Masters Thesis on Authenticity

Embodied Presence: A Heuristic Inquiry into Mindfulness Teachers’ Experiences of Authenticity
Jane Brendgen
This dissertation is in part fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MSc in
Teaching Mindfulness Based Approaches at Bangor University.
School of Psychology, Bangor University
Student Number: 500176555
Date: September 2014

HEURISTIC INQUIRY INTO EXPERIENCES OF AUTHENTICITY Page 2
Acknowledgements
Heartfelt thanks to the many people who have supported me on this extraordinary
embodied inquiry into Authenticity.
I’d like to especially thank:
o My supervisor Jan Mojsa for her wisdom, humour, encouragement when my belief in
myself wavered and for reminding me over and over again to “write from that place”.
o My supervisor Rebecca Crane for her support, positive response to my topic and for
her comments on the first half of this thesis which gave me a big confidence boost and
fuelled my motivation.
o My wonderful co-researchers, for your generosity and commitment to supporting my
endeavour. Your wisdom has touched me deeply. I could not have done this without
you.
o Emma and Rosie for the clarity that emerged from our conversations.
o Deb for her feedback on the felt sense of chapter 4.
o Brian, my psychotherapist whose warm-hearted presence and fierce wisdom helped
me with the process of "embodying the potential that is manifesting within me”.
o Taravajra for the focusing sessions that helped to excavate the tacit dimension.
o Gregory Kramer for his genius in conceptualizing Insight Dialogue.
o My partner Otto for his love, patience and compassionate holding especially through
the turbulent times.
May this work be of benefit for all Beings.

Declarations
The inserted pages following this declaration page are in fulfilment of the Bangor
University MSc thesis requirements for submission.
Thesis word count: 14992

Contents
Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………………................2
Declarations……………………………………………………………………………………………….…3
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………………….….5
Chapter 1: Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….….6
Chapter 2: Literature Review……………………………………………………………………...12
Chapter 3(a): Methodology…………………………………………….……………………….…26
Chapter 3(b): Method……………………………………………………….……………………….30
Chapter 4: Research Findings……………………………………………………………………..35
Chapter 5: Creative Synthesis……………………………………………………………………..47
Chapter 6: Discussion and conclusion…………………………………………………………48
References: ………………………………………………………………………………………………..55
Appendices: ……………………………………………………………………………………………….61

Abstract
This research study explored experiences of authenticity to deepen the understanding of
the meaning and essence of the phenomenon from the perspective of the person of the
mindfulness teacher. Heuristic methodology was employed to obtain the initial
qualitative data from the primary researcher and four mindfulness teachers were
interviewed to broaden the understanding. The distinctive feature of this research is that
all participants have a personal and interpersonal mindfulness practice. The findings
highlighted the intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions of authenticity and pointed to
the relational process of presence as a factor that supports the choice for authenticity.
Further research that acknowledges the fundamentally relational nature of MBI
programmes would help to move the potentiality of the teacher-student relationship into
the foreground of mindfulness pedagogy. This could support a refinement in current
teacher training practices and potentially increase positive outcomes for participants.

Chapter 1: Introduction
“How did the Rose ever open its heart and give to the world its beauty?
It felt the enCOURAGEment of light against its Being,
otherwise we all remain too frightened”
(Hafiz quoted in Ladinsky, 2002, p. 161).
The aim of this chapter is to contextualise my research topic within the field of
mindfulness-based research and my professional and personal context.
The Mindfulness Context
Interest, development and application of mindfulness-based interventions (MBI’s) has
burgeoned since the inception of the pioneering mindfulness-based stress reduction
programme (MBSR) almost 35 years ago (Cullen, 2011; Davis & Hayes, 2011). The last
decade has seen an exponential rise in the number of research publications gathering
empirical evidence for its salutary effects in clinical and non-clinical settings (Black, 2010).
This growth is increasing the demand for professionals with the competencies required to
effectively deliver MBI’s (McCown, Reibel & Micozzi, 2011). Given the responsibility the
teacher carries in preserving the integrity, quality and standards of practice in service of
successful outcomes for participants, it is becoming increasing important to establish
clarity and consensus in the identification of these competencies, how they are
demonstrated in practice and what processes and structures are required to support
teachers to cultivate them (Crane et al., 2010; Crane et al., 2012a; Kabat-Zinn, 2011).
There is a striking paucity of research literature devoted to these essential teacher
processes.
I will be focusing on two particular MBI’s for this research project, namely MBSR and
MBCT (mindfulness-based cognitive therapy). The former, developed by Kabat-Zinn and
colleagues, has become the template programme for many derivatives including MBCT,
specifically developed for depressed population groups (Segal, Williams & Teasdale, 2013).

Given the centrality of the researcher and their experience in heuristic research, the
methodology I’ve chosen to explore my question, it seems appropriate to offer a
biographical background and personal account of how I arrived at the question before
establishing the project’s relevance by placing it into the context of mindfulness pedagogy.
The Researcher’s background
I have extensive experience delivering workshops and individual coaching for
organisations and members of the public. In 2006 I began practicing mindfulness and a
few years later embarked on the Masters Teacher training programme at Bangor
University. Since then I have gained a number of years experience teaching mindfulness in
various forms and settings.
Six years ago I discovered Insight Dialogue (ID), a distinct form of interpersonal
mindfulness practice developed by Gregory Kramer to cultivate relational mindfulness
(Kramer, 2007). I have attended numerous retreats and practice it both formally and
informally. In July 2013 I attended a teacher training retreat for MBSR teachers
experienced in ID and recently began teaching the Interpersonal Mindfulness course, an 8-
week programme based on ID and formatted for MBSR graduates. The programme was
developed as a collaborative effort between the Centre for Mindfulness and Metta
Programs.
The Call to Authenticity
Eight years ago, following an existential crisis, I enrolled onto an intensive 3-day personal
development course which offered an unexpected ‘rite of passage’. On the last day I
experienced a profound paradigm shift in the momentary recognition of the constructed
nature of reality and myself. The first book I read following this event was entitled ‘After
the ecstasy, the laundry’ (Kornfield, 2000). I highlighted one sentence in particular: “To be
nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best to make you everybody else means
to fight the hardest battle ever” (Kornfield, 2000, p. 213). This was the first call to
authenticity.

An extract from an essay written shortly after attending my first ID retreat clearly reveals
authenticity as a recurrent theme:
In this sacred place I felt my ego let go of its defensive role as it came to a place of
rest, allowing the authentic Jane who embodies a quality of very human relational
presence that is transparent to open-hearted being…to step forth. (Brendgen,
2010)
Last October I was searching for a meaningful research question, one that would enrich
my development as a person and as a mindfulness teacher. During this time I attended an
ID retreat and on the penultimate day the topic ‘chose me’. It emerged whilst I was
engaged in dialogic meditative practice:
I experienced an exquisite state of being, an abiding with equanimity in the rapid flow of
emergent experience, thoroughly in the ‘lived-body’, intimately attuned to the arising of
thoughts, emotions, sensations, open-hearted, vulnerable and grounded. The truth of
the words I spoke resonated deep in my torso, a harmony between my inner world and
the expression of it. At the same time I was aware of the ‘felt sense’ of my partner’s
presence and my body, like a finely-tuned sensitive listening instrument, resonated with
receptivity.
Immediately following the dialogue I captured the qualities of the experience in my
journal, reflecting on the nature and meaning of it. This way of being, vividly connected to
myself and present in relationship felt vital, liberating, effortless, a standing in my truth,
outside of any role. I touched into a quiet sense of authority borne out of fully trusting the
unfolding moments of my organismic experience, ‘being all that I am’ and ‘being fully in
relationship’. As the sediments of my experience settled I came to apprehend it as a
direct experience of authenticity, lived both intrapersonally and interpersonally.
The topic of authenticity was now clear, as was its personal significance. Romanyshyn
(2013) suggests the topic chooses the researcher perhaps even more than the researcher
chooses the topic in the sense that it is an imperative unconscious call to revisit and

resolve the ‘unfinished business of the soul’. I began to explore the relevance of
authenticity in teaching mindfulness, and in particular the influence of the person of the
teacher. I considered the competencies associated with teacher effectiveness and focused
particularly on the two areas where authenticity features most distinctly. The first is
embodiment, a “critical way in which the teacher communicates authenticity” (Crane et
al., 2012b, p. 17). It is emphasized as a core competency in almost all of the pedagogical
literature, e.g. Crane, Kuyken, Williams, Hastings & Rothwell, 2010; van Aalderen et al.,
2014; Kabat-Zinn, 2003. The second competency is relational skills. There are very few
direct references to the teacher-student relationship in current literature. As Dores (2011)
states, “The relationship is hidden in plain view, a background variable” (p. 7).
The two most pertinent questions that arose from this initial investigation were these:
what would the impact on participants be if the teacher has a limited capacity to be
embodied in relationship and could this be a significant factor in outcomes? These
questions led me to begin exploring the extensive body of literature on the
psychotherapeutic relationship. I located compelling evidence to suggest that the
therapist’s authenticity significantly impacts the quality of the relationship and
consequently influences therapeutic outcomes (Norcross, 2011). Returning to mindfulness
pedagogy, I wondered how I might explore authenticity in a way that would offer a
meaningful contribution to the literature. The answer lay in the relational mindfulness
context within which my research question arose. Given my clear apprehension of the
experience of authenticity whilst on retreat and my experiences as a mindfulness teacher,
I wanted to determine whether other teachers who also have an interpersonal practice
may have had similar experiences of authenticity in their teaching. I selected heuristic
methodology for this inquiry which was the final piece in formulating the title of the
research project: Embodied Presence: A heuristic inquiry into mindfulness teachers’
experiences of authenticity.
Research Methodology
Heuristic methodology is a phenomenological inquiry process aimed at deepening the
understanding of the lived experience of the research question. The process begins with
and is founded on the researcher’s experience and co-researchers’ participation supports

a broadening of awareness and understanding. This approach is suited to explore my
research topic in that it encourages an embodied authentic personal and interpersonal
inquiry.
The aim of this study
This research study aims to investigate experiences of authenticity as an intrapersonal and
interpersonal phenomenon.
It offers a unique approach to the exploration of a dimension of human experience: given
that each of my co-researchers are mindfulness teachers experienced in the practice of ID,
the interviews will take the form of an interpersonal meditation practice. The conditions
for exploration will potentially support a strengthening of concentration and mindfulness
and, as Louchakova (2005) notes, offer the opportunity for greater insights into the
phenomenon. Furthermore, the ID practice guidelines may support the arising of
authenticity whilst engaged in dialogue and thereby offer a temporal window to
investigate facets of the experience ‘in vivo’.
It is my hope that the work will contribute to the understanding of the teacher
competencies outlined in this chapter and refine current training practices through
illustrating the potential the teacher-student relationship holds for increased intervention
efficacy.
The four questions central to this research are:
 What is authenticity?
 How is authenticity experienced?
 What factors support or hinder authenticity?
 How is authenticity communicated?
The structure of the thesis continues as outlined below:
Chapter 2: A literature review of the elements central to my investigation of
authenticity.

Chapter 3: (a) A description of heuristic research methodology and (b) the method of
research.
Chapter 4: Research Findings.
Chapter 5: A creative synthesis of the heuristic process.
Chapter 6: Discussion and conclusions.
Summary of Chapter 1
In this chapter I have established the mindfulness context for my research question and
offered a biographical background and a personal account of how I arrived at the
question. I introduced heuristic research as the methodology with which I will explore my
question and elucidated the aim of the study. Finally, I highlighted the four questions
underpinning the research and laid out the structure of the remainder of this thesis.

Chapter 2: Literature Review
Introduction
Using the engines Google Scholar, JSTOR, Web of Knowledge and Science Direct I began
with a broad exploration of the construct of authenticity and found research spanning a
vast range of disciplines. I narrowed the search, drawing specifically from philosophy,
pedagogy and humanistic, dialogical and existential psychology to construct the
theoretical framework for this dissertation, Embodied Presence: a heuristic exploration of
mindfulness teachers’ experiences of Authenticity.
The four elements central to my investigation are synthesized as follows.
1. Background to mindfulness-based approaches
2. Mindfulness Pedagogy and the role of the teacher
3. Conceptualizing Authenticity
4. Authenticity and its importance in mindfulness teaching
1. Background to Mindfulness-based approaches
Mindfulness has been historically referred to as the heart of Buddhist meditation, a
“systematic phenomenological programme to investigate subjective experience”
(Grossman, 2011, p. 1034; Kabat-Zinn, 2003). Drawing on insights derived from his own
practice, Kabat-Zinn recognised the therapeutic potential of mindfulness and
conceptualised the 8-week psycho-educational MBSR programme as a vehicle to deliver
mindfulness into western clinical settings. Since then there has been an exponential rise
in awareness of mindfulness and a corresponding increase in the development of
mindfulness-based interventions serving the specific needs of a diverse range of
population groups. Despite the surge in academic interest and proliferation of published
research on the subject, a consensus has not yet been reached regarding an operational
definition of mindfulness within western psychological theoretical frameworks (Chiesa,
2013). Kabat-Zinn’s definition is most cited in the literature: “The awareness that emerges
through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally to
the unfolding of experience moment-by-moment” (Chiesa, 2013, p. 4).

