Teaching Mindfulness and Our Connection with Nature

In this episode, Mark Coleman speaks with Fleet Maull, Ph. D., of the Prison Mindfulness Institute, about Incorporating mindfulness and nature into education and

incorporating embodiment into teaching across different settings.

• Integrating mindfulness and nature in teaching.

• Meditation practices in nature retreats.

• Mindfulness teacher qualifications.

• Personal growth and spiritual development as a teacher.

• Embodiment and teaching in various contexts.

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Mark Coleman is a Buddhist meditation teacher and has taught insight meditation retreats since 1997 at Spirit Rock and worldwide. Mark is passionate about integrating meditation and nature and is a visionary leader in this emerging field of awareness in nature. Through his organization Awake in the Wild, he leads mindfulness-based wilderness retreats and year-long nature meditation teacher training in the US and Europe. Co-founder of the Mindfulness Training Institute, Mark also teaches year-long professional mindfulness teacher training in Europe and the US. Author of 4 books: Awake in the Wild, Make Peace With Your Mind, From Suffering to Peace and recently A Field Guide to Nature Meditation. He lives in Northern California and relishes hiking, biking, kayaking, and being outdoors. https://markcoleman.org/

Podcast Transcript

Fleet Maull 0:04  

Hi, Welcome to the Teaching Mindfulness Summit. My name is Fleet Maull, and I'm your co-host for this session. I'm happy to be here today with my longtime friend and colleague, Mark Coleman. Welcome, Mark.  

Mark Coleman  

Hi Fleet, Great to be with you today.  

Fleet Maull 0:16  

It's great to be with you. I've been looking forward to this interview. Our lives, teaching paths, and work in offering programs intertwine in many different ways, so it's great to connect again. I will share your bio, and then we'll jump into the conversation.

Mark Coleman is a senior Spirit Rock Meditation Center teacher who has taught insight meditation retreats worldwide since 1997. He is passionate about integrating mindfulness and  nature and leads wilderness retreats worldwide, based on his first book, 'Awaken the Wild: Mindfulness  in Nature as a Path of Self-Discovery.' Mark leads the year-long meditations and nature teacher trainings,  co-founder of the Mindfulness Teacher Training Institute, he leaves Mindfulness Teacher Trainings in  Europe and San Francisco. Mark is also a teacher trainer for a 'Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute' developed at Google. His recent books include 'Make Peace with Your Mind' and 'From  Suffering to Peace, The True Promise of Mindfulness.' Mark is a poet, avid outdoor enthusiast, and likes nothing more than being in the great outdoors.  

You shared with me before we started that you just took a hike up in Muirwoods; I'm jealous that it is such an incredible place, Muirwoods.  

Mark Coleman 1:34  

It is. I consider that my practice and homework. My teacher's development is getting out in nature every day.  

Fleet Maull 1:47 

Muir Woods is like a cathedral of old growth. It's such an amazing place.  

Mark, we will talk about teaching mindfulness and maybe training teachers. But I  wanted to share some of your background about your initial journey from the punk rock scene in London to mindfulness. And finding greater peace and clarity in your life through mindfulness and then integrating that with nature. That seems to be the real thought line of your work and life today: integrating mindfulness practice and being outdoors in nature. So I wonder if you could talk about how all that developed a little bit?  

Mark Coleman 2:33  

I was in London, I'm English, I was in college, and I was very much into the punk scene. It was a great time to be around in the early 80s. And I was kind of a wild kid and very politically engaged. There were a lot of anti-establishment politics and anarchy during the Thatcher era. And so I was kind of railing against what  I perceived as the injustices at the time. And so punk was a great expression of that. And also, squatting was part of that movement, where we took over empty houses, which were thousands of empty houses back then. But I was also suffering and angry and confused and had a lot of inner turmoil and hatred, and I started looking for some relief from my anguish. But I was very busy blaming the world for my problems and suffering. And I ended up squatting in a house that a Buddhist Housing Association managed. It was empty, and we occupied it for a while. They got to know me and realized I could do with some help. And they said, You should go check out our meditation center. It's around the corner, which was in this rundown part of East London, Bethnal Green, which back then was very depressed. I walked into the center, and there wasn't anything happening, but it was a beautiful center with lots of Buddhas and just usual Buddhist iconography.  

