used to have a repetitive dream of not catching my train because I could not find my bag with my papers which I needed to bring to work, anxiety and frustration, I can feel it now in hearing the dreams, unpleasant and aversive!

D: That actually happened to me this week, I missed my train because I was late leaving home looking for my papers, I felt very frustrated!

In the reflection that ensued the group could recognise how our minds create these scenarios whether in the dream or daily life, which require us to manage our attention and feelings of anxiety, frustration or anger. Experience arises moment to moment as a result of causes and conditions, the conditions including the individual and group tendencies. The group could observe the commonality; how we are all on the same train, managing the exchanges.

Empathetic Resonance

As described above the cultivation of attention defines mindfulness awareness in its secular and Buddhist formats. In addition to mindful attention, empathetic attention is activated during the contemplative group and in fact is an essential feature of its practice. Within contemplative learning, Buddhaghosa held empathy to be a form of attention. Following Ganari’s (2017) reading of Buddhaghosa, empathetic attention involves attending to bodily and behavioural gestures that intimate or make known the intention of the one observed. Ganari notes that Buddhaghosa’s view is generally aligned with contemporary phenomenological approaches to social cognition which Shaun Gallagher describes as the occasions where: “the other person’s emotions and intentions are normally and frequently apparent in their embodied and contextualised behaviours, including their vocalisations, gestures, facial expressions, eye gaze, and situated posture” (cited in Ganari, p.276). One distinction Buddhaghosa makes from contemporary phenomenology is that empathy is attentional rather than perceptual. Empathy is “attention to others’ states of mind by virtue of their bodily pose and movement. Your reaching forward your arm is that in virtue of which my attention is drawn to your intention to strike or grasp” (p. 276). The senses perceive the movement, or the voice, of the other and then the mind “knows” the intention.  Smitiene (2011) conveys a closely related view of Merleau-Ponty: “The meaning is modulated or even formed within the act of speaking. In the same way, the meaning of a gesture is not self-enclosed. It emerges as the things around us share their meaning with the gesture” (p. 251.)

In the context of the contemplative group the phenomenological approach to empathy is relevant in that it offers an embodied understanding of our responsivity, one consistent with mindfulness awareness principles. The two contrasting contemporary theoretical approaches to empathy are the theory-theory of mind and simulation theory of mind. Both of these theories propose a mediating step, an inferential use of either intellect or imagination, to disclose intersubjectivity (see Zahavi, 2005). This contrasts with the perceptual (phenomenological) or attentional (Buddhaghosa) emphases on shared embodiment.

Because the contemplative group proceeds in a slow and tempered way the details of others’ experiencing are seen and heard. What is observed by group members has an immediacy, distinct from when experience is mediated through inference. “Posture and movement are attention-enabling rather than inference-enabling conditions in our consciousness of others’ minds” (Ganari, p. 274). Further because members are speaking from a meditative posture with ample silences, rather than from habitual postures with prescribed speech, the conditions can be cultivated to observe how empathetic attention arises.

Discussion

We will briefly contrast the contemplative group with the generic mindfulness training groups and group therapy formats which hold the group itself as an essential component of treatment. In the context of mindfulness training the contemplative group re-contextualises the individual practice to the group level. This highlights how context operates as a supervening variable for a practitioners’ mindfulness-awareness. Indeed insight into how context shapes judgment(s) related to past action is intimately related to the cultivation of compassion. The contemplative group with its re-contextualization of the foundations also activates some of the recognized healing aspects found in the therapeutic group. It does this without engaging the narrative or autobiographical content of members.

The Contemplative Group in Relation to Mindfulness Training Groups

The content of the psycho-educational model of mindfulness training includes instruction with particular practices (sitting meditation, body scan, yoga, walking meditation) and the theoretical rationale for the usefulness of these practices (see Feldman & Kuyken, 2019). The contemplative group continues with this content and rationale while transposing the sitting and body scan practice to the group level. This transposition engages not only mindful attention but activates empathic attention.

The contemplative group accounts for where individuals are placing their attention as members articulate a given foundation. The shared intention to be present makes it easier to stabilise attention on a given foundation. From this presence, as mentioned, an empathetic resonance develops followed by a situational awareness of the group as a whole. From the group perspective this situational awareness solicits the individuals’ attention (cf. Johnson, 2007). Thus the familiar struggle with distractibility that the solitary practice may elicit is eased in contemplative group practice. The group in addition brings into play the dynamic of resonance with others. The gentleness that mindfulness training emphasizes supports this attentional expansion toward the group situation. Members relax as they are no longer beholden to individual projections of past and future, nor group ones of status and power. The existence of the group supports the contemplation of the stream of consciousness in both its subjective private flow as well as its intersubjective shared flow of experiencing. This extension of internal mindfulness to external mindfulness seems necessary for appreciating the emergence of shared experience.