2. Mindfulness pedagogy and the person of the teacher
The mindfulness-based literature pool is populated with research investigating the
therapeutic ingredients and outcomes associated with MBI’s. The last few years has seen
the inclusion of pedagogical theoretical literature devoted specifically to exploring the role
of the teacher, their qualities of being and the unique set of skills associated with teaching
mindfulness. However, to date a significant empirical gap exists regarding the influence of
the person of the teacher, starkly highlighted with the finding of a single qualitative study
(van Aalderen et al., 2014). McCown and Reibel (2010) attribute this largely to the drive to
establish the evidence base for the intervention and the associated adherence to the ‘gold
standard’, quantitative, randomized clinical trial research protocol. This is surprising given
the quality and integrity of a MBI is “only as good as the teacher” (Kabat-Zinn, 2011, p.
281).
The Teaching Assessment Criteria framework (MBI:TAC) was developed to emphasize the
importance of teacher competence in the preservation of intervention integrity and
efficacy (Crane, et al., 2013). It establishes a developmental trajectory where maturity is
characterized by a ‘way of being’ – a deep internalization and integration of the
competencies such that they are woven into the fabric of the person of the teacher (Crane
et al., 2012a). The six competency domains are: management of session curriculum,
relational skills, embodiment, guidance of practices, conveying course themes and holding
of the group learning environment. The two inter-related elements of this set particularly
pertinent to authenticity in mindfulness teaching were introduced in chapter 1, namely
embodiment and relational skills. I will expound on each here and establish their
relevance in the process of teaching mindfulness in the last section of this review.
Embodiment
To experience embodiment is to experience being, thoroughly, in the lived-body,
from moment to moment, sensing precisely those body sensations, feelings and
thoughts which give rise to our sense of self. (Rahilly, 1993, p. 55)

The primary mechanism through which mindfulness is transmitted is not via concepts and
intellectual understanding but rather through the presence of the teacher and their
capacity to embody mindfulness (Crane et al., 2010; Kabat-Zinn, 2011; Woods, 2009). The
whole teaching process itself is an ‘in vivo’ experience of mindfulness where everything is
taught through “the being of the teacher” (Crane et al., 2012; Santorelli as cited in
McCown et al., 2011, p. 16). Embodiment has been defined as “The quality of instantiating
into one’s being, actions and phenomenological experience the skills that are cultivated
through mindfulness practice” (Dobkin, Hickman & Monshat, 2013, p. 4).
Relational Skills
“All real living is meeting said Martin Buber
and teaching is endless meeting” (Palmer, 1998, p. 16).
Considering the centrality of the ‘Being’ of the teacher and the form and content of the
MBI curriculum, many of the transformative effects are potentiated through relational
processes, particularly inquiry, which is a vitally important element of the intervention
(McCown et al., 2011). Through dialogic encounter, participants are invited to explore
what they noticed in their experience of the mindfulness practice and to symbolize this
pre-semantic information in descriptive, concrete terms, fostering an embodied intimacy
with subjective experience. The relationship itself offers the participants support to
explore their experience more deeply.
Santorelli (1999) is explicit about the importance of the relationship in his contribution to
the literature: “This book holds as its central focus the healing relationship” (p. 1). He
emphasizes the healing potential of the relationship to Self and the teacher-student
relationship, regarding the latter as “an embodiment, a direct expression of
interconnectedness and interdependence” (p. 97). Based on their personal experience of
mindfulness in the MBI classroom and therapeutic setting, McCown and colleagues (2011)
bring forth a tentative suggestion that the psycho-physiological phenomenon of inter-
subjectivity may be the facilitating factor in participants receiving the transmission of
mindfulness. This condition of humanness, defined as the sharing of subjective states by

two or more individuals, presents a small temporal window of lived relational experience
that holds the potential for change (Stern, 2004, my emphasis).
With the pedagogical context in place and having established the importance of
embodiment and the relationship in teaching mindfulness, I will proceed with an
exploration of the construct of Authenticity.
3. Conceptualizing Authenticity
Through reading different conceptions of authenticity within the relevant contexts it has
become clear that it is a vast, multi-dimensional and complex phenomenon, with no single
unifying definition. To add to the complexity, a number of different terms are used
interchangeably within the literature including congruence and genuineness. With the
concrete purpose and scope of the study in mind my aim is to establish a theoretical
foundation for authenticity and to build on this in my exploration of the construct within
the context of teaching mindfulness.
Decades of scientific research on the effectiveness of psychotherapy have consistently
shown that the therapeutic relationship makes a substantial contribution to positive
therapeutic outcomes (Norcross, 2011). In the person-centred body of literature the term
congruence is used to refer to a relational quality within the therapeutic context. Rogers
regarded it as the fundamental of a set of three, the other two of which are unconditional
positive regard and empathy (Lietaer, 2001). The term authenticity is also used in a wider
context to refer to a fundamental characteristic of the two dimensions of human
existence: the substantial or individual aspect of being a person and the relational,
dialogical aspect of becoming a person (Schmid, 2001). I will use this wider
conceptualization in my exploration of authenticity.
Substantial debate and consensus has led to a comprehensive definition of authenticity: a
tripartite construct involving consistency between (i) the person’s subjective experience –
body sensations, emotions and cognitions, (ii) the conscious awareness of these aspects of
experience and (iii) their outward manifestation in the form of verbal and non-verbal
communication and behaviour (Wood, Linley, Maltby, Baliousis & Joseph, 2008).

Authenticity as a way of Being
Soren Kierkegaard’s phrase ‘be that self which one truly is’ has become synonymous with
the quest for authenticity (DeCarvalho, 1991). It implies that there is such a separate
entity as the authentic self, a self-as-object view consistent with a large body of western
psychological thought (Bradford & Sterling, 2009; Geller & Greenberg, 2001; Kreber et al.,
2007; Ryan & Warren, 2003).
From a humanistic perspective, the inner dimension and core of authenticity is openness
to what is arising in one’s actual present-moment experience and the accurate
representation and symbolization of this in awareness (Geller & Greenberg, 2001; Kernis &
Goldman, 2006; Schmid, 2001; Wyatt, 2001). Implicit in this inner dimension of
authenticity is a present-centred intrapersonal process of being aware and open and this
leads to a different conceptualization of the authentic self.
As Heidegger (1975) notes: “To genuinely be oneself is to fully arrive in the present
moment and to linger a while in the expanse of unconcealment” (p. 34). This is part of a
broader post-modernist shift from the self-as-object to the self-as-process, where the self
is regarded as an ongoing process of construction located in the unfolding moments of
experience (Geller & Greenberg, 2001; Haugh, 2001; Kreber et al., 2007; Ryan & Brown,
2003). Rogers captures this in his definition of a person: “A fluid process, potentiality, a
continually changing constellation, configuration, matrix of feelings, thoughts, sensations,
behaviours” (as cited in Schmid, 2001, p. 218). He made a significant contribution to the
study of authenticity by conceiving it as a process of ‘becoming’ (a verb in the present
participle form) rather than a final state of ‘being’ (noun): “A continuing organismic
valuing process that comes straight from the individual’s own sensory and visceral
experiences” (Rahilly, 1993, p. 53).
Within this conceptualization, the ‘true self' emerges when there is complete congruence
between experience and what is consciously symbolized. This is one of the features of
Roger’s concept of a psychologically mature person, where the authentic self is regarded
as a developmental orientation, facilitated through self-transparency and self-awareness,

the readiness to experience ‘what is’ without defending against it and the willingness to
be an embodiment of all that one truly is (Bradford & Sterling, 2009; Haugh, 2001; Kreber
et al., 2007; Ryan & Brown, 2003; Schnellbacher & Leijssen, 2009).
Bugental, the founder of existential-humanistic psychotherapy dedicated his life to the
exploration of authenticity. He describes a person in this way: “The essence of my being is
that I am subjective awareness continually in process….in short I am no thing, nothing, I
am solely the process of my being” (Bugental, 1976, p. 14). His conception of authenticity
is summarised in Bradford & Sterling’s (2009) statement:
To be true to oneself is to open to the unrehearsed flow and fullness of
experience, and to respond without hesitation from within that truth. During
moments of genuine openness and responsivity there is no preferable place to get
to and no other time in which to arrive. The journey is the goal. (p. 324)
My literature search located two qualitative studies corroborating the intrapersonal
phenomenological aspects of authenticity as portrayed by Rogers and Bugental above.
Adomaitis’s (1992) interviews with counsellors captured their accounts of being authentic
with clients. The themes included being open to experience, focused in the moment,
feeling centred, trusting experience, being one’s intentions, a willingness to be known and
recognizing choice. Rahilly’s study (1993) with a group of psychotherapists revealed
further characteristics: being present and fully aware, fully embodied with heightened
somatic awareness, and a sense of ego dissolution, a ‘being-in-process’.
Authenticity as a relational experience
The outer dimension of authenticity is that which emerges in relational contact. Rogers’
depiction of this is summarised as: “This person is a human process of becoming, most
deeply revealed in a relationship of the most intimate and complete acceptance; a real I-
Thou relationship” (as cited in Schmid, 2001, p. 219). He makes reference to Buber’s
(1958) seminal work entitled ‘I-Thou’. From Buber’s dialogical viewpoint, being a person
means ‘communicating oneself’. We exist not only in relationships as a person, but we are
relationships. Authenticity as an existential relational process unfolds in the lived

experience of both the intrapersonal and interpersonal. Schmid (2001) refers to this as
“being fully myself and fully open, fully living the individual that I am, fully living the
relationship I am in and the relationship I am” (p. 225).
Rogers (1980) wrote of the experience of communicating himself openly:
I feel a sense of satisfaction when I dare to communicate the realness in me to
another. This is far from easy, partly because what I am experiencing keeps
changing every moment…when I can communicate what is real in me at the
moment it occurs I feel genuine, spontaneous and alive. (p. 16, my emphasis)
Bradford and Stirling (2009) vividly portray relational authenticity in their comment: “dare
we open ourselves in seeking truth, which requires ever-greater submission to the process
of unconcealing, and once nakedly present, how responsive dare we be with another
person” (p. 320, my emphasis).
The words ‘dare’ and ‘naked’ appear in the quotes above and point to an essential facet of
authenticity implicit in being open and connected to oneself: the courage to embrace
one’s human vulnerability. There are remarkably few explicit references to this in the
literature perused. Daniel’s (1998) suggests that by being authentic with their own
vulnerability, people are able to perceive it in others and enter into mutual vulnerability.
Brown’s (2010) research offers the most significant contribution to the field. She regards
vulnerability as the core of meaningful relational experiences and the source of
authenticity.
Rombouts (as cited in Lietaer, 2001) asserts “The state of fundamental openness in my
personal world is the soil on which the contact with the person grows” (p. 41). Expressed
in different terms, receptivity to one’s own experience enables receptivity to the other’s
experience and establishes the ground for a true ‘I-Thou’ meeting to arise. Kramer (2003),
a scholar of Buber, suggests this inter-subjective meeting is characterized by a revelatory
‘authenticity of being’ in which one is fully present and accepting of oneself and extends
this to the other which catalyzes a meeting in the realm of the human condition. In the
safety of unconditional presence the other is invited to open to their experience, just as it

is and “to bring forth their very being, just as they are” (Adams, 2005, p. 20). In this place
the meeting is so unreserved that the “essential being of both persons is touched”
(Jacobs, 1989, p. 3). Mutual growth, development and authenticity are fostered in the
moments of this emergent, transient relational field (Greenberg & Geller, 2002; Kreber et
al., 2007).
Presence: A crucible for Authenticity?
Presence is a core facet of Buber’s (1958) ‘I-Thou’ relationship. It is well represented in the
psychotherapeutic literature as a fundamental element influencing the quality of the
relationship and therapeutic outcomes (Hycner, 1993; Krug, 2009). There appears to be
consistency in the conceptions of presence as having both an interpersonal and
intrapersonal dimension. Pemberton (as cited in Greenberg & Geller, 2012) defines the
intrapersonal aspect of presence as a deep state of self-attunement: “knowing the totality
of oneself in the moment” (p. 39, my emphasis). The interpersonal aspect is present-
centred receptivity and attunement to the other’s experience. The skill of presence is to
be able to carefully balance contact between these two relational dimensions, and to
respond from this place of internal and external connection. Robbins (1998) describes the
process of presence as a ‘dual level of consciousness’ requiring an ongoing shifting from
internal to external, from self to other, from being open and receptive to being
responsive.
In his later years Rogers writing reveals the tentative proposition that the relational
conditions emerge from the ground of presence, that being present is an embodiment of
the therapeutic conditions. In the wider sense, this suggests that presence is the
existential core of authenticity – it is the ground of authenticity and the necessary pre-
condition of it (Bozarth, 2001; Geller & Greenberg, 2012; Hycner, 1993; Schmid, 2001;
Wyatt, 2001).
Having established a theoretical foundation for authenticity, I will move to the final
section of this review where I explore the importance of authenticity within the context of
mindfulness teaching.

4. Authenticity and its importance in Mindfulness Teaching
The explicit association of the constructs of mindfulness and authenticity appears
primarily in the literature on mindfulness pedagogy and also features in a limited
collection of writing on relational mindfulness. I located one quantitative study which
supports the view that mindfulness is positively correlated with authenticity in that it
enhances one’s ability to engage with subjective experience in a non-reactive and non-
defensive way (Lakey, Kernis, Heppner & Lance, 2008). This dovetails into a large body of
empirical research on emotional regulation and mindfulness which has established a
statistically significant relationship between the constructs (Chambers, Gullone & Allen,
2009; Cheisa, Serretti & Jakobsen, 2013; Hayes & Feldman, 2004; Holzel et al., 2011).
Presence is well represented in the mindfulness-oriented psychotherapeutic literature
with multiple references suggesting that the practice of mindfulness helps to cultivate it
(Brito, 2013; Childs, 2007; Cigolla & Brown, 2011; Geller, Greenberg & Watson, 2010;
Germer, Siegel & Fulton, 2013; Razzaque, Okoro & Wood, 2013; Siegel, 2010).
Who is the Self that teaches?
Who is the Self that teaches? This question lies at the heart of Palmer’s (1998) exposition
of teaching. The answer to his inquiry is reflected in McCown and colleagues (2011)
definition of a MBI teacher:
The work ultimately depends on who you are as a person.
You enter the little community of participants with nothing…you meet them just as
they are, just as you are...To teach mindfulness is to practice it, and to practice it
means to bring all that you are to every moment. And all that you are is all that is
needed; the real you really is sufficient. (p. 91, my emphasis)
In this section I will integrate authenticity and mindfulness, focusing on the person of the
teacher and the competencies of embodiment and relationship skills.
The Being that we are
The person of the teacher that arrives in the MBI classroom is the convergence of all that
they are. The degree to which this is authentically expressed is determined by their level

of spiritual and psychological maturity and has a direct influence on their ability to
embody mindfulness and to meet participants with presence (Crane et al., 2010). Rogers
characterizes psychological maturity as a process of functioning more fully: an openness
to and intimacy with experience, living fully in each moment and an increasing trust in
one’s organismic experience (as cited in Haugh, 2001, p. 4). McCown and Reibel (2010)
suggest the level of spiritual maturity that is required of an MBI teacher is akin to “a
dialogical knowing in which knower and known enter an I-Thou relationship” and that
practice is the actualizing factor (p. 37, my emphasis).
Personal Practice: Cultivating Embodiment
“The teacher’s presence is an authentic embodiment of the commitment to be awake to
one’s life no matter what is occurring” (Santorelli as cited in McCown, 2011, p. 16).
Mindfulness pedagogical literature consistently stresses the importance of mindfulness
teachers having a committed and sustained personal practice. It is considered essential for
the cultivation of embodiment (Crane et al., 2010; Dobkin et al., 2013; McCown & Reibel
2010; Kabat-Zinn, 2003; Van Aalderen et al., 2012; Woods, 2009). Practice can be
regarded as a holistic process of “learning to listen and trust your own being”, the whole
body-mind organismic experience which is the source of authenticity (Kabat-Zinn, 1990, p.
3; Rahilly, 1993). In mindfulness meditation the body is re-discovered, emphasized and
regarded as a resource of intuitive wisdom, with a shift in emphasis from ‘language-based
conceptual knowing’ to ‘embodied intuitive knowing’ (Rothwell, 2006; McCown & Reibel,
2009; Woods, 2010).
Crane (2009) suggests mindfulness practice and teaching contains three broad elements.
It is important to consider each of these in turn as they clearly show how embodiment is
developed intrapersonally. This will establish a basis from which to position the
importance of interpersonal practice in my exploration of the relational realm in teaching.
(i) The cultivation of awareness through regular engagement with intrapersonal forms of
practice. With ‘presence to self’ one becomes aware of the changing aspects of subjective
experience and gains insight into the constellations of conditioned patterns that drive the