 But the people had a quality of presence that I'd never really encountered before. They were going about their day in the office, cleaning and making flowers and things. And I realized, Oh, these people are onto something. I didn't know what it was, but I wanted whatever they had. I didn't have words for it, but I thought, "Oh, okay, figure out what they're up to. So I started meditating. I  learned mindfulness practice and loving kindness practice in this lovely Buddhist center. And it changed my life as the inner light went on. Oh, a whole inner landscape of the mind, awareness, self-awareness, and illumination was possible.  

And that changed my life. I went from railing in society out there to seeing, Oh, the suffering is in here; I  need to look at what's happening here: the judgments and the criticisms. So, that began a very intensive path; I dropped out of college and moved into a semi-monastic retreat center. That eventually led me to India to study with different teachers with different traditions, both Buddhist Advaita and  Tibetan teachers. I then eventually made my way to the States to California. Well, to Florida initially, I got a camper van and drove across the country and fell in love with the wilderness and the nature here because it's vast and wild compared to what I was used to in England, which is lovely but more tame.  

In the '90s, I was doing a lot of retreat practice, studying, and spending a lot of time in India. And I began to take my retreats outside. It felt very natural to meditate outside and to retreat outside. And I quickly began to realize, when I was doing longer retreats outside, that all the teachings, the wisdom, and the illumination coming from Buddhist practice indoors were just being sung from the treetops. The natural world with its changing beauty and its vastness, its interconnectedness,  its abundance and beauty, the insights and the discoveries.  

The lived experience of the wisdom traditions worth pointing to is available in nature. And that led me to start teaching. And then, in the early 2000s, I  was invited to teach a ten-day silent backpack retreat in Navajo country in these beautiful red rock canyons. When I did that and led that, I saw how profound it was for students, how impactful, quiet, effortless, and joyful it was, and that it was game over for me. I was like, Okay, this is what I want to do. This is what I want to dedicate my life to. Since then, for the last 20  years, I've been leading mostly nature retreats outside through my organization Awake in the Wild,  writing about it, training people to do it, and it's been, and is still, a constant joy, love, and passion.  

Fleet Maull 7:53  

Interestingly, in the time of the Buddha, the historical Shakyamuni Buddha and his followers lived outside.  

Mark Coleman 8:00  

Right, and so much of what the Buddha is pointing to, he uses so many nature metaphors, analogies, and similes because he's outside in the forest teaching about impermanence. What is nature teaching most frequently all the time? It is impermanence, teaching about interdependence, right? You can't step outside for a moment and not see how everything is affecting each other. So, I think so much of his wisdom was directly informed by his awareness of being present in nature. Millions of people have followed this practice in China and Japan, in the Himalayas, Tibet, and India. People go to the forests and mountains for good reason.  

Fleet Maull 8:50  

Please say a little bit more about that intersection of practicing some traditional or classic mindfulness-awareness meditation as it's been presented. You teach primarily in the Vipassana tradition, the insight meditation tradition. So, you know, basic mindfulness, as it's presented in the Satipatthana Sutta. Can two students sometimes begin their practice with you out in nature, and are they learning that while also learning to be in nature differently? Could you say a little more about the mechanisms of how those two things intersect, how being out in the world may facilitate or enrich their practice, and then how their practice allows them to be more present in it?  

Mark Coleman 9:36  

I get a range of students from beginners to people who've been meditating for 20, 30, 40 years. Most people have learned mindfulness or some awareness or insight practice indoors, where most classes are taught. Most retreats are taught. But sometimes, I get people who are brand new. And definitely, there's an adjustment period for people who've learned intensively to practice indoors. There is an adjustment when you go outside because there are many more stimuli. There are a lot more sensory stimuli. Most people, I would say, in the mindfulness world tend to orient towards focused attention, a kind of practice, concentration, a single object, breath, body, Mantra, whatever.  