Mindfulness training has many phases depending on the goal of the practitioner, both in the secular and Buddhist contexts. One may start with mindfulness-awareness training and proceed to loving kindness or compassion-based practices. While many training settings have ample interpersonal exercises, the expansion of attention to the group level is not generally cultivated. Reasons for this may include: 1) that a given orientation is only aligned with the primary goal to train in mindfulness awareness as an individual rather than a group endeavour; 2) fear of touching on group dynamic issues and disrupting the teaching structure; and 3) limited training of teachers in group processes.  The contemplative group as said above is not a substitute for individual mindfulness training. What we are suggesting is that the contemplative group has useful complements or next steps for the secular and Buddhist forms of mindfulness.

When entering the contemplative group most practitioners are already familiar with the foundations. The group provides an intersection between these specific practices and theoretical rationale (the content), with the domain of group dynamics, wherein the group environment is influencing, if not determining, individual behaviour and attention (the process). What is innovative is the use of speech to describe the moment to moment experiencing. For many practitioners this shared practice is easier than when alone. Importantly empathic resonance emerges in the group and then supports non-conceptual awareness. The empathetic resonance is in real time rather than simulated with the use of imagination to visualise others. The immediate group resonance is itself activating empathetic attention.

The Contemplative Group in Relation to Therapy Groups

Within the therapeutic context mindfulness elements have been integrated in MBCT for recurrent depression and in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) (Linehan, 1993) for borderline personality disorder. These hybrid models of mindfulness with therapeutic goals reside within a training process emphasizing individual skill development. They represent one end of a continuum where individual therapy is done in a group.  At the other end of the continuum of therapeutic treatments are those that emphasize the group itself as an element of healing rather than the skills imparted therein (e.g., Group Analysis).

Group specialists have approached the contemplative group with a curiosity as to how mindfulness may enrich the group experience. These specialists already know that to see the group communication pattern requires attending to the group context and not simply the individual member. Doing so provides information that is different in kind than attending to individual communication alone. The group specialist and member are also aware of the universality of human struggle, thus knowing that the group reduces isolation. A member’s long-term habit-patterns may be activated within the group thus providing an arena for change, change which occurs by becoming aware of how a pattern may be re-enacted. One can then inquire as to the antecedents, for example, if there are look-a-likes from the past in the present group. These three aspects: the group communication, the shared struggle, and the importing of the past into the present, can be understood as aspects of group awareness. Each aspect discloses something that is other than the individual level and potentiates healing for the individual.

In a similar but different register the contemplative group’s practice of the foundations of mindfulness has a healing effect. Classically, the Buddha described the practice of mindfulness as an antidote for the suffering resulting from attachment. In contrast to group therapeutic models that work through a discourse which engages the emotional habit patterns through a reflective process or a group inquiry, the contemplative group simply articulates the four foundations. As mentioned, the goal is not therapy but a means of practicing mindfulness with others. As the contemplative group transposes the solitary practice to the group level, the practice of these foundations activates the healing nature of the group. For example, as the entire group focuses on a given foundation it becomes apparent that the communication pattern is of the group, with the individual contributing. This tends to make it easier as mentioned for the member to rest with a given foundation. The generation of sensual empathy also has a connective yet impersonal quality. The struggle with unpleasant or aversive experience, for example, bodily discomfort is articulated and shared by the practitioner rather than remaining private. Pleasant and attractive experience is also shared and reverberates. Additionally, the focus on a relatively brief passage of experienced time helps to meet the habit reactions of aversion, attraction, and indifference in mindful awareness. This meeting in awareness, rather than reinforcing the reactions with thought, potentiates a transform toward clarity, discrimination, and spaciousness. This transform is supported by “letting-go of the story”, a frequent yet difficult to implement suggestion during mindfulness training.

Conclusion

The practice of the group method of mindfulness that is brought forward in the contemplative group provides mindfulness practitioners with an expanded context to apply mindfulness-awareness as the group dynamic unfolds. Mindfulness as attention and care is extended to the sociality of contemplative community.

Group therapists and members of groups are familiar with the healing qualities of a group setting. The practice of the four foundation of mindfulness when done as a group echoes some of these qualities. Rather than the communication content consisting of the personal or interpersonal it consists of a series of observations of the practitioners’ lived experience as it arises and resonates with others. The simplicity and discipline of the structure suspend not only individual habit patterns for a time but also suspend the group-social habit patterns that constitute shared distress. The group can then fully develop as a training place where we are creating the world with our shared communications and finding our common humanity.

References

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Šmitienė, G. (2011). Speech that stems from body, or body that flows through language. Thinking in dialogue with humanities: Paths into the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty. Eds. Novotny, K., Hammer, T.S., Gleonec, A. Budapest: Zeta Books. pp.241-258.

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The Open Group: An Introduction to Contemplative Group Dynamics.
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For more information or to register contact: lawrence.ladden@gmail.com

Jale Cilasun
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Lawrence Ladden
lawrence.ladden@gmail.com