organism of Self (Sills, 2009). This process encourages a dis-identification from a ‘static’
self-as-object and instead, identification with the raw material of subjective experience,
with self-as-process, and results in a greater freedom to experience a more genuine way
of being (Holzel et al., 2011).
(ii) The qualities of attitude that are developed from within practice and also emerge from
it are non-judging, patience, beginner’s mind, trust, non-striving, acceptance and letting
go (Kabat-Zinn, 1990). These attitudes support a fundamental shift in relationship to the
personal, internal world of thoughts, feelings, sensations: rather than striving to change or
avoid aspects of experience, particularly the unwanted, the mind is encouraged to turn
towards experience and meet it ‘just as it is’ with kindness and compassion. This way of
being with experience is a central principle underpinning MBI programmes (Segal et al.,
2013; Crane et al., 2010). It reduces intrapersonal reactivity, creates internal safety and
calms the limbic system, promoting ‘openness to self’. The neurobiological term for this is
intra-subjective resonance and it has a direct bearing on the teacher’s ability to create a
safe learning environment (Siegel, Siegel & Parker, 2012; Crane, et al., 2012b). Participants
are likely to perceive the internal safety implicitly through neuroception, an inter-
subjective process that forms the biological basis of trust (Porges, 2009). Safety facilitates
the activation of the social engagement system, a mechanism that inhibits
flight/fight/freeze and promotes openness and relational connectivity (Siegel, 2010).
(iii) Understanding of human vulnerability, the third element of practice develops
through intellectually understanding the Buddhist psychological themes underpinning the
MBI programme and systematically investigating the phenomenology of one’s subjective
experience to gain the experiential embodied understanding. Insights into one’s personal
conditioning are placed into the larger context of human experience where compassion
for oneself and others as limited and imperfect human beings can arise (Neff, 2003).
The Process of Teaching
“There is only one dress code: nakedness” (Santorelli, 1999, p. 97).
Pedagogical literature emphasizes that the way the teacher communicates authenticity is
through sustained connection to their personal practice whilst teaching, “living the

transformative realities” as the moments unfold (McCown & Reibel, 2010, p. 41). The
teaching comes directly from the flow of intrapersonal mindfulness. This requires stepping
out of the known territory of the selfhood structures of role and expertise and into ‘being-
in-process’, opening to the unrehearsed, groundless, emergent flow of direct, present-
moment sensory and visceral experience.
Moving into the realm of the interpersonal
“As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others”
(Williamson, 1992, p. 191).
Santorelli (1999) considers teaching as “The vocation of becoming a true Human Being” (p.
21). Central to this is the healing potential of the quality of the teacher-student
relationship, the transformative agent of which is the teacher’s willingness to encounter
participants from their humanness. Cranton and Carusetta (2004) characterize the
relationship in this way: “being who I am and letting them see who they are” (p. 14). The
relationship is therefore less defined by roles and more by virtue of the shared human
condition, the essence of Buber’s (1958) ‘I-Thou’.
Considering the whole teaching process is an ‘in vivo’ experience of mindfulness I am
convinced that the central skill is the practice of relational presence: the ability to balance
contact with the intrapersonal and interpersonal, with self and participants and to teach
from this place. The practice of presence is not mentioned within mindfulness
pedagogical literature because the relationship is a background variable. Mindfulness is
regarded as a way to cultivate presence, however, given that it is traditionally a solitary
practice research is based almost exclusively on intrapersonal practice.
It is important to consider that many are drawn to mindfulness as a way to overcome
psychological and relational wounding (Davis & Hayes, 2011). Personal practice may
become a process of ‘spiritually bypassing’ issues, preventing one from being fully present
and open to one’s own humanness (Welwood, 2002). Relationships tend to trigger
unresolved wounding most intensely, resulting in the erection of defences and an
impaired ability to be present, open and authentic with another. Furthermore, it may be

particularly challenging to be engaged in a relational process in the MBI classroom where
it is witnessed by the whole group. Invulnerability is likely to result in a ‘hiding behind role
and expertise’, creating a sense of disconnection and impacting the teacher’s capacity to
meet participants who are distressed, a particularly crucial issue in teacher effectiveness
(Dores, 2011; Taravajra, 2010). From an inter-subjective viewpoint, the knock-on effect of
this is an inhibition of the ‘flow of mindfulness’ in relational contact and a reduction in the
potential the relationship offers for mutual healing. When considering the process of
neuroception, this may potentially compromise the group’s sense of safety.
Relational Practice: Cultivating Embodied Presence
Kramer et al. (2008) make an important distinction between embodiment that is
cultivated in intrapersonal mindfulness practice versus interpersonal practice. They
propose that human interactions are uniquely challenging and that, whilst a personal
practice does develop some measure of intrapersonal resonance and equanimity,
transferring these skills directly into real-time human interactions is a largely unsupported
challenge. They suggest the formal dialogical meditation practice of ID supports this
challenge directly and fosters presence, an embodied way of being in relationship.
The roots of ID lie in Buddhist philosophy, depth psychology and Buber’s dialogical
existential philosophy. There are six inter-related elements that create the structure for
practice, namely Pause, Relax, Open, Trust Emergence, Listen Deeply and Speak the Truth
(Kramer, 2007). The form for practice is primarily dyadic, with participants seated face-to-
face, in eye contact. Contemplations highlighting significant elements of the shared
human experience are offered as a vehicle for relational engagement. Participants are
offered the opportunity to attune to aspects of subjective experience directly related to
being-in-relationship - the relationship itself triggers the emergence of conditioned
relational patterns.
The psychological and spiritual literature I have reviewed consistently points to openness
as the activating factor in the transformational process of becoming authentic.
Intrapersonal mindfulness practice actualizes the inner dimension of authenticity through
fostering the ability “to see, to hold ourselves closely just as we are” (Santorelli, 1999, p.

20). However, it is the interpersonal mindfulness practice - the exploration of the
intrapersonal realm within a dialogical relationship - that cultivates the outer dimension
of authenticity and facilitates being open and authentic with self and other in relationship
(Hycner, 1993; Kramer, 2000; Kramer & Surrey, 2013).
Summary of Chapter 2
In this chapter I have offered a background to mindfulness-based approaches and
highlighted the importance of the person of the teacher within mindfulness pedagogy. The
two core competencies of embodiment and relational skills pertinent to teacher
authenticity were introduced within this context. Authenticity was contextualized within
humanistic, dialogical and existential psychology and philosophy and explored as both a
way of being and a relational experience underpinned by presence. I explored
authenticity within mindfulness pedagogy, focusing on ‘The self’ that teaches and the
importance of personal practice to cultivate embodiment. I further discussed the process
of teaching, emphasizing the centrality of the teacher-student relationship and introduced
Insight Dialogue as an interpersonal practice to cultivate authenticity in relationship,
integrating both competencies of embodiment and relational skills in embodied presence.

Chapter 3(a): Methodology
“Let go and fall into the river. Let the river of life sweep you beyond all aid from old and
worn concepts. I will support you. Trust me…
Can you trust me enough to let go of the known and swim in an unknown current”
(Moustakas, 1990, p. 13)
Introduction
The aim of this chapter is to introduce the methodology associated with my research
project. I highlight research paradigms and explore the salient features of heuristic
methodology, as outlined in the researcher’s personal process and the phases of inquiry.
Research Paradigms
Positivist objectivist research fits into the cause-and-effect paradigm where the focus is on
cognitive processes associated with describing, defining, explaining and predicting objects
under study (Sela-Smith, 2002). Psychometric instruments are used to investigate
experience and data is in the form of statistics. Proponents of this paradigm argue that
empirical evidence is the only acceptable source of knowledge and strive to achieve ‘gold
standard’ rigour in the application of randomized controlled trial studies (Onwuegbuzie &
Leech, 2014).
In qualitative research the interview is considered the gold standard approach. Data is
represented in the form of descriptive narratives that offer insight into the phenomenon
being investigated (Sandelowski, 2002). Proponents of this camp argue that positivist
research reduces human experiences. Bugental asserts: “The objectivist view...regards all
that is not familiar as dangerous, mythical or nonexistent” (as cited in Anderson & Braud,
2011, p. 4).
Onwuegbuzie and Leech (2014) provide a strong rationale to reduce the polarization and
suggest the two methodologies be regarded as complimentary. Considering the current
evidence base for mindfulness-based interventions, qualitative methodologies have
helped to establish that they are efficacious. Grossman (2011) asserts that greater

emphasis now needs to be placed on qualitative investigations which are likely to offer
insights into the characteristics related to the ‘full-bodied lived’ practice of mindfulness.
Moustakas (1990) developed heuristic methodology and it is founded on the philosophical
principles of Polyani (1966) and Gendlin (1978). The approach fits into the qualitative
paradigm in that it is a systematic phenomenological process aimed at discovering the
nature and meaning of a particular aspect of human existence. However, there are
distinct differences. Firstly, the initial data is within the researcher: their direct lived
experience is central to research integrity. Secondly, participants in the study are regarded
as co-researchers rather than research subjects and the researcher engages in open
compassionate dialogue during the interviews, facilitating an emotionally connected
scientific inquiry (Anderson & Braud, 2011; Djuraskovic & Arthur, 2010). In fulfilment of
the purpose of the research data from both sources are integrated to provide a rich and
multi-faceted description of the lived experience.
The Researcher’s personal process
Within the interiority of self lies a wealth of embodied knowledge that has been
assimilated and integrated over the lifetime of the researcher’s experiences. This includes
all the education, training, reading, language, social forms and cultural influences (Sharma,
2010). Polyani (1966) refers to this as the tacit dimension. The Greek root of the word
heuristic means to discover or find (Moustakas, 1990). The researcher is invited to venture
into the unchartered territory of self to discover this personal knowledge (Sela-Smith,
2002). Sela-Smith (2002) proposes that it is this interiority that flows between Buber’s
(1958) inter-subjective ‘I-Thou’ meeting.
Sela-Smith (2002) contends that it is not the thinking-observing self but rather the ‘I-who-
feels’, the experiencing self that provides entry into the tacit dimension and Stern (2004)
offers an incisive rationale in support of this proposition. He asserts the present moment
is being consciously registered as it is still unfolding, therefore symbolization and
verbalization can only take place retrospectively. The ‘I-who-feels’ apprehends the original
moment through implicit knowing.

A number of self-reflective processes are central to heuristic discovery. They support the
excavation of the tacit terrain and bring aspects of experience into the researcher’s
awareness where they are symbolized, interpreted, re-integrated and embodied. One of
these processes is focusing, a body-based form of inquiry developed by Gendlin (1980).
Focusing facilitates a direct and embodied way of knowing prior to conceptual
interpretation (Anderson & Braude, 2011). Todres (2007) was influenced by Gendlin’s
work and uses the term ‘embodied inquiry’ to emphasize the importance of the body in
authenticating the experience. He suggests understanding involves being “intimate with
the unsaid and…with the said”, that we need both conceptual formulations and ‘lived
body’ experiences to reach a fully matured embodied understanding (p. 25).
The Heuristic process requires committed engagement from the researcher to validate the
methodology therefore it is important that the research topic holds significant personal
meaning. Herein lies the potential for increased self-awareness, self-knowledge and
transformation. Through “daring to surrender to the listening”, the constituent parts of
the self are reorganised and reintegrated and the experience of self is transformed (Sela-
Smith, 2002, p. 64). Heuristic research clearly holds psychological developmental
potential for the researcher in that the elements essential to discovery are exactly those
defined by Rogers as central to the process of becoming authentic: openness to and
trusting one’s experience and the willingness to enter into self-as-process (Moustakas,
1990).
Research phases
The research design consists of six phases: Initial engagement, immersion into the topic
and question, incubation, illumination, explication and the creative synthesis, the
culmination of the whole heuristic process.
The heuristic process begins with initial engagement, a search to find a personally
significant research question to clarify the topic for research. Immersion is characterised
by the researcher ‘being taken by the research’ where the question is thoroughly ‘lived
into’. During this time the researcher relies on processes that support access to the tacit
dimension. The next phase, incubation, offers an important ‘breathing space’ to allow for

the unconscious organic ‘ploughing’ of the tacit domain. The arising of insights is evidence
of the illumination phase where tacit knowing emerges into awareness. This is a rich
generative time where new meanings, interpretations and understandings are possible. It
is also the ground for transformation, with a potential major reorganisation of the
interiority of self. The purpose of the explication phase is to fully examine what has
emerged from the tacit dimension using both conceptual and body-based processes. The
material is gathered together to construct a comprehensive depiction of all of the
discovered facets of the experience. Finally, in the creative synthesis, the experience as a
whole is expressed in an aesthetic way to convey the fully embodied understanding of the
phenomenon.
Sela-Smith (2002) offers a particularly insightful critique of Moustakas’ heuristic
methodology. Following her review of 28 heuristic studies she found little evidence of the
discovery of the tacit dimension. This drew her to a thorough investigation of his
methodology which revealed a split focus and potentially misleading aspect for
researchers. She noticed that he had shifted focus from exploring subjective experiencing
(verb) to understanding experience (noun) from an objective position. With the latter, the
primary source of data is not drawn from within the researcher but rather from
experiences of co-researchers. Her revised approach, Heuristic self-search Inquiry, aims to
support the researcher to stay as close as possible to their subjective experience to ensure
the validity of the research methodology. Co-researchers experiences are therefore
regarded as “valuable reflectors” in that they may reveal themes outside of the
researcher’s awareness and thereby allow the transformation to be more expansive (p.
78).
Summary of chapter 3(a)
In summary, I have offered an outline of the elements of heuristic methodology, exploring
features of the researcher’s process and the phases of inquiry.