When you go outside, it’s the practice of open awareness, open monitoring, spacious awareness, and sensory awareness. That’s more the predominant mode of attention because there's so much happening. There are 360-degree stimuli of sound, wind, smell, movement, light, and color. So, not the practice of focus, attention, sound, to breath, or walking, as I'll teach, but the inclination is to open up awareness, open the senses, to be present to the whole, know gestalt of experience. And to be present to see how the outer circle, wind, sun, breeze, light, air, and rain impact the inner sensations, such as breath, heart,  and mind.  

So there's a little adjustment period. The doorway, my orientation, is tuning to a natural quality of attention. That's realized through relaxation. You know, when we go outside, nature naturally pulls us into the present: sounds of the wind of birds, the movement of the breeze, that touch of air on the skin, the smell of the soil in the inhale, the feeling of the soft ground as you're walking, the changing light. So, in some ways, it's much easier to abide in the present and to sustain a mindful awareness because there's so much pulling you, inviting you into the present. Other than just the mind, which is mostly when we're indoors, that's the loudest stimuli. And yeah, we focus on breath, body, and sensations. But the mind doesn't have too much competition. Whereas when we are outside, the mind is just this little sliver of an experience, compared to the cacophony of phenomena.  And so that stimuli makes it much easier to stabilize in the present moment. And then it also opens up into much easier access into a nondual awareness, where we see this artificial distinction between me observing an experience starts to soften, there's just experience happening being known.

So it's a very rich experience that's also very accessible because the mind chatter gets quieter, the nervous system generally relaxes, and the conditions for presence are much more available.  

Fleet Maull 13:44  

While there's a lot there, I'd like to pursue some things with you. So, students who train in Insight tradition practice with closed eyes. In different traditions, Zen usually, the eyes are open, gazing down. Nondual practices are sometimes done with a raised gaze, but many insight meditation practitioners practice with closed eyes. So imagine it's a striking shift when they come outdoors on a nature retreat and practice with their eyes open. I'm also curious about your multi-day retreat, so I assume you're hiking, moving, or setting up camps; I don't know. So I guess all that can be part of mindfulness practice, but you stop and do regular formal sitting practice, sitting on the ground or logs or something at some point during the only time. And then do people close their eyes, or do they continue with the eyes open?  

 I understand the external world because it is so rich and provides something in which to rest our awareness. It's more powerful than that distracted discursive mind, so I can see its power, but I'm still just curious about how people reorient themselves to these various modes of factors.  

Mark Coleman 15:01  

 I'd say, for the most part, most people, especially in the first few days, have their eyes closed just because there are enough stimuli, sound sensations, the breeze, light, and smell. So either the eyes are closed, or the eyes are down. And that helps. Let's say, for a week-long retreat, which is normally what I teach, it allows us some stability. And I also want people to be very grounded in their body, in this inner sensory sensation experience, before opening wider, including seeing. If people open up too quickly to see, it can be either too stimulating or ungrounding. So I'd like people to be grounded in body and breath sensation, open to sound as the natural expansion, and go from there.  

But there is a learning curve to practicing with the eyes open. People are outside in nature, and they want to have their eyes open. So, a lot of the time, whether it's walking or just unstructured time, their eyes are open. And I teach a lot of different meditations with the eyes open, soft gaze, and mingling with the sky. There are a lot of different practices that are drawn from the Tibetan tradition.  

Regarding the question about retreats, mostly now, my retreats are what I call base camp retreats. So we have a base camp. And that's often now a retreat center. There are a few good wilderness retreat centers in New Mexico, Ecodharma in Colorado, where you get to center in the wilderness. So you're already there; there's nowhere to go because you are already there.  

So people have a bed, a hot shower, and good food; their basic needs are covered, and they're warm enough. And then from there, we go outside all day, sit before sunrise all morning, and come back for lunch all afternoon. I like to have a place where there's a base camp meditation area. So there's kind of a familiarity or regularity, and people can relax, have their gear, and be steady.  

