Labyrinthine Routes to Meditation: Contemplative Pedagogy and Instructor Self-Care

This essay argues that instructor self-care, particularly through meditative exercises from contemplative pedagogy, is a necessary complement to student-focused wellness efforts in higher education. The author contends that practices like labyrinth walking offer faculty a flexible way to find stability within demanding work-life constraints. Such self-care can foster community among educators and sustain their ability to support students across professional, domestic, and civic spheres. The essay proposes that expanding the discourse on academic well-being to include instructors shifts academic culture toward a more holistic approach to teaching and learning.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In the pandemic- and post-pandemic era, new as well as exacerbated work-life stressors have led academia to recognize the vital role wellness plays in teaching and learning. While most institutional and pedagogical response has understandably focused on students’ holistic health, this essay promotes increased instructor self-care as a necessary complement to supporting learners in higher education. By practicing meditative exercises drawn from contemplative pedagogy, faculty and instructional staff can create synergy between mindfulness strategies that we might invite students to try and our own attention to the whole self outside class. As the essay’s case study shows, labyrinth walking in particular embodies a flexible way to find stability and harmony within constraints, offering a form of mindful meditation that resonates with the complex, demanding embeddedness instructors experience on and off campus. Such meditative self-care can also generate greater care for educators as a community, while helping sustain our collective efforts to support students and others in professional, domestic, and civic spheres. Expanding the discourse on academic well-being to focus on instructors too thus shifts academic culture toward more fully realizing its emphasis on transformative holism in teaching as well as in learning.