Chapter 3(b): Method
Introduction
The aim of this chapter is to provide a description of the methods associated with
collecting, organizing, analyzing and synthesizing of the data to represent the themes,
meanings and essence of experiences of authenticity. I outline the two phases of inquiry
of the project, list the questions presented to co-researchers and offer a profile of my co-
researcher team. I highlight the approach I adopted for the interviews and include other
relevant information.
The heuristic method: A work of two halves
The university’s current submission process for master’s students requires the first half of
the report to be submitted half way through the academic year. By design, this supported
me to follow two phases of inquiry as suggested by Sela-Smith in her revision of
Moustakas’ heuristic approach.
The first phase was characterised by self-search, an intrapersonal process aimed at staying
with the feeling, experiencing self to facilitate self-discovery (Sela-Smith, 2002). Once the
question had formed I began the process of living through the phases of immersion,
incubation and illumination, relying on processes such as meditation, ID practice,
journaling, actual teaching, psychotherapy and focusing to bring aspects of my experience
of authenticity into awareness. My growing experiential understanding became the inner
compass that guided my selection of papers from the vast range of literature on the topic.
The second phase, the interpersonal process, began with interviewing my four co-
researchers. Moustakas (1990) states that this needs to come at a point near the end of
the research rather than at the beginning “where it might have acted to predispose or
colour growing awareness” (p. 96). Each interview transcript was repeatedly checked for
accuracy and I re-entered the heuristic phases. I chose to follow Moustakas’s guidelines of
procedures for analysis of data. I studied each interview transcript thoroughly and
constructed individual portraits representing each co-researcher’s experience of
authenticity. I invited them to check their depictions to ensure for accuracy and

comprehensiveness and we agreed on a title that would capture the essence of the
portrait. Upon completion of the depictions I entered into a further phase of analysis,
beginning with immersion into the collective data and reached a point where the
experiences were internalised and understood to the best of my ability. The next step was
the construction of a composite portrayal to depict the essential themes and essence of
the experience of authenticity.
In the writing of the portrayal I made a decision to move away from the traditional
descriptive phenomenological approach of representing findings using language that is
precise, rational and objectifying of the data. Instead, I chose to follow a trend emerging in
phenomenological research where data is presented evocatively to ‘bring it to life’
(Anderson & Braud, 2011; Todres & Galvin, 2008). Krycka (2011) regards this trend as
bringing the human into research. Not only is this approach wholly congruent with
heuristics in conveying the ‘lived experience’, it is also profoundly congruent with a core
theme of this thesis – inter-subjectivity. Through ‘embodied interpretation’, a process
based on Gendlin’s philosophy of ‘entry into the implicit’ I engaged with the ‘felt sense’ of
the data represented in the themes and sub-themes (Todres, 2007). I translated this into
concrete, textured and sometimes metaphorical language that emerged from direct
contact with the experience. This language provided the thread to weave the verbatim
extracts from co-researcher’s individual portraits together. The findings are therefore
presented more as a cohesive flowing narrative rather than blocks of data connected by
lines of elucidating commentary. I have attempted to maintain a balance between
structure and texture. It is my hope that my portrayal will invite readers into the
experience of authenticity, communicating a bodily sense of ‘being there’ and creating an
inter-subjective sympathetic resonance that characterises Buber’s (1958) ‘I-Thou’.
Research questions
I formulated a number of questions to orientate the mutual inquiry into experiences of
authenticity. These were offered to my co-researchers prior to our meeting.
 How would you define authenticity? How is it experienced or known?
 How is authenticity communicated?

 What factors support authenticity? How do the ID guidelines support the choice for
authenticity?
 What hinders authenticity?
 Does authenticity contribute to the efficacy of mindfulness teaching and if so how?
Co-researcher team profile
It was my initial plan to recruit eight co-researchers however, after due consideration of
the scope of the project and the time available, I decided to reduce the number to four.
My co-researchers, one of whom is male, are highly experienced mindfulness practitioners
with practice ranging from 23 – 38 years. Similarly, they have a significant amount of years
of experience teaching either MBSR or MBCT. All have an established interpersonal
mindfulness practice in the form of ID, with many hours of practice accrued both formally
on retreat and informally in numerous different settings. Three have experience in
teaching or facilitating ID. They have psychotherapeutic and educational backgrounds and
all expressed interest in a number of different wisdom traditions.
Interview approach
I currently live in East Sussex. Given our geographic locations I was able to meet two of my
co-researchers face-to-face, in their respective homes and I used Skype as the means of
contact with the other two. The duration of each interview ranged from 55 – 75 minutes.
Within the framework of ID practice, the interview occurred as a naturally unfolding
dialogue that relied on my previously formulated questions and those that formed
emergently during the interview to reap the data. In heuristic exploration dialogue is the
preferred interviewing approach in that it encourages expression, elucidation and
disclosure of the experience under study (Moustakas, 1990).
Being in practice together offered the opportunity to explore both ‘experiences’ and
‘experiencing’ of authenticity: co-researchers referenced memories of experiences and
there were moments when the conditions ripened to enable an embodied ‘in vivo’ inquiry.
This excerpt from co-researcher-03’s interview transcript exemplifies this:

It's like I'm not trying to do anything to you, you're not trying to do anything to
me...In this context of an interview, I'm aware you have a job to do and I can sense
that. But I also sense this openness. I don't feel manipulated or that you're trying
to control what's happening. I find that quite moving. It’s a deep honouring and
respect for what's here, Buber’s ‘I-Thou’. (CR-03)
I was profoundly touched by the openness, honesty and wisdom of my co-researchers and
deeply moved by our dialogue at times.
Recording equipment
Given that I had chosen to employ the services of a reputable transcribing service
recommended by the School of Psychology I used their iphone app to record three
interviews. I used an Olympus digital voice recorder WS-812 as a backup and to record the
forth interview which I personally transcribed. All MP3 files are currently stored on my
password-protected computer.
Risk
I adhered to the guidelines of The British Psychological Society’s Ethical Principles for
conducting Research with Human Participants (2009). There was no perceived risk to
interview participants. The Ethics committee of the School of Psychology, University of
Bangor approved this study.
Consent and withdrawal
Early in the academic year I contacted my co-researchers by email and invited them to
participate in the research. Following Ethics approval, each co-researcher received a
formal letter of invitation, a research information sheet and a consent form. Each of these
documents can be found in appendix-b. All co-researchers gave their full consent to
participating in the study.
Debriefing
Co-researchers were informed once again regarding the interview process at the onset of
the interview and given an opportunity for reflection after completion.

Confidentiality
Co-researchers were assured that their anonymity would be preserved at all times in all
instances.
Summary of chapter 3(b)
In this chapter I have provides a summary of the qualitative methods I used in the
collection and processing of my data.

Chapter 4: Research Findings
Introduction
The aim of this chapter is to present the composite depiction of the data captured from
the interviews with my four co-researchers. It takes the form of a cohesive narrative and
reflects the themes and sub-themes that crystallized from the analysis. Although the
themes are represented structurally as discrete facets of authenticity, in actuality there is
a strong interrelationship between them.
I aim to depict accurate and vivid dimensions of my co-researchers experiences, focusing
on situations, events, issues, feelings, thoughts, perceptions, processes, sense qualities,
meanings and understandings they have expressed. Where appropriate, I include personal
philosophies that have either come from or been fortified by their direct experiences.
My co-researchers are identified numerically to preserve their anonymity and each of
their comprehensive portraits of experiences of authenticity are included in Appendix-A.
The thematic structure of the findings from the collaborative exploration is outlined
below.
 Authenticity: Trusting the flow of Being
 Presence: Choosing Authenticity
Being Here, Now
Being Wide Open
Being Receptive and Responsive
 Transmission of the Teaching
Embodiment: Being the Teaching
Inter-subjectivity: When Human Beings meet
Letting go of Being Somebody
Bearing Witness Faithfully
 Fear: A narrowing of Being

Authenticity: Trusting the Flow of Being
“Come and live in truth.
Take your place in the flow of grace”
(Faulds, 2003, p. 10).
How is authenticity experienced or known? It begins with awareness. “There’s some
congruence between what’s spoken and what’s felt in the body and how the mind
organises itself” (CR-02). This consistency between what is experientially known and what
is expressed is enabled when the body and mind meet here, now. “Unification of body-
mind is really this place where the mind and the body are in harmony...in the present
moment” (CR-02). This opens up a channel for the flow of authentic experiencing to
stream into awareness. Can I let go of any personal agenda to try and accomplish
something? Can I let go of the security that knowing gives me, feel the vulnerability and
enter into the rapids of change, the “river of rising life” (Kramer, 2007, p. 148)?
In teaching, authenticity is a sense of ‘a surrender’. My hand is moving now and
there’s some sense of ‘getting out of the way’ of being the doer. And there’s a
fullness that’s very alive, that emerges vibrantly in the moment…Trust Emergence
is something that actually feels playful to me...this edge of not knowing is
comfortable but it’s more thrilling. There’s the recognition that this constant
change is reliable. (CR-01)
Being at ease with not knowing is like floating effortlessly in an unknown current. Egoic
roles are released and the experience of self becomes more fluid. There is trusting,
trusting in the process of Being, trusting in “the emergent improvisation” (CR-04).
As soon as I drop into practice, whatever is needed, the way it comes into being,
the way it is accessed really doesn’t depend on the ‘egoic me’. It depends on
organising myself to get there on time and to cover the basics…but as soon as I let
go into teaching...the path takes care of itself. There is impermanence. There is
suffering. There is cessation and there is ‘it’s not me’. It’s letting go of the duality,

letting go of time and space and surfing the waves of change in the present
moment. (CR-02)
Perhaps authenticity is less about striving towards “finding your true self” a goal that can
so easily feel “ungraspable…Maybe it’s actually more like a momentary ‘not-self’ state, so
openings of imminence…being an opening through which life can emerge, moment to
moment” (CR-03). In the opening, a latent potentiality wakes up. There is the possibility of
experiencing a dissolving of that sense of separateness, that ‘Me-You’ subject-object
duality. “The boundaries of the skin are more arbitrary” and a natural perception of
embodied connection and intimacy with all that we encounter arises (CR-04). “It’s some
sense of ‘being in the play of consciousness’, ‘being’ it, dwelling in a larger field of
awareness which includes all people and extends spaciously”(CR-01).
Presence: Choosing Authenticity
There is this sense of responsibility that is a part of being the teacher, to hold both myself
and the group in mindful awareness, to stay in touch, personally and interpersonally.
I have said yes to this responsibility and I will not abandon the group in my role
that I’ve said yes to…[and] I’m working with this body-mind as I’m guiding, as I’m
teaching. It’s almost like a vertical-horizontal presence (CR-01).
It’s an ongoing process of choosing to be mindfully connected to myself, opening to
include others and balancing the contact between these two relational dimensions. It’s
teaching from a full-bodied receptivity and responsiveness.
So, firstly I am going to pause, ah look I’ve got lots of tightness here, let’s see if I
can loosen with that. Right, I’ve got a sense of myself in the Pause, I’m opening to
myself, now let’s expand out that sense of openness to the group as a whole. What
does that feel like? What does the energy feel like in the room right now? Ok. Oh,
I’ll just come back to myself. I’ve got a bit tight here. Let’s open up again. (CR-04)

Being Here, Now
“What is it you plan to do with this one wild and precious life?” (Oliver, 1992, p. 94)
Mindfulness is the practice of choosing to “wake up to life as it is now, as it is
unfolding…to meet the actual authenticity of living, moment to moment” (CR-01).
Choosing is essentially about remembering and “remembering to pause is the primary
condition that enables mindfulness, enables the authenticity” (CR-04).
What I begin to see is how the meditation guideline Pause comes as refuge. It’s
mindfulness…It’s like ok, this is a path, this is a choice, and I can feel the
conditioning that gets met right in that place. With pausing there’s the permission
and the practice of settling, and greater clarity can arise. (CR-01)
“You know, it’s not all just wonderful, I mean at times it’s like feeling into contraction,
judgement, whatever may show up” (CR-01). The realities of ‘waking up to this’, meeting
experience with awareness can sometimes evoke strong feelings of no, not this, “I don’t
want to be with this” (CR-01). The mind can so easily close down, shut off from the
authentic flow of life. Embracing our experience just as it is with the soothing kindness of
compassion “actually makes the idea of authenticity an embodied living experience
because it says it’s ok being as you are, having your experience is ok, we don’t have to
hide anything. It really is ok” (CR-04).
In the Relax…it really feels like there’s a release. Internally, this allowing is
hospitality. It feels like, ‘It is like this’ and, sometimes wanted, sometimes not
wanted, but here it is…I was teaching this group and I had a moment of judgement
in response to one woman and aversion arose. As soon as I woke up to particularly
the sensory experience of it, because there was a little pull back in my body, there
was a turning toward. So it was like experiencing it, seeing it, waking up to it, and I
could turn again to the woman. (CR-01)
With Relax, “there's this willingness to soften, give it space, let it be, which increases my
capacity to meet my own experience and that of others. So it facilitates availability and

from that everything else happens” (CR-03). A whole spectrum of possibilities for
responding creatively and appropriately opens up.
I feel very rooted, as if the world is busy doing its chaotic whirl as ever and
somehow I’ve now landed amidst it, like on a windy day and I’m just here,
watching all this happening. Then it’s ok, well, how am I going to respond now to
these particular conditions? Out of this grounded place I’ve got some space for
choice. (CR-04)
Being Wide Open
Practicing Pause and Relax is an internal holding of ourselves, an opening of our hearts
and minds for the emergence of authentic experience. The openness internally can now
expand outwards, beyond the boundaries of mind and body. It’s opening into a full-
spectrum, all-inclusive awareness and receiving the full flow of life. The awareness
becomes “wide open…There is the experience of being in the flow where there is no need
for a defensive posture. This type of receptivity is at the core of meditation” (CR-02).
This capacity to be wide open means it’s possible to stay connected to myself and to the
group. “The openness is the capacity to feel myself while I'm feeling others so that the
focus of awareness isn't in this skin, but in this ‘group skin’. It's almost like we become an
organism” (CR-03).
It’s also about the capacity to “include whatever arises” (CR-03).
People in the room are a little bit like parts of my body. So I might get an irritating
experience over here which could be a pain in my knee, or it happens to be this
person saying something I think is a bit ‘left field’ and then I experience my
aversion, I don’t like this. Or the knee’s hurting again…It’s possible to be with the
experience as 'ah, it’s part of my experience right now’. (CR-04)