There's a lot of what I call meandering practice. So, rather than the form of walking in Zen or Vipassana, you walk up or down. Meandering is when you are on your own, just moving through the landscape, mindfully, slowly, very participatory, and sensory; you might pause, stand, lean against a tree, lie down, or touch plants or water.  

So it's very engaging. I still like the movement between sitting and walking or sitting and movement,  sitting and meandering, because I think it's good for energy and stability. This sort of stillness comes from the sitting presence and then the moving, which is more engaging and interactive. And so we dance between those two. And then, as the retreat goes on, I have people who do more solo time so they can have the experience of being more immersed without the interaction of others. And then the  Silence. The Silence is a powerful doorway, as you know, and to be silent with others is a very powerful experience because we're alone with the trees, the rocks, the meadow, and the sky with the ground.  

Fleet Maull 18:34  

Well, you answered what was going to be my next question. Because I think we're focused mostly visually and tend to be very externally oriented already. Between externally oriented/caught up in our thinking are often the spiritual journeys. The self-awareness journey is about going within and coming home and going within, getting re-grounded, and finding that inner space and then, from there, reopening to this sensorium. So it sounds like you do exactly that trajectory of getting people grounded in their body first and then gradually go from there. I love how you might start with sound and then go further with the visual input.  

Of course, you have odor; you have the olfactory sense out in nature, and the smells can be so strong and beautiful in a pine forest.  

Mark Coleman 19:30  

Then, over time, the division between the inner and outer becomes more seamless.  Especially when you start sitting with your eyes open, there's a sense of this bodily experience of sensations. But it's a continuum with the breeze, smells, sunlight, cool air, and all of that. So one of the gifts from nature practice is we realize we are of the Earth; we're not just on the Earth, we're not looking at the Earth, we are the Earth, breathing aware  

of itself. And that's one of the profound insights that come. That's what we're craving for: a sense of belonging. We're so alienated from the Earth that sitting on the Earth, walking on the Earth, sleeping on the Earth, something opens up where we realize, right, this is my primordial ancient reality that we're just Earth. We're just expressions of Earth in a particular form called Fleet or Mark or whoever.  There's a settling and a relaxing rediscovering like, 'Oh, we're home, we're home. How can we not be home, you know?  

And so that's profound. For me, the fruit of that is the motivation for my work, which is that connection and love. Because everyone falls much more deeply in love with this amazing earth, forests, meadows, and sky. We want to care, we want to steward, we want to protect. How can you not want to care for that which you love, which has birthed and feeds and cares for you?  

So there's an arc of the retreat of settling, deepening, opening the senses, opening the heart, and then feeling the connection, feeling the tenderness of what's happening ecologically to the planet and the wish to care and protect in some way or steward.  

Fleet Maull 21:37  

I'm curious if you practice outdoors at night. I can imagine that would be interesting. I've done some solo retreats myself and been in the wilderness at night, practicing. Sometimes, seeing glowing eyes out there can be a little dicey at night.

Mark Coleman 21:56  

You work with fear, and there's a lot of adversity outside, right? And often, we're snowed on, hailed on, there are howling winds, or it's baking hot, and your brains are melting. I mean, there are bugs, there are challenges. And there is fear. I'll take people on night walks; we'll do a laying meditation, where we do sky gazing at night, looking at the stars.  

And if we're camping outside, deep in the forest with just a little thin layer of whatever it is, nylon of the tent, you realize we're vulnerable. And actually, I like that because it makes us more humble. And it makes us realize, 'Oh, we're not just the apex predator here. We're also part of the ecosystem. We have to tread a little more carefully. It also makes us more mindful. You know, every sound is like, 'What's that'? It's the part of the practice that brings up different things for people's fear or curiosity. 

Fleet Maull 22:56  

I'm curious about the relationship with other beings, wildlife, and the forest, including birds;  often, when we come into a forest area, there's a kind of alarm that goes off. And you can hear the birds and certain calls and so forth. And it's not till we can be there in such a way that we're no longer perceived as a threat that the natural world relaxes. There are some teachers and different traditions where they talk about finding someplace pretty accessible to where you live, like a sitting spot where you can sit in nature. And you sit down regularly, and you sit there long enough that you see the wildlife begin to approach, or it could be insects, could be anything, but you start to see the world responding to you being safe, I suppose, or being in a state of non-aggression. So I'm curious if there's any of that experience out there.  

Mark Coleman 23:56  

I think the coming into a relationship with the ecosystem, whether it's the animals, birds, insects, trees, or beings that live at different speeds, right? We go from flies to megafauna, trees, stones, and mountains. And from my perspective, they're all beings, there are just different forms, different expressions, different speeds. There's something beautiful about when people slow down, which takes a  few days. They say our urban life is three days deep. And so after the third day, people start sloughing off, becoming more tuned, slowing down, more sensitive, and moving more slowly. It is less scary to the ecosystem and fauna there because we're just becoming part of the forest, part of the mountain, and part of the ecosystem.  

There's something beautiful about that. And as you say, being attuned to when we walk down the canyon, the birdsong changes, their call, and their flight patterns. And at Spirit  Rock, where I do a lot of practice outdoors, sometimes the flock of turkeys will walk through, or deer will walk through our little sitting circle. Because there's not a sense of threat. I've had many animals come to check us out: squirrels sitting in people's laps and chipmunks. And just because of the sense of safety, which is beautiful.  

Fleet Maull 25:47  

Wonderful. So you have been teaching mindfulness for a long time, and you've had your whole path into that; you trained with Spirit Rock with Jack Kornfield and other teachers. And so, I'm wondering what you think are some of the more important qualities or characteristics for us to develop as people aspiring to share the practice of mindfulness or teach mindfulness? But what are some key foundational experiences, qualities, and so forth? Skill sets?  

Mark Coleman 26:29  

Great question. First and foremost, I'm looking for people who have had a depth of experience in their practice and a depth of understanding of their mind, body, heart, and psychology that mindfulness reveals when you sit still. In my teacher trainings, the key that I always emphasize is that you're teaching from your experience and from your practice.  

You can study or read all the meditation teaching manuals you like, but it has to come from your inner knowledge and knowledge. And so that's the sort of the baseline, right? Do your practice. If you want to be a good teacher, deepen your practice. This means tending to your daily practice, going on retreats, and just living your practice and studying. So I think that's, I don't know what percentage-70% of it, it's a significant part. And the more that deepens, the more the years grow, the more that will grow.  

And then also, a level of insight, a level of understanding about the human condition, which can come from meditation and practice, but also comes from life, may come from your work, maybe you're a social worker, or a nurse, or a parent, or the kind of work that you do in prisons, and where you've really been close to the human condition, but particularly the suffering. Because of the importance of understanding the suffering nature of experience, people are coming to your classes, not because they're happy in life swimmingly, going along great. Usually, it's because they're suffering just as I was as a young punk.  

So, to be familiar with one's suffering, with one's struggles, with one's trauma, or pain points or losses and have had some familiarity and experience and okayness with that. I learned this by having done my trauma work in myself before doing trauma work with other people; I couldn't have done that work, the trauma-informed work had I not looked at my trauma and worked with it and come to some resolution with it. So, having done one's work can be psychological or emotional. Other important qualities for teaching empathy, compassion, kindness, and understanding emerge when we struggle with our human condition.  

I'm going to be teaching a day, in a couple of months, on ADHD and mindfulness, which has not been  taught too much about, partly because I struggle with ADHD. And despite having practiced mindfulness for 40 years, and mindfulness is often given as a remedy for ADHD, while it helps, it's much deeper than that. And so, having struggled with my attention deficit, I'm a good person to teach that because I've done my work for a long time, suffered, struggled, learned, and grown.  