Wide open awareness fosters intimacy with all things. “When I’m teaching I’m resting in
the guideline Open...it’s possible to open to yourself, internally, externally, and to the
space in the room, to the whole group. This very intimate connection is here...” (CR-01).
Moving into relationship and teaching from a full-bodied receptivity and responsiveness is
the place where “the rubber meets the road, where all of it comes right in, all of the
pausing, the openness, the not knowing, the allowing, the creative flow, it’s right here,
here, here” (CR-01).
Listen deeply is like tuning the instrument of self. The body-mind becomes this sensitively-
attuned resonant listening instrument: “feeling, sensing, it's not with ears, it’s a whole
body responsiveness” (CR-03). There is awareness, internally, externally, a wide-open
listening “not just out of my mind but out of the shared mind and the field of relationship
that's here and accessible when I’m grounded” (CR-02). This process of whole body
listening “really allows on-going connection with people and with what is being developed
in the moment of contact that we’re all sharing” (CR-02). It offers the possibility of
“responding accurately by calibrating to the needs of the group based upon the
intelligence that's gathered” (CR-02). It’s a “deep listening for 'this is what is called for
next'…I just trust that process” (CR-01). This is the heart of the curriculum, “the actual
living of the unfolding of the class with the people who are present” (CR-01).
Listening deeply is intimately connected to communicating authentically. The body and
mind are unified and there is a live connection to the flow of Being. The body becomes the
conduit for the expression of emergent embodied wisdom: “I don't know what I'm going
to say next and I'm listening deeply to the sense of my body and really just letting
information flow through me…it doesn't feel like a cognitive thing. It's not like I'm thinking
things through” (CR-03).
With my experience of doing inquiry…it works best if I remember to pause, take
more time. There is a sense of listening from a grounded pool of awareness lower
in the body which may well extend up into the heart area. If I’m speaking from

here, if I let my thinking as it were, almost be occurring in this part of the body –
thinking, sensing, experiencing - it’s slower…It’s not that my head isn’t thinking but
it knows at the same time that the belly, this whole area is open to this
experience.(CR-04)
Listening deeply brings with it the sensitivity of discernment, the ‘feeling into’ and
consciously choosing to speak what would be most fitting for this moment. “So, ‘what's
here right now?’ and there could be two different things that could be said but…listening
deeply…what feels that it wants to be spoken” (CR-03)?
Transmission of the Teaching
I believe that the practice is the teacher, that the collective wisdom of the group is the
teacher and much of what the teacher is transmitting has to do with ‘it’s possible to be
real, and you can be real’. (CR-01)
Embodiment: Being the Teaching
Yes, there is this very real challenge associated with the dichotomy of being a competent
teacher and a vulnerable, fallible, imperfect human being. Being authentic requires the
courage to let go of the need to be seen as ‘The..Competent..Teacher’ and instead, to
choose to be vulnerable and inhabit our humanness in as fully an embodied way as
possible, moment by moment. It’s “braving into that space of ‘it truly is like this right now’
and I’m like this right now” (CR-01).
I was leading yoga, the ‘cat and the cow’ so we’re on hands and knees. I lead for
about an hour on two different days and I said something like, “For the balance
stretch now raising your right hand and arm and raising your right leg”…And sure
enough I did the very same thing the next day…It’s like, ‘oh yeah, that too’. (CR-01)
Making mistakes or revealing imperfection can trigger a painful conditioning of not feeling
good enough, feeling incompetent and exposed. “In our society at large, there is this
unconscious and conscious idealization of competency…people are frightened to get it

wrong, I'm frightened to get it wrong” (CR-03). So, to “teach this way, to be embodied in
the moment, just as it is right now, as I am now, while having the responsibility of the
curriculum, timing to follow, the structure, and the responsibility, it’s all there”(CR-01).
Last week I taught a session and I had to explain my absence from the monthly
group. I was going abroad and because my grandmother had just died, it
completely left my mind that I'd be away. I started to explain but then I started to
cry and said, “I can't talk about this” and there was this struggle for me - should I
be crying with my participants? (CR-03)
It’s the sense of meeting a deep conditioned impression, of not just duality but
hierarchy. In that hierarchy there’s some injunction that the teacher has some
level of separateness or perfection that is in much of schooling. I think most
people agree that it’s a big, big parcel of suffering there and I certainly carry mine.
(CR-01)
In the role of teacher there is the ‘doing’. “I've got a job to do, it's a specific
task…honouring certain boundaries - safety for myself and participants and being really
careful of the role that I have the honour of inhabiting and what that might mean for
people” (CR-03). There is also the ‘being’, a deep honouring that goes beyond all the
practicalities, the time management, conveying course themes and taking care of the
group. Perhaps ‘being the teaching’ means living inside the paradox of competency:
holding the role in mind and having the courage to let go of it at the same time. “I feel the
greatest thing I can offer is to be true and there's something about that willingness to be
vulnerable. It gives other people the permission to be vulnerable” (CR-03). “The most
powerful teaching we have is the way we are. When a teacher is real, trust builds in the
participants” (CR-01).
It’s the permission to get it wrong, to be flawed, to forgive oneself, and, certainly
how I work anyway, to speak aloud about that experience to people: “Actually I
don’t feel very comfortable about how I responded to you there. I’m aware of this
sense of discomfort, the language I’ve used doesn’t sit with me very well now. Can

I have permission to just have another go?” I think that feels so authentic, to have
that permissiveness to oneself and I think people really lean in to the humanity of
that. There is a self-kindness in that self-forgiveness. (CR-04)
“I don’t view embodiment as a competency. It’s a way of being that emerges from the
choice to be awake in one’s life. It’s not about perfection…embodiment and authenticity
are no different. It’s like the same coin” (CR-01).
“I don’t know if there are many people that are not wounded by suffering having to do
with ‘being met and meeting’, being seen through our eyes and then projected as being
seen through another’s eyes” (CR-01).
A ripening of conditions for transformation occurs through releasing traditional
hierarchical teacher-student relationship roles and meeting, as the human beings we are,
in the same existential predicament. “The shared human condition becomes very much a
part of communicating authenticity, that I know, we know, we can know together how it is
to be human. No shame. There is a real practice of acceptance, forgiveness” (CR-02).
It's like unpeeling - I take some of my clothes off and then, maybe they'll be willing
to take some of theirs off. It gives permission. If I can be tender and wounded and
fallible and struggling then it’s okay to be that way. (CR-03)
I didn’t know where I was going to go with it but I just let it emerge in the moment,
steeped in compassion for the reality of aversion. “This is painful for us, yeah, it’s
hard to stay with this. Oh yes, this is our life experience”. It was a beautiful
moment. There was an easing, a settling and love and humour flowered in the
room. This wasn’t serious business anymore. For the rest of the session we were
playing, dancing around the curiosity of being a human being in this predicament.
(CR-04)
It is in the lived relational moments that a small window of opportunity for healing opens
up: participants are being compassionately met, as the imperfect human beings that they

are by another human being, who, in that moment, is accepting of their own imperfect
humanness. “It’s a resonance that then begins to vibrate” (CR-01). Buber’s (1958) ‘I-Thou’
moment forms.
We’ve done the practice and then there’s the piece of inquiry. People are really
listening because they are fairly mindful and they can hear this is a common issue.
They see the person being met so beautifully…it is infectiously healing. The heart
just sings with delight or opens in some way, flowers, because the possibility of
being seen and met so fully is shown to them in that moment. (CR-04)
“There’s access to joy, spontaneity. There’s love…being graced with and abiding in the
‘flow of being’ and ‘being in and with and as’, in relationship with another” (CR-01).
Letting go of Being Somebody
Being authentic also involves the capacity to let go of any kind of notion of how a
mindfulness teacher should look or should be. Not needing to be special, to be any
particular way opens up the freedom to experience our “natural being, our most authentic
self” (Bayda, 2014, p. 61).
It's about letting go of any need for them to see me in a particular way or for me to
see myself in a particular way…I'm relaxed. I've noticed that I'm not trying to be
anybody specifically. I'm not trying to be this wise teacher. (CR-03)
Being true to who we are as people is a part of this too. Rather than hiding aspects of who
we are it’s bringing our ‘whole self’ into the teaching. “I think that's key...not to inhibit or
close down who and what one is…I'm just really friendly, it comes natural to me” (CR-03).
There is an authenticity in my own playful approach to life and to completely hide
that side of myself would be inauthentic…Sometimes people will say something
like “my mind did this and I started doing that” and I said “really, your mind does
THAT? Well that really is odd”. I remember one person saying “you’re not
supposed to say that” and the group was just laughing at the sending up of that.
(CR-04)

Being authentic doesn’t mean being an “endlessly soft, compassionate character” (CR-04).
It’s not all “love and light” (CR-01). It’s also about grit and edginess, fire and struggle.
“Come on, let’s talk about this!” (CR-01).
Meeting participants in this way sometimes feels like the most authentic choice.
If I decide I am going to take a very linguistic, maybe faster-paced response to
somebody then I know I’m doing that. It’s still a choice - I’m going to push this
quite hard and be really quite strong about this because I think this person needs
to feel my resilience and certainty and there’s a strength here. (CR-04)
Teaching with more grit is daring. “It's risking what people think of you” (CR-03). It’s
feeling into the fear, into the vulnerability.
The way I facilitate is much more gritty and grounded now and I'm less afraid of
saying things as they are. There’s something about 'bearing witness
faithfully'…There's this commitment to sharing it regardless. There's something
about courage and the willingness to take the fear and the uncertainty and that
awkwardness with me in knowing that this has to be said. (CR-03)
Fear: A narrowing of Being
Fear gets in the way of being authentic. “There’s intentionality, there’s practice, there’s
aliveness, and there’s fear, a place where the conditioned takes over” (CR-01). It’s the root
of defence. Primal survival mechanisms and social pressures contribute to this
conditioning and “we know the plethora and consistency of messages to not be real, that
you’re not enough if you’re just real. If you really were you’d be sent out of the tribe. So
huge, huge” (CR-01). A big part of this is “the fear of being judged or seen as ‘not up to it’
or inadequate…It's quite a primal fear of being cast out, not belonging, exposing one's
vulnerability and then being judged. It's so painful” (CR-03).

Fear arises, defence mechanisms kick in and the vital connection between body and mind
can so easily be lost. The channel for the flow of authentic experiencing narrows or shuts.
Wherever the mind is separated from the body in some way, that sense of
separation can fuel the mind running off on its own and losing its grounding. The
mind is just not quite able to trust the connection, moment-by-moment, to trust
the flow. (CR-02)
The mind runs amok, caught up in the rhetoric of judgement, self-criticism, and
comparison:
It’s not right, it should be different, I should be like this, I should be different, why
am I not like this, I don’t want it this way, I want it this way, we should look a
certain way, I’m cringing under a person’s judgement, I’m not trusting my own
authenticity, I’m not trusting my own voice, I’m not trusting my own view, I’m not
trusting. (CR-01)
We lose trust in our experiencing through “making an enemy of anything that’s actually
happening here and now” (CR-04). “It’s a narrowing of ‘being’ into a prescription of how it
should be. And it diminishes life” (CR-01).
Summary of chapter 4
In this chapter I have presented the composite depiction of experiences of authenticity
that emerged from the thorough analysis of the data obtained from interviews with my
co-researchers. I presented the data in a structured form to reveal the many facets of the
experience of authenticity and used a more textured language to weave verbatim extracts
from co-researchers individual portraits together.

Chapter 5: Creative Synthesis
I have chosen to offer a poem to convey the journey of wholeheartedly living my research
question these past many months. It is my first venture into poetry and all I had to do was
listen deeply and wait…
Trusting the River of Rising Life
A voice from deep within my Being
A call to an adventure of the soul
Let go and swim in the stream of life
Trust its emergent flow
Go to places where tenderness lives
Where doubt casts its shadow
Nakedly present with nowhere to hide
Oh the beauty of this human kind
Eyes that see and a heart that opens
Ears that listen to the song of Being
Trust me dear One, trust me
Let your authentic truth be known
Behold the face of a kindred Being
A reflection of all that you are
Heed not the messengers of fear
The warmth of compassion is here
Release the ego from its role
The purveyor of separation and decree
Open boundlessly to the miracle of life
Receive the joy of Authenticity

Chapter 6: Discussion and Conclusion
"Dropping our facades, our identities, our stories what remains?
The presence of just Being…
This gives us the experiential taste of our most Authentic Self”
(Bayda, 2014, p. 68).
Introduction
In this final chapter I convey what I feel is important and inspiring about the findings and
reference relevant literature where appropriate. I highlight perceived limitations of this
research project, offer a recommendation for future research and conclude with a
summary of the project which includes implications for mindfulness pedagogy.
Discussion
This heuristic inquiry investigated experiences of authenticity from the perspective of the
person of the mindfulness teacher, as represented by myself, the primary researcher and
a small cohort of co-researchers. The analysis of the data obtained from my co-
researchers elucidated the common ground of our lived experiences and understanding of
authenticity. It also highlighted personal areas of unconscious resistance and expanded
my levels of self-awareness and self-understanding.
My interpretation yielded a set of four main themes: Authenticity, Presence, Transmission
of the Teaching and Fear. Each of these themes is multi-faceted in nature and the
composite picture clearly reveals the complexity of the phenomenon. Given the
limitations of the word count I will focus on the core features of each.
Authenticity: Trusting the Flow of Being
Co-researchers responses to my first question “how is authenticity experienced or known”
revealed three distinct features. The first is structural and relates to congruence where
there is synchronicity between subjective experience that is known with awareness and
what is being communicated. This element is consistent with the person-centred

conceptualization of authenticity in that it points to both the inner and outer dimensions
of the experience (Woods et al., 2008).
As expected, my co-researchers recognised mindfulness as fundamental to authenticity. I
found co-researcher-02’s articulation of the correlation between these constructs
particularly incisive: “It rests on the unification of the body and mind in the present
moment”. Authenticity is clearly contingent on mindful awareness in that it fosters the
ability to disentangle the mind from its preoccupation with disembodied abstract and
conceptual processes and return to the immediacy of the stream of direct sensory ‘lived
body’ experiencing (Akincano, 2006). This finding points to the body as the source of
authenticity and is consistent with Rahilly’s (1993) phenomenological study.
The second feature of authenticity is associated with being-in-process. The ability to let go
into not knowing and trust the dynamic flow of subjective experiencing was elemental in
co-researchers’ experience of authenticity. Implicit in this is the dis-identification with the
‘expert’ role of teacher. Co-researcher-01 described this as “getting out of the way of
being the doer”.
All co-researchers identified transpersonal qualities of authenticity. The experience of self
was perceived as a fluid and constantly changing phenomenon. This finding is in
agreement with the post-modernist thinking of self-as-process and the Buddhist
conception of ‘no self’ (Ryan & Brown, 2003). Co-researchers also described the equally
ineffable quality of non-duality consistent with the ego’s remarkable ability to dissolve
itself (Epstein, 1998).
Presence: Choosing Authenticity
I asked my co-researchers what factors contributed to their capacity for authenticity. Their
responses suggested that the ID guidelines offered a ‘presencing’ framework to support
the actualization of both the inner and outer dimensions of authenticity. Each of the three
sub-themes of presence maps directly onto two ID guidelines.

Being Here Now
The intrapersonal elements of presence were highlighted in co-researchers experiences of
the guidelines Pause and Relax. The choice for authenticity was actualized in the
remembering to pause, to be re-embodied and to attune to the flux of subjective
experience arising from being relationally situated. The guideline Relax is consistent with
Crane’s (2009) second aspect of personal mindfulness practice in that the attitude of
acceptance of ‘what is’ cultivates intra-subjective resonance, however what is distinctive is
that this is fostered interpersonally. Co-researcher-03’s description of her experience of
Relax points to the Siegel et al. (2012) conception of inter-subjective resonance in that it
reduces interpersonal reactivity potentially changing the quality of the relationship: “In an
encounter with another or others one's body is the sensitive pad that resonates and
moves in contact…the guideline Relax…increases my capacity to meet my own experience
and that of others”. Co-researchers reported experiencing compassion, kindness, love and
a sense of genuine connection with self and others arising from the capacity to pause and
relax.
Being Wide Open
Grounding in Pause and Relax facilitates opening into the interpersonal realm, described
as “the spacious extension of meditation into the relational moment” (Kramer et al., 2008,
p. 200). Co-researcher’s descriptions of their experiences of the guideline Open were rich
and multi-layered. The core feature was a wide open receptivity where the ego’s
defensive functioning is reduced or inactive at best. This state of fundamental openness
relates to Rombout’s (as cited in Lietaer, 2011) conception of receptivity, as mentioned in
chapter two. Other features included a sense of spaciousness and receptivity internally,
externally, to oneself and the group and to the holding of both of these relational
dimensions in awareness. Co-researcher-01 described this as a “vertical-horizontal
presence” which corresponds with Robbin’s (1998) ‘dual level of consciousness’.
Authenticity of presence and speech is brought directly into relationship with the
guidelines Listen Deeply and Speak the Truth (Kramer & Surrey, 2013). The capacity for
receptivity and responsiveness is heightened. Co-researchers described listening deeply as

resting in an embodied intrapersonal and interpersonal attunement and resonance. Co-
researcher-02 highlighted an inter-subjective quality in her listening: “It’s listening not just
out of my mind but out of the shared mind and the field of relationship”. The relational
field contains the conscious and unconscious material of all its inhabitants. Sensitive
embodied listening provides access to this shared intelligence and facilitates a refinement
of relational responsiveness (Akincano, 2006). Co-researchers described their experiences
of speaking authentically as arising from a grounded place in the body rather than from
the head, the domain of cognitive processing. Deep intrapersonal attunement offered
access to knowledge embodied in the reservoir of ‘being’.
Transmission of the Teaching
In my analysis I identified four features that relate to the person of the teacher:
Embodiment, Inter-subjectivity, Being oneself and Bearing witness faithfully. I have chosen
to offer a full explication of the first two given their centrality in this research, however
this is at the expense of the latter two.
Embodiment: Being the teaching
Co-researcher-01 was so clear regarding her perception of authenticity: “to me,
embodiment and authenticity are no different...it’s a way of being”. It is inextricably linked
to the capacity to compassionately embrace one’s humanness. Inherent in mindfulness
teaching is the transmission of universal truths associated with being a human being
(Crane et al., 2012a). Embodying the teaching therefore means ‘being it’: inhabiting
honesty and courage and nakedly facing the group of participants as an imperfect,
vulnerable human being, without shame. Co-researcher-01 expressed this as teaching
from transparency. Co-researchers described ways of being that included being
vulnerable, tender, fallible, being ok with getting it wrong and having the courage to
openly admit it. They also talked about being openly kind and forgiving of their
humanness. Being authentic is therefore a radiant embodied expression of compassion:
modelling being real conveys the profound message that being real really is ok. Teaching
in this authentic way can serve as a vehicle to establish new value systems in society
where the emphasis is on our inherent value as human beings rather than on status and

idealized perfection which are “forms of violence and repression on the human psyche”
(Shaw, 2014).
Buber (1970) believed that the human being needs to be confirmed by others to know
itself as human being: “The person becomes conscious of himself as participating in being,
as being-with, and thus as a being” (p. 113). This existential acknowledgment is about
accepting another human being not as an object of one’s experience but as a fellow
human being. Co-researcher-02 expressed this mutual participation in the human
condition as “I know, we know, we can know together how it is to be human”. Co-
researcher-01 recognised teaching from transparency as being so powerful because “it
levels us all in our humanity”.
Authenticity is actualized through embodying the teaching: being present, open and
transparently compassionate of one’s humanness and, choosing to ‘presence’ in
relationship where authentic meeting can happen. Co-researcher-03 emphasised the
powerful impact that meeting participants in this way can have: “wow...there’s the
potential for a deepening and unfolding, the potential for greater aliveness”. Co-
researcher-04 likened the mindfulness teacher to a horse-whisperer in terms of the
powerful healing potential that the ‘I-Thou’ meeting can have on the individual and,
systemically, on the whole group (McCown et al., 2011). According to Stern (2004) these
transformational meetings can occupy fleeting moments in time and, as Polyani (1966)
suggests, the ‘being’ of the person develops from every encounter and brings to the next.
It’s clear to me that the Buber (1956) ‘I-Thou’ meetings may be moments of grace and
occur infrequently, however what is significant is the teacher’s capacity to inhabit their
humanness in relationship. This can have a profound effect on the quality of relational
contact with participants and invites the possibility of the arising of these transformative
moments.

Fear: A narrowing of Being
Co-researchers agreed that fear is the root of defence and that it inhibits authenticity. The
mind loses its anchor in the body, in the present moment, and gets swept away by
reactivity. They recognised the primary influence of fear as manifesting in the inability to
‘trust the flow of Being’. Without trust, the mind returns to its identification with
‘disembodied’ abstract constructions and this includes the static sense of self-as-object.
As cited in chapter 4, Co-researcher-01’s portrait of authenticity includes a vivid account
of the restlessness of the mind and its preoccupation with prescriptive ways to be. The
kinds of fears co-researchers identified relate to forms of intrapersonal and interpersonal
stress that arise from the sense of a separate self and the associated notion of difference
(Kramer, 2007). This includes self-judgement, being judged by others, comparison and
rejection.
Research Limitations
One of the limitations of heuristic research as a reflexive methodology is that the
researcher is the primary judge of validity, the criterion of which is whether the composite
depiction accurately presents the meaning and essence of the experience (Moustakas,
1990). I believe the self-search period led me to the tacit dimension where the themes for
the explication of the experience were found. This fits with Sela-Smith’s (2002) key
criterion for validity. However, I am left with some doubt as to whether I accurately
interpreted the data from my co-researchers and to what degree my interpretation was
influenced by my frame of reference.
Recommendations for future research
As a next step it would be helpful to conduct qualitative research focused on the relational
aspects of teaching, from the perspective of the teacher and participant. The cohort would
be recruited from a small but growing number of teachers who have both an intrapersonal
and interpersonal practice. Teachers could track their subjective experiences of
authenticity for the duration of an MBI programme. To assess the interpersonal dimension
of their teaching course participants could be recruited to report on their experiences and

observations of relational engagement and whether this impacted in any way on personal
outcomes.
Conclusion
This research study aimed to investigate experiences of authenticity as an intrapersonal
and interpersonal phenomenon. The fact that all of the participants, including myself,
have a personal and interpersonal mindfulness practice offered the unique opportunity to
explore whether the embodiment of these practices might support being authentic with
self and others in the relational context of teaching mindfulness. The findings offer
compelling support for this. The intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions of
authenticity were highlighted and the relational process of presence emerged as a factor
that supports the choice for authenticity.
I am convinced that current training practices for mindfulness teachers need to be refined
to bring the teacher-student relational potentiality right into the foreground. Co-
researcher-04 sums up the importance of this eloquently:
I think in teaching we are trying to ignite, to release, to be the midwife to the
emergent authenticity of the other and the conditions that are most likely to bring
that forth are our own open, authentic, emergent meeting of their experience. It
can’t be otherwise.
Further research that acknowledges the fundamentally relational nature of MBI
programmes would help raise awareness of the person of the teacher and the impact that
authenticity in relationship can have on the hearts and minds of all the persons swimming
in the stream of becoming…

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Appendices

APPENDIX A: Co-researcher portraits
CR01 Depiction of Authenticity:
Embodiment: Being the teaching
In teaching, authenticity is a sense of ‘a surrender’. My hand is moving now and there’s
some sense of ‘getting out of the way’ of being the doer. And there’s a fullness that’s very
alive, that emerges vibrantly in the moment. You know, it’s not all just wonderful, I mean
at times it’s like feeling into contraction, judgement, whatever may show up, but it’s
awake to this.
What I begin to see is how the meditation guideline Pause comes as refuge. It’s
mindfulness. It’s choosing to wake up. It’s like ok, this is a path, this is a choice, and I can
feel the conditioning that gets met right in that place. So with the pause, older
conditioning is surfacing from childhood - will I be heard, is there a need, is there some
judging mind around? I could have self judgement emerge, and feel judging about that.
With pausing there’s the permission and the practice of settling, and greater clarity can
arise. That’s where authenticity is. The other piece of it is literally the word ‘authoring’. In
Mary Oliver – “what is it you plan to do with this one wild and precious life?” I mean, here
it is. Was that message ever given to you - to know that there’s choice, moment-to-
moment? Maybe there’s two percent free will but in that, am I going to choose to be
awake or asleep?
There’s really the sense, and it’s increasingly so I’m finding with teaching, that there are
moments of not knowing what’s called for. But there is a security that I’ll rest in that is a
deep listening for 'this is what is called for next' and I just trust that process. And it’s
something to realize that oh, it’s just this...and resting in this non-dual knowing. There’s a
book called ‘The Duet of One’ and it feels that when I open to that space there is trust.
Trust Emergence is something that actually feels playful to me. Out of the allow, relax,
this edge of not knowing is comfortable but it’s more thrilling. There’s the recognition that

this constant change is reliable. It’s some sense of ‘being in the play of consciousness’,
‘being’ it, dwelling in a larger field of awareness which includes all people and extends
spaciously. It is larger than the often contracted, conditioned, and ‘desiring it to be one
way’ me, the ‘I, me, my’.
I feel that one of the great strengths with practice and with teaching is curiosity and
transparency. Being transparent, to me, has a great deal to do with trusting emergence as
well as openness filled with discernment. It also has to do with not assuming a particular
hardened role as ‘The teacher’ but allowing simple wonder, a ‘not knowing’. It’s not so
simple. I mean, it’s simple but it’s some deep knowing that has been forgotten and is
being remembered.
Transparency ties very deeply into authenticity with unbinding ideas of perfection or some
idea of ‘It should look this way, I should look this way’ and braving into that space of ‘it
truly is like this right now’, and ‘I’m like this right now’. I was leading yoga, the ‘cat and
the cow’ so we’re on hands and knees. I lead for about an hour on two different days and
I said something like, “For the balance stretch now raising your right hand and arm and
raising your right leg”. I made a joke but there was a twinge – I felt like, ‘why wasn’t I
awake there?’. And sure enough I did the very same thing the next day. But it was also
just ‘grist for the mill’. It’s like, “oh yeah, that too”. Teaching is engagement in the
practice and that levels us all in our humanity. That’s where the transparency is so vibrant
and the teaching from transparency is so powerful. What I find is that there’s access to
joy, spontaneity. There’s love and the love is less personal. It’s ‘dwelling in’ as with myself
and with others.
Allowing - this is Relax. I’m very awake in the Relax to the way that my face might have
tension. That in itself physically feels like the same place where the mud settles. It really
feels like there’s a release. Internally, this allowing is hospitality. Yeah, it feels like, ‘It is
like this’ and sometimes wanted, sometimes not wanted, but here it is. I’m so
appreciative of allow, relax, that it moves to love, but it can’t be a spiritual bypass. That
love can be touched or it is touched when I drop into just being with this.

There is also responsibility. So this is another level of the authenticity as I’m in a role of
guiding. I have said yes to this responsibility and I will not abandon the group in my role
that I’ve said yes to. So, I’m working with this bodymind as I’m guiding, as I’m teaching.
It’s almost like a vertical-horizontal presence.
[I was really struck by what you were saying about inhabiting the role of teacher and the
responsibility that comes with that, but then there’s also the reality of being a human
being and working with both of these dimensions]. That’s precisely it and it’s the sense of
meeting a deep conditioned impression, of not just duality but hierarchy. In that
hierarchy there’s some injunction that the teacher has some level of separateness or
perfection that is in much of schooling. I think most people agree that it’s a big, big parcel
of suffering there and I certainly carry mine. So to teach this way, to be embodied in the
moment, just as it is right now, as I am now, while having the responsibility of the
curriculum, timing to follow, the structure, and the responsibility, it’s all there. But it
works at unbinding that separation and that sense of suffering for both teacher and
participants.
Honesty is another word that comes in to authenticity for me. I think it’s just simply being
honest about places of disconnect. I was teaching this group and I had a moment of
judgement in response to one woman and aversion arose. As soon as I woke up to
particularly the sensory experience of it, because there was a little pull back in my body,
there was a turning toward. So it was like experiencing it, seeing it, waking up to it, and I
could turn again to the woman. But at first I was like: “I don’t want to be with this.”
When I’m teaching I’m resting in the guideline Open. Open can be a refuge and it’s in the
openness of, yes, different life stories but the same humanity, same impermanence. For
some teachers, in the space of being seen by the group, conditioning can arise about
feeling unsafe and this can lead to freezing. It might mean you can’t even quite look at
people’s eyes. With Open, it’s possible to open to yourself, internally, externally, and to
the space in the room, to the whole group. This very intimate connection is here but it is

held more widely. So it begins to be like the cup of salt that’s being put into the lake. It’s
that ‘more openness’.
ID practice is a source of great healing, a conviction that I know personally. I don’t know if
there are many people that are not wounded by suffering having to do with ‘being met
and meeting’, being seen through our eyes and then projected as being seen through
another’s eyes. I think it’s actually so primal. And then it’s what’s true now. It’s not some
assignment of perfection, but being graced with and abiding in the ‘flow of being’ and
‘being in and with and as’, in relationship with another.
‘Consciousness, awareness dwells within you as you see awareness in one another and the
world is as you see it’. These practice guidelines I’ve lived all these years and this sense of
‘oh, it’s right here’, that awareness can be known in this place and when it’s brought into
intentionality, in mutuality, it blossoms. Otherwise, it’s holding that view, personally, and
moving through the world that way. My teaching has moved from resting in that to
having the guidance to actualize it in the moment. The felt sense of connectivity and
spaciousness in my personal practice was definitely known but the actualization is bringing
it to this place of meeting another. It feels like it has feet, it’s less in cognition and more in
pulsation, in the body, in the moment, it’s like vibrant right here, and it can be dropped
right into now. A door for me has opened and especially when we are in ID practice and
we are choosing to remember together to ‘dwell as an in’. When it’s not two people
choosing to do this, it’s here and it’s my living it. I trust that somehow, from that, is the
encouragement for others. It’s the tuning fork, it’s a resonance that then begins to vibrate.
Listen Deeply and Speak the Truth - I feel that’s where ‘The rubber meets the road’, where
all of it comes right in, all of the pausing, the openness, the not-knowing, the allowing, the
creative flow, it’s right here, here, here. From this internal and external space of
awakening there is the ‘being with’ this part of the equation of experience and also, the
fact that we are in a mystery.
I’ve seen many people who are like ‘love and light’, and it’s like, where’s the grit, the grit

of authenticity? Where’s the fire and the struggle? Come on, let’s talk about this! Let’s
all hold it.
There’s intentionality, there’s practice, there’s aliveness, and there’s fear, a place where
the conditioned takes over and usually it has flavours of comparing mind, self-criticism.
When I use the word fear, it’s the judgement of ‘it’s not right, it should be different, I
should be like this, I should be different, why am I not like this, I don’t want it this way, I
want it this way, we should look a certain way, I’m cringing under a person’s judgement,
I’m not trusting my own authenticity, I’m not trusting my own voice, I’m not trusting my
own view, I’m not trusting’. There’s a line from Kabir where he says “The ego is like a
black ant on a black rock on a moonless night”. There is a call for deep respect that when I
least expect it, that ant appears. And, when I can see it, I’m open to the possibility of
another way of seeing it. But if it’s a quick abandonment to please, to get safe in some
way, it’s a narrowing of ‘being’ into a prescription of how it should be. And it diminishes
life.
I don’t view embodiment as a competency, it’s a way of ‘being’. It emerges from the
choice to be awake in one’s life. It’s not about perfection. To me embodiment and
authenticity are no different. It’s like the same coin. So, we can have a curriculum, a
helpful guide, but then who are we with? Who are we with here and who are we within
our class? It’s very good to move through a form and a structure that I truly feel is brilliant
but it’s a kind of bizarre slavery to the written word, to not have it ‘filled with life’. That’s
the curriculum, the actual living of the unfolding of the class with the people who are
present. And the moment is the curriculum. I think that’s what’s transformational. I
believe that the practice is the teacher, that the collective wisdom of the group is the
teacher and much of what the teacher is transmitting has to do with ‘it’s possible to be
real, and you can be real’. And again, it’s not about perfection, it’s choosing. We know the
plethora and consistency of messages to not be real, that you’re not enough if you’re just
real. If you really were, you’d be sent out of the tribe. So huge, huge. I feel that it’s the
embodiment of compassion. It’s not a form of teaching compassion, it’s radiant.