So, do your work. We all have our paths. Some may be trauma, and some might be physical health challenges. I'm not saying everyone has to suffer to be a good teacher, but there is a lot of struggle in life, and what people are coming with, and the questions they inevitably come with is, can I  go home from this lovely mindfulness class, and how do I deal with my partner's rage? Or how do I deal with my kids who are getting bullied at school? Or how do I deal with my or my parent's chronic pain? Or how do I show up in this world with so much political division?  

 So, in a way, becoming a teacher in teacher training is a lifelong practice, being tenderized by experience and life. And then you're teaching from that. Some of the greatest teachers will teach just from the midst of their struggles. And the other side is that maybe that's not been your path. And there's a way to teach from depth, from meditative depth, from insight, from your illumination. There's a way to teach from what the practice allows: freedom, spaciousness, joy, and nonreactivity. So, I'm aware that I'm massaging this whole field to deepen your experience of the practice of life and let that inform your teaching.  

Fleet Maull 32:47  

You covered a lot there, and with great depth and nuance, it's quite beautiful. And from what you're saying, although knowing how to instruct or practice or how to provide some teaching that's going to be beneficial to people, there is something about our words, how we structure that, and so forth. But it sounds like it's equally as important, if not more important, who we're being as we're doing that.  

Mark Coleman 33:15  

I think there are some great role models. I’m connected to Spirit Rock and taught there for many years, and someone like Sylvia Borstein, a Jewish grandmother, or a great-grandmother now, if not a great, great grandmother, teaches from the midst of whatever happened this morning, having breakfast with her grandkids and what she discovered at the gym, and she teaches through story.  

So there are so many examples of people just being themselves. Vinnie Ferraro is another teacher who teaches through story and is very much being himself in his teaching. And I think one of the things that teachers go through, and I went through for a long time, was I thought I had to be a certain way. I  thought I had to be like Joseph Goldstein, who was my teacher mentor. So, I thought I had to be very wise and clear. He is a beautiful teacher, and I have some elements of that, but I'm not Joseph; I've got my own path and teaching style.  

 So to be authentic with who one is, try to disavow yourself of some idea of how you think a teacher should be, be authentic in the seat, and be integrated in the seat. And that takes many years because of the conditioning that's so deep in all of us, to be somebody in some role, some idea, some idealization, and to relax enough, to be comfortable enough, to be yourself is important. And then there's a whole teaching because you embody presence and authenticity.  

Fleet Maull  

Yeah, I like what you said about it taking years. In our current society, more than ever, there's a lack of patience. And the idea of apprenticing in some craft or something is not very popular these days; it's not a very current idea. So people want to do a workshop, hang out their shingle, and go off.  

Fleet Maull 35:40  

But even if people start that way, hopefully, they will embrace an ethos of being a lifelong learner and that we are never done. And that sounds like what you're pointing to. And both in terms of our practice,  ever deepening our practice, and having our teachers so that we continue deepening our practice and doing our work. And our psychological work, our emotional work, our trauma work, and  I'm curious in your path if you've seen, sometimes we talk about the work we haven't done, or that we haven't seen that we might need to do, we tend to use that term, the shadow is sometimes used in  Jungian terms, but it's kind of what we don't yet see in terms of our conditioning and obstacles, and so forth.  

And everything has it, even the minute we identify with the role of being a teacher, that has its own shadow, right? And so I wonder if you've seen as you've gone through your career as a teacher, new layers of that appear, where you then have the opportunity to peel back another layer and do another piece of work so that how you're in the world is that much freer of those unacknowledged or un-worked through elements of our conditioning.  

Mark Coleman 36:51  

I think it's, as you say, like the peeling of an onion that you think you peeled all the way. It's like, 'Oh,  there's another layer, another layer of hubris, another layer of whatever it might be’. So, I think it's a couple of growth stages for me; one is, there's no end to, I'm not sure growing is the right word, but growing the heart, like there's no end for me to become a more compassionate person and teacher or to be a more kind person, or teacher. A lot of my intention is to be more kind in this role in my life.  