The practice of mindfulness is a choice to wake up to life as it is now, as it is unfolding and
to meet what is called for with wisdom and compassion. This practice invites us to meet
the actual authenticity of living moment to moment. We cannot predict what will happen,
or how we may respond, but we can know that we have chosen to be present, awake and
open to what emerges. We can know that we embrace certain virtues of clarity, kindness
and generosity as we turn toward what is. This is a choice to be authentic as we engage
with life.
And, with teaching MBSR, we are being in practice while inviting others to engage deeply,
and directly with their own emerging lives, we invite ourselves and others to ‘look again’
at perceptions of how we define or limit ourselves and our challenges, joys and
relationships. The most powerful teaching we have is the way we are. When a teacher is
real, trust builds in the participants. In this way, no one is left out of the potential to
engage in a real way with our lives, to inhabit honesty and courage and to show up, just
one moment at a time.

Surfing the waves of change in the present moment
The first thing that comes to mind with the word authenticity is 'speaking the truth'. So
there’s some congruence between what’s spoken and what’s felt in the body and how the
mind organises itself. My perception of authenticity both internally and externally rests
upon this unification of the body and mind in the present moment. (Pause)………so just as
I paused right then, I was checking in with the body and listening for anything that wasn’t
quite synced up. So I’m pausing again now just to notice that….I feel my feet on the floor
and I’m aware of thinking and speaking and listening to this larger framework of which I'm
a part. It’s listening, not just out of my mind but out of the shared mind and the field of
relationship that's here and accessible when I’m grounded. Unification of body-mind is
really this place where the mind and the body are in harmony and there is a ‘full
spectrum’ awareness, internal and external.
When I’m teaching I notice an attuning to the group and a pausing to listen to what’s
emerging for them. It’s as important to listen to what’s not there as it is to listen to what is
there. It's not like I have any kind of mental checklist, it doesn’t take that form. It’s more
the way that the mind organises itself. It can take in a vast amount of information at one
time without having to go into the details and then respond accurately by calibrating to
the needs of the group based upon the intelligence that's gathered. The mind has a
quality of flexibility and adaptability to it and a lack of attachment to agenda. I’ll have the
content and an idea of the material I want to cover and how I might do that. As I receive
what’s emerging in the group, my knowledge base comes into play as a reference point.
There is this listening at a level that really allows on-going connection with people and
with what is being developed in the moment of contact that we’re all sharing.
I experience authenticity as being wide open. There is the experience of being 'in the flow'
where there is no need for a defensive posture. This type of receptivity is at the core of
meditation. As our practice becomes more refined, the experience of this gap of
receptivity actually facilitates knowing impermanence, seeing mental objects arise and
vanish in the moment. Now, if the fire alarm went off while I was teaching, how

wonderful that my ‘self’ would organise itself in a different way. My focus would narrow
and move toward immediate action. It’s so important to stay really grounded in the body
so that we see the path and don’t make it into something other than what it is. Our sense
of reality is constantly being constructed, can we remain aware of this constructing
process? Can we keep noticing the next best step?
My perception of what’s being offered in the teaching role is presence and the skilful
means that are being cultivated in presence - mindfulness, concentration, loving kindness
- actually help people in terms of their mental flexibility and capacity to let go of suffering
and drop out of habit.
I haven't quite thought about this in this way but I’m noticing the presence of the three
characteristics even as I speak - impermanence, 'not self', and listening to where there is
suffering and where there is cessation in suffering as well. Attuning to these is the
practicing and fulfilling of the four foundations of mindfulness. In MBSR we’re teaching
people to pay attention in a ‘full spectrum’ way that encourages trust in a process so they
can begin to see selfing as a process. And wow, when people catch on that selfing is a
process instead of a fixed entity then it changes everything. That's often the cessation of a
long suffering.
I think authenticity is communicated primarily through presence. There’s a willingness to
share my own subjective truth that really helps to stabilise that sense of authenticity. The
shared human condition becomes very much a part of communicating authenticity - that I
know, we know, we can know together how it is to be human. No shame. There is a real
practice of acceptance, forgiveness even, allowing the knowing of whatever is here.
We’re all like baby ducks. We’re just looking for another human being who’s awake. If we
can see another human being who is awake, we think, “Oh, I can be awake. This is what it
looks like to be awake.” To whatever extent we can be fully present and understand
what’s happening so the mind is free from clinging and has that flexibility, adaptability,
stability and energy, is the extent to which we can inspire that in others. Oh, how beautiful
to be part of the alleviation of suffering and to know it.

Sometimes when I’m leading a guided meditation, say the body scan, and it’s not the first
time but maybe a little bit down the road in the course I actually say “you might notice
this, you might notice that” and it’s what I’m noticing in the body. So I’m grounded and
noticing in my own body, tracking experience and then inviting others to notice in their
experience.
The guideline Pause is simply an invitation to be aware of what is already here, to allow
the knowing of tension and habit, and to begin to attune to change. This is the
embodiment of the Sattipathana refrain: to pay attention internally, externally, both
internally and externally, to arising and vanishing so that mindfulness is established as
necessary for bare knowledge and continuous mindfulness. Whatever mindfulness reveals
is met with kind receptivity and acceptance. This kind, allowing awareness is the essence
of the second guideline, Relax. Without that kindness and acceptance, we don't actually
get to investigate our experience because we're bouncing off of our experience and still
clinging to whatever obscures the mind. As we Open (the third guideline) internally,
externally and beyond, spaciousness becomes a lived reality and, the mind settles enough
to be able to actually conduct the investigation. In that investigation, mental and physical
phenomenon can be known as discreet, fluid events. This is the process of Trusting
Emergence and Deep Listening, the last guidelines.
The ID guidelines support the cultivation of the enlightenment factors: establishing
mindfulness is the Pause and in the Relax the body-mind relaxes and some measure of
tranquillity and concentration is accessed which naturally gives rise to joy. This mutual
investigation gives rise to energy. As we Speak the Truth and Listen Deeply in relational
engagement energy is released. Then the equanimity factor really goes up because
there’s more natural interest in the flow of insight than in the need to sustain the clinging.
The embodied process of mutually listening and mindfully sharing our subjective truth
grounds the relational moment in a radiant field of compassion. As shame drops away,
wisdom dawns and relationship is transformed. No longer lost in habit and frozen
perceptions, the heart-mind becomes as wide as the world. We become awake human
beings.

When there is the willingness to establish mindfulness in a shared way we don’t need to
speak at all. I think speaking is just an act of compassion.
Fear hinders authenticity. It is the root of defence. Wherever the mind is separated from
the body in some way, that sense of separation can fuel the mind running off on its own
and losing its grounding. The mind is just not quite able to trust the connection, moment-
by-moment, to trust the flow, and it manifests in all kinds of ways, depending on the
person and what their past conditioning has been. That's why it’s so important that the
whole person is invited into mindfulness training, all parts, the known and the unknown,
the conscious and the unconscious. Our capacity for awareness expands as soon as there
is more than one of us paying attention. Alone on our cushion we do not have the added
benefit of relational engagement. Whether alone on our cushion or meditating together
we can develop some confidence in navigating those places of separation. This greatly
develops our capacity for kindness, compassion, for openness, for genuine connection
with self and with other people. The beauty of this path is that the things that used to
hinder and obscure the mind over time, with practice, just drop away. They don’t
continue to arise.
Sometimes I have pain associated with a health issue. If I’m in a period of flare when the
pain is higher, my capacity to concentrate usually takes a bit of a dive. More of my mental
space is taken up with sensation. I have ideas around organising myself and what
organisation looks like and I’ve discovered that once I give those ideas up and I just go do
what I’m going to do, particularly if I’m teaching, it’s fine. As soon as I drop into practice,
whatever is needed, the way it comes into being, the way it is accessed really doesn’t
depend on the egoic ‘me’. It depends on organising myself to get there on time and to
cover the basics. (Long pause)……so I’m just realising what’s happening. There is
tightening in the body wherever there is residual aversion and taking up any defence. It
restricts flow but as soon as I let go into teaching, or even into the pain, then the path
takes care of itself. There is impermanence. There is suffering. There is cessation and
there is ‘it’s not me’. It’s letting go of the duality, letting go of time and space and surfing

the waves of change in the present moment. There’s just the fullness and emptiness of
phenomena.
I think authenticity really contributes to establishing mindfulness. A lot of the teachings of
mindfulness are about virtue. Sila - ethical behaviour is the beginning place and in many
ways, it’s another way to cross map authenticity. It’s a deep practice of the precepts
where one is grounded in ethical behaviour: doing no harm, refraining from harsh speech,
refraining from sexual misconduct, refraining from intoxicants, telling the truth, not taking
what’s not given freely. So ethical practice underpins the capacity to be authentic, to be
undefended. There is nothing to defend because there is nothing to hide.

To be in contact with another human being is very impactful for my nervous system and
the way that I'm able to keep showing up is to include whatever arises. To just keep
receiving what's happening, in my experience, allows me to stay open and present and
imminent - I'm not trying to control things by planning and there's enough capacity here
that I'm not closing down, numbing or switching off - so I can stay at the edge of what's
emergent, the unknown and be with that shakiness and it’s okay. Maybe that's what
authenticity is...as a natural experience maybe it's something about 'being an opening
through which life can emerge, moment to moment'.
I know I am communicating authentically when I don't know what I'm going to say next
and I'm listening deeply to the sense of my body and really just letting information flow
through me. It doesn't feel like a cognitive thing. It's not like I'm thinking things through
although there might be some discerning whether I should say that or not. When that
flow starts to happen, there's some sort of unconstructed flow…information's being given
to me, there's some sense of authenticity in that because I know I'm not doing it. And
also, I'm relaxed. I've noticed that I'm not trying to be anybody specifically. I'm not trying
to be this wise teacher. I've got a job to do, it's a specific task. But while honouring
certain boundaries - safety for myself and participants and being really careful of the role
that I have the honour of inhabiting and what that might mean for people - I'm just really
friendly, it comes natural to me.
If I can get out of the way or be there just enough, then I can be a transmitter and
receiver.
I think that the word authenticity is used in a way that rarefies it and puts pressure on
people. There's this emphasis on finding your ‘true self’ that then can become this
‘ungraspable’ or something that needs to be found. Maybe it's actually more like a
momentary ‘not-self’ state, so openings of imminence - what's felt and what's known is
being communicated and that might be within the context of my personality being

worried about me sharing it. All of that can be in the mix, but there's this commitment to
sharing it regardless. There's something about courage and the willingness to take the
fear and the uncertainty and that awkwardness with me in knowing that this has to be
said or this difficulty has to be met.
The way I facilitate is much more gritty and grounded now and I'm less afraid of saying
things as they are. There’s something about 'bearing witness, faithfully'. I think in
mindfulness, in Buddhism, in our society at large, there is this unconscious and conscious
idealisation of competency and ‘okayness’ and happiness and it has been a struggle for me
to find out how does my experience, the challenges that I faced, the struggles that I've
encountered belong in these contexts? I feel like something in me wants to bear witness
to that. Last week I taught a session and I had to explain my absence from the monthly
group. I was going abroad and because my grandmother had just died, it completely left
my mind that I'd be away. I started to explain but then I started to cry and said, “I can't
talk about this” and there was this struggle for me - should I be crying with my
participants? They were so sweet to me and two of them wrote to me afterwards and
said that it was a brilliant session. I feel the greatest thing I can offer is to be true and
there's something about that willingness to be vulnerable. It gives other people the
permission to be vulnerable.
When I did my first ID retreat I experienced metta for the first time, experientially, without
saying any phrases...and it felt like a real coming home, like I'd really hit an oil well in my
own being that I didn't know was there. This capacity for vulnerability and enough
courage to dare was really energising and beneficial and I felt its impact on others and
that helped me to even more ‘be’ it.
The fear of being judged or seen as ‘not up to it’ or inadequate would get in the way of
being authentic. It's quite a primal fear of being cast out, not belonging, exposing one's
vulnerability and then being judged. It's so painful. I find myself in the often
uncomfortable position of being the ‘canary in the coal mine’, saying things that no one
else will say but that are true and eventually everyone comes around to it. It’s like, okay,
I'm going to say how it is for me and in this context I don't feel that safe because it seems

to me that all of you are okay - you're not experiencing what I'm experiencing because
you're not talking about it. I remember during the foundation year....it was a key moment
for me. We were sitting in the big group and people were sharing. I said, “I don't know
about anybody else, but I've been having a really difficult time” and I spoke about it. It
seemed to open the door because then other people started to share quite deep, difficult
experiences that they were having. I've experienced it in meditative groups, in sanghas, in
teaching communities, it’s like people are frightened to get it wrong, I'm frightened to get
it wrong. But I'm more frightened of spiritually bypassing the truth than I am of getting it
wrong. So, here is this being able to bear witness again.
It's risking what people think of you. It's about letting go of any need for them to see me
in a particular way or for me to see myself in a particular way. I think that's key, letting go
of what people think and obviously allowing what other people think to support one in
receiving feedback and moderating behaviours, but not to inhibit or close down who and
what one is.
I read this quote this morning - “Enlightenment is the absence of anxiety about
imperfection”. I think that’s something of our capacity to be present and when I say
present I mean authentic. For the group to ‘taste’ me nothing can be left out because if
I’m trying to hide from them or trying to be someone else, the flavour is not going to really
be there. And that brings me back to that stone soup story that McCown & Reibel tell.
He has to convince people that this soup is worth contributing to. It’s like that, isn’t it.
They’ll taste it and go, “Ah, this is good” because it’s whole, it’s whole. But if it has
flavours missing then people aren’t going to bring their best flavours to the soup.
Maybe in some ways our work is about authenticity, about finding out who we really are.
That's holy, supporting people in awakening to their own wisdom and intelligence and in
doing that awakening to my own wisdom and intelligence. It's like unpeeling - I take some
of my clothes off and then, maybe they'll be willing to take some of theirs off. It gives
permission. If I can be tender and wounded and fallible and struggling then it’s okay to be
that way.