Regarding my nature teaching, that is another path of humility for me because nature is so vast,  and my ability to understand, perceive, and know is so infinitesimally small. So, for example, my edge in my nature practice is listening to the wisdom of indigenous teachers and traditions who've grown up with intimacy, relationality with nature, and an understanding of nature as a healer, teacher, and guide. And for me, I get excited when I see, Oh, there's this whole thing that I thought I knew, And it's like, 'Look at this.'  

What's important for teachers is to be excited and curious, like, 'Where is an edge?' not as an endless self-development or self-help project but as 'Oh, what's alive for me that helped me broaden or  deepen?' And so, for me, nature being such an all-encompassing teacher, that journey is endless.  

My journey right now is learning to listen to what I used to think of as inanimate objects like trees, stones, and streams. And the wind. I had a bit of experience teaching your retreat for Dharma teachers. I  am doing a nature retreat dharma training for dharma teachers. And the wind came to me as I was  teaching some practices, and it's like, 'Oh, I've never listened to the wind as a being, as this animate  spirit, as this teacher.' It was a different way of relating to wind, which, up to now, was just the wind, the wind, or some airflow.  

So, being humbled by life, your practice, or some aspect of life is like studying with a teacher.  A good teacher will stretch you and challenge you. I don't have many live teachers anymore. But when I  do, I love them stretching me like, 'I've never looked at it that way. I've never seen it that way. Let me go back and spend a few years feeling into that.  

Fleet Maull 40:35  

I love that. Let me go back and spend a few years feeling into that, not the weekend, but maybe a few years! I love that humility and that real depth of dedication. I know you've practiced and taught in a Buddhist context; Spirit Rock is a Buddhist center, and in the Theravadan, Insight tradition is a lay center in that tradition, and you also offer many things in a secular context. I think your Awaken the  Wild work sounds like it's presented in a fairly secular Universalist way. You've done work with training leadership and in the Google-inspired program, Search Inside Yourself, leadership training. And so it seems like you've moved seamlessly back and forth between somewhat faith-based to more secular context with these practices. And Buddhism is often presented in a very kind of Universalist way,  as well, but there is a depth of a faith-based religious tradition there, which I think has tremendous value. But you seem to be able to move fairly seamlessly back and forth. I'm just curious about what you've learned about bringing these profound practices to different audiences and in different contexts in that way.  

Mark Coleman 42:05  

As a teacher, I think the inner experience is that I don't feel like I'm doing anything different anywhere. I feel like I'm teaching. Some might call it Dharma; some might call it mindfulness, and some might call it Buddhist meditation. But I feel like I'm teaching out of mindfulness and out of  Buddhism; it's a wisdom that comes; Buddhism is a wisdom tradition.  

 And so, I feel like I'm just imparting tools, practices, methodologies, skillful means, and wisdom that's most appropriate to that audience as best as I can. So if I'm teaching to say business leaders or some corporate board, I'm not going to use a whole bunch of Buddhist lingo that is foreign and weird because  it's just not relevant. So, and I often say this when I'm in my mindfulness training institute, I often say many people come from Buddhism to that. I say, 'Not using Buddhist lingo will make you a  better teacher.' Because we get very lazy, we can say, 'Oh, it's all impermanent,' or 'The three characteristics,' or different teachings.  

 And then what is that to a layperson? Well, everything changes. Everything is unreliable and uncertain.  And there's a certain kind of impersonal, universal nature to it. That's more interesting than saying,  "Anicca anatta dukkha', the impermanence, not-self, and suffering.  

So I think the art is, and I think the Buddha and others would say this: teach the Dharma in the people's idiom. So prepare what's appropriate. When you teach the kids, you make it fun; you make it sensory and playful, and you do a one-minute meditation, not a 30-minute meditation where they'll be bored stiff. When I taught in juvenile justice, it was adapting to that audience, making it relevant and engaging.

When I'm teaching in corporate, I use a different presentation style. I have to pick up my speed a little bit. I'm using PowerPoints and slides. And it's more engaging, it's more interactive. So people have asked me sometimes, judgmentally, 'How can you be a Buddhist teacher? How can you be teaching at Google?  How can you teach, I don't know, some conference?'  

Or they say, 'What are you teaching? And I asked them, 'What do you think I'm teaching?' I am a deeply trained Buddhist teacher and mindfulness teacher. I'm just teaching that; I'm just teaching what I know. I don't call it Buddhism; I don't call it or use all those labels. I'm teaching in wisdom.  

And so I think there's a kind of a thread through all of that, and I know you teach in many different settings. And it's like we teach the fruit of who we are and what we've learned. And yes, we can put on different hats to suit that audience. But what's coming out is the same, hopefully, the same depth and authenticity. That's how I can manage all those different different worlds. It's one world to me, just different expressions, you know? 

Fleet Maull 46:00  

Well, I think you shared so much wisdom with us today. It's so helpful. And we're nearing the end of our time; I had one last question when you were talking about the nature retreats and that people do begin with their eyes closed when connecting with the body first and developing that grounding in that embodiment. Then, when they do start opening up to the sensorium of the natural world, the external sensorium that they're grounded, to begin with, they don't just then get pulled into another kind of distraction or separation.  

So I'm wondering, in the role of a teacher, being a teacher, and in the path of being a teacher and sitting in the seat, so to speak, when you're guiding and teaching, the importance of embodiment for you. How has that evolved, and what is the importance of being embodied, being fully present, and teaching from that when you're teaching?  

Mark Coleman 46:59  

Thank you. I think it's essential both for practice and teaching. I've been practicing Vipassana for about  30 years. What I love about that practice is that it's a very embodied. You're sitting and sensing yourself, your body sensations, breath, feelings, and the walking, like learning to be embodied and walking up and down for thousands of hours, just being relaxed and present in my body. And now, whenever I walk, I feel like I'm embodied. That's what practice does; it entrains these qualities, and teaching is an embodied experience.  

We can quite easily go up to the head center, but if it's not connected to the body, we're missing this whole universe of experience. And then taking all that practice and training and being in nature,  nature's like an embodiment on steroids. We're not just sensing our body, but we're sensing our skin,  and we're sensing breeze, we're sensing warmth and coolness. So, it's a very multi-textured, layered,  embodied experience. And when I teach, especially when I'm outside, but also inside, I'll take my seat,  say I'm teaching, I'm in a meadow somewhere, and there are trees, I'll take my seat. And I won't speak for two, three, four, or five minutes. I'll sit, I'll look around, I'll sense my body, and I'll feel how my body feels in that landscape. I'll be aware of all those different sensory stimuli. And I listen to see what wants to come forth between. It's an alchemy between my inner embodied experience and the gestalt of the ecosystem I'm in, and something comes out. And it's often a surprise.  

It's spontaneous, improvised, and speaks very much to the immediate experience coming through my embodied knowing. And I think it's essential, an art, and something one practices. And again, one of the doorways both to presence, presence in nature, and embodiment is relaxation. So first, it's like, let's relax, relax the body. Yeah, relax. Sense. Then, the teaching is much more effortless. Yeah, I think it's a good quality for teachers to delve into.  

Fleet Maull 49:59  

Yes, I think what you just shared that having what we're offering, what we're sharing arising at that intersection between our inner experience and our embodiment, presence, and the ecosystem that we are in, as well as you described it quite beautifully, as it would play out in the natural world. But I  imagine that same approach could work very well if you're in a boardroom, in a corporate setting, or at a preschool working with little kids. It's about landing there, being there, and then connecting with whatever ecosystem you're in, right? Then, let the teaching unfold from there.  

Mark Coleman 50:40  

Yeah, because the body is feeling all that, picking up on all that, it's just a field of information that can inform.  

Fleet Maull 50:49  

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Mark, for sharing your decades of expertise and wisdom and for participating in this summit; it is incredibly valuable.  

Mark Coleman 50:59  

Thank you, Fleet. It's always great to be here and to dialogue with you.  

Fleet Maull 51:05  

 Be well.

Mark Coleman 51:06  

 Thanks.