In meeting participants there’s this longing to connect intimately. If I’m willing to do that
with myself, to bear witness to the troubles and trials and tribulations and fears and
terrors of my own life, not that I have to tell them that, it’s not about disclosure, it’s about
resonance. It’s in how I respond to their sharing, the tone of my voice, the intonation,
where that’s coming from in me. It’s about the depths. It’s about the potential of what
we’re offering. I think the capacity to which a teacher is able to inhabit and ‘presence’ in
the room is the capacity that the students can aspire to or meet. And if the teacher
doesn’t, then the students will also stay at roughly around that same level more or less.
There might be a student in the class who’s able to be more vulnerable than the teacher
but if they’re not met then there’s only going to be so far they can go. If they're met then,
wow! Then there’s the potential for a deepening and unfolding, the potential for greater
aliveness, about not numbing, not deadening. Or, if numbing and deadening are present,
that they know they can be included as part of life. But if it’s unconscious, if I come in the
room wearing a rain mac how could other people feel safe to really unlayer? I’ve just got
the image of skin touching clothing or touching plastic - you're going to feel something,
but you're not going to feel skin, heat.
Part of what we’re trying to facilitate is people owning themselves, standing by
themselves, really coming into contact with what’s true and developing skills and
strategies for being able to meet that.
I see the ID guidelines a little bit like an onion, that they look separate but actually they
make a whole. They're facets of presence, of mindfulness. The pause is a given now. I'm
constantly pausing, and really that's the fundamental premise of mindfulness is to be
present, right. Allowing, receiving (relax) particularly works for me because there's
something about the viscerality of it. In an encounter with another or others, one's body is
the sensitive pad that resonates and moves in contact. And with this guideline relax,
there's this willingness to soften, give it space, let it be which increases my capacity to
meet my own experience and that of others. So, it facilitates availability and from that
everything else happens. The openness is the capacity to feel myself while I'm feeling
others so that the focus of awareness isn't in this skin, but in this ‘group skin’. It's almost
like we become an organism. The willingness to include whatever comes, I think that's

open and trust emergence. The capacity just keeps growing if we can relax and not try
and shut anything out that's coming up. Listen deeply is for me feeling, sensing, it's not
with ears, it’s a whole body responsiveness. Speak the truth…feels like ’stay true’. So,
‘what's here right now?’ and there could be two different things that could be said
but…listening deeply…what feels that it wants to be spoken?

Dancing around the curiosity of being a human being in this predicament
Maybe authenticity is embodied resonance. As a metaphor it might be as if the energetic
experience of the body is somehow resonating with the energy of the world and with the
other people, the other person. If we are just energy, we are not really separate but that
can be a mental knowing rather than an embodied knowing. When it is an embodied thing
it's like the boundaries of the skin are more arbitrary and it has a kind of spaciousness.
I see attention itself as having a natural cycle to it, that sense of moving between the fine
focus on a part of the body out to the wider breathing body and beyond and then that
sense of movement, almost as though the attention is breathing, so not necessarily
holding it in one place. The authenticity then emerges with the allowing of that so the
practice isn’t ‘I should be taking it here now’. There is aliveness, a sort of pulsing.
Anchoring in sensations is so powerful and the relational, for me, is coming back to the
sensations, opening up again to this dialogue, maybe beyond into the sense of the space
we’re in and the light and the wind and back into the sensations, back out again. For me it
has that rhythmic piece that holds it in some way.
It feels like the speaking of the practice is very much at one with 'being in' the practice. I
am simply doing the practice and letting some words come to describe the emerging
process. It’s in contrast to my experience of doing inquiry where it’s so much harder work
for me not to be operating from a mental cognitive bias. The mind is so quick, language is
so quick and I’ve got so many ideas about what I could say at that moment to a person.
Sometimes that’s useful for people but it doesn’t feel as authentic. It works best if I
remember to pause, take more time. So it’s the modelling of the reflective slowing down,
pausing, pacing. There is a sense of listening from a grounded pool of awareness lower in
the body which may well extend up into the heart area. If I’m speaking from here, if I let
my thinking as it were, almost be occurring in this part of the body – thinking, sensing,
experiencing - it’s slower. I feel as we speak now and I allow myself to really be with that
sense of presence I can feel there is a strong bit of me that wants to come up here into my
head and start doing something up here with it and then I can breathe down and I can

almost imagine my hands, as in Tai Chi, breathe out and bring the body down like this,
hold it back down here. It’s not that my head isn’t thinking but it knows at the same time
that the belly, this whole area is open to this experience.
Authenticity is a very pleasing and often quite a delightful experience for me. I feel very
rooted, as if the world is busy doing its chaotic whirl as ever and somehow I’ve now
landed amidst it, like on a windy day and I’m just here, watching all this happening. Then
it’s ok, well, how am I going to respond now to these particular conditions? Out of this
grounded place I’ve got some space for choice.
Authenticity has a resiliency to what comes back. During a class if I say something and it
lands in a way that wasn’t what I anticipated then that’s ok. It’s just another piece of
feedback into the system. If someone gets a bit angry or annoyed or seems really
dismissive it's 'ah, ok that’s interesting'. I notice I'm less likely to think I did it wrong. I just
made a choice, an energetic wave went out from me in response to theirs and then they
came back from there. Then I can once again see whether I can come from there, hold
that in a useful way. So it’s a very resourceful place when I am in it.
The actual circle of the group and indeed the room itself is a sacred space. When it feels
most authentic the people in the room are a little bit like parts of my body. So I might get
an irritating experience over here which could be a pain in my knee, or it happens to be
this person saying something I think is a bit ‘left field’ and then I experience my aversion, I
don’t like this. Or the knee’s hurting again. When I’m feeling authentic I can see that and
smile at the inevitability of me wanting to have moved on beyond that, whatever my
personality is, whatever fascinating dance that the mind does. It’s possible to be with the
experience as “ah, it’s part of my experience right now”.
I think of a still point in a big circle. I can be the still point in my circle in my body and it can
be the still point in the circle of the group. The still point then becomes a focus of
awareness on a field of awareness and then you do both and go back and forth. So then
when it works it’s so beautiful.

In teaching there are these amazing moments where we’ve done the practice and then
there’s the piece of inquiry. People are really listening because they are fairly mindful and
they can hear this is a common issue. They see the person being met so beautifully and I
think it is infectiously healing. The heart just sings with delight or opens in some way,
flowers, because the possibility of being seen and met so fully is shown to them in that
moment. People fear that they’re never really going to be met as much as that and
somehow, or even if they’re not quite met as they want to, there is such an acceptance
that life has this fuzzy quality to it, it’s never quite perfect. There is this beautiful
recognition of that and a humour, softness, acceptance and an opening that goes with
that “ah yeah but that is like that”. It makes me think of the stories of horse whispering
where people watch Brannaman, the guy who invented it working with one person and
the horse. People in the audience who have been abused or have had difficult emotional
experiences have breakthroughs and insights just through seeing such sensitive
compassionate relational work, and seeing the horse overcoming its own fear and just
meeting. There is a beautiful 'coming together'.
Freud talks about a ‘freely floating attention’. It’s like both of us, his consciousness and
mine are in this sea together and so there is an inter-penetration between, with a part of
my mind being able to watch that and offer something back. There is this beautiful flow of
connection and ease but with some insights, some startling seeing things clearly – a matrix
moment as people sometimes call it.
One of the things I’m learning is the more compassionate I am the more powerful people’s
experiences are. I think there is a particular potency to it because I am an intellectual man
and people experience me as resiliently compassionate because I say "we’ve got to pause
here and really be with what this feels like in your heart before we start unpacking what
this means at an intellectual level. Really, what’s it like for you now"? People are so
hungry for that steady listening to the bit that tightens, that’s in pain. They soften so
much and suddenly life can hold more. Suddenly it’s “ah it’s ok, I don’t need to be so
defended against this”. It actually makes the idea of authenticity an embodied living
experience because it says it’s ok being as you are, having your experience is ok, we don’t
have to hide anything. It really is ok.

The ID guidelines pause, relax and open are really helpful because they give one
something to do. So, firstly I am going to pause, ah look I’ve got lots of tightness here, let’s
see if I can loosen with that. Right, I’ve got a sense of myself in the pause, I’m opening to
myself, now let’s expand out that sense of openness to the group as a whole. What does
that feel like? What does the energy feel like in the room right now? Ok. Oh, I’ll just come
back to myself. I’ve got a bit tight here. Let’s open up again. It’s that sort of preparation,
grounding, presencing that I think is very usefully achieved through those. Remembering
to pause is the primary condition that enables mindfulness, enables the authenticity.
Authenticity has all sorts of choices. If I decide I am going to take a very linguistic, maybe
faster-paced response to somebody then I know I’m doing that. It’s still a choice - I’m
going to push this quite hard and be really quite strong about this because I think this
person needs to feel my resilience and certainty and there’s a strength here. So there is a
choiceful meeting. Being a teacher isn’t some kind of notion of an endlessly soft
embracing compassionate character. People think holding means holding them and
hugging them. Holding has this boundary and it has all sorts of edges in it.
Another condition that supports authenticity is the permission to get it wrong, to be
flawed, to forgive oneself, and, certainly how I work anyway, to speak aloud about that
experience to people: ‘Actually I don’t feel very comfortable about how I responded to
you there. I’m aware of this sense of discomfort, the language I’ve used doesn’t sit with
me very well now. Can I have permission to just have another go’? I think that feels so
authentic, to have that permissiveness to oneself and I think people really lean in to the
humanity of that. There is a self-kindness in that self-forgiveness. It’s helpful because you
get that idealization of the teacher and it’s tempting to ‘get off’ on that. At the end of a
retreat I attended recently the teacher said “I’m a flawed human being. Please forgive me
if I’ve done or said anything that has jarred you, maybe hurt you or may have been
difficult”. She said it with such genuineness it brought tears to my eyes. She is saying “I’m
just doing my best but I think I may well have made mistakes all over the place”.

Maybe authenticity is courage to trust the emergent improvisation. It was in session 6 or 7
and just such an ordinary thing. We had done a practice and the window was making
some noise in the wind and then this woman said ‘I really wanted to get up and shut that
window’. The exploration was an inquiry into the fact that life throws up things -
supposing you can’t just shut the window and what’s it like just to be with the experience
of aversion to that experience. Somebody else had talked about the lights being too bright
so I said it’s a bit like this. She really got it and it was infectious in the group, like a
moment of insight going on. It’s not like I hadn’t said this many times before but it was
something about me. I was slower and we really took some time on it. It began with that
sense of being so steady within myself without a story about how I answer this kind of
inquiry. I didn’t know where I was going to go with it but I just let it emerge in the
moment, steeped in compassion for the reality of aversion. It was like ‘this is painful for
us, yeah, it’s hard to stay with this, oh yes, this is our life experience’. It was a beautiful
moment. There was an easing, a settling and love and humour flowered in the room. This
wasn’t serious business anymore. For the rest of the session we were playing, dancing
around the curiosity of being a human being in this predicament.
There is an authenticity in my own playful approach to life and to completely hide that
side of myself would be inauthentic. When the group’s a little bit more mature I bring that
playfulness in. Sometimes people will say something like ‘my mind did this and I started
doing that’ and I said ‘really, your mind does THAT? Well that really is odd'. I remember
one person saying ‘you’re not supposed to say that’ and the group was just laughing at the
sending up of that. Humour that is quite playful is a great medicine. It’s a very trusting
emergence thing because the very nature of it is spontaneous. It’s like ‘here it comes’, the
impulse is quite strong and it’s almost like that bit of me is watching - ooh look, this is
really wanting to come out like this and there is a testing of the moment as it emerges. As
I breathe and it starts to calm I think am I going to go with this or not? I can trust
emergence if it feels like a resonant moment, the body feels open and it doesn’t feel like
it’s tight, like it’s trying to eject some edgy bit of myself. There is a generosity to it, a
playful 'we’re all in this together' and 'it’s actually really like this' kind of thing. It’s bigger
than this very cosseted careful thing that I do with compassion, sometimes really slowly
which is appropriate at times. Then sometimes there's a bit that’s got this edgy vitality to

it and someone going “oh yeah, my God, I really am like that, how utterly ludicrous, I’ve
believed all my life that thoughts are facts, I can’t believe that I’m 58 and I’m now learning
that thoughts are not facts, bloody hell!” and these people are going ‘my gaawwd’. These
are lovely insights that people can have in moments of humour. But it’s risky sometimes
because if a person does get shamed it’s clearly very detrimental. I’m quite careful with it.
There are many things that could stop me trusting this emergent moment - stories about
how I should be doing it or worries about something coming up later or my wishing
something was different from how it is, making an enemy of anything that’s actually
happening here and now. The key is just meeting this moment wholeheartedly. In
teaching, time pressure is one that I find quite challenging. There is the sense of the
agenda, and there is the time line, people asking more questions than you want and you
want to spend time on the inquiry. I might start to speak a bit quicker or I might get
caught between a bit of me that wants to do justice to the work versus the sense of my
wanting to move through things.
I think in teaching we are trying to ignite, to release, to be the midwife to the emergent
authenticity of the other and the conditions that are most likely to bring that forth are our
own open, authentic, emergent meeting of their experience. It can’t be otherwise.

Appendix B: Co-researcher correspondence
Letter to co-researchers
Date: June, 2014
Dear XXX
Thank you for your interest in my dissertation research: A heuristic exploration of
experiences of authenticity. I value the unique contribution that you can make to my
study and am excited about the possibility of your participation in it. The purpose of this
letter is to reiterate some of the elements we have already communicated about and to
secure your signature on the consent form which you will find attached.
What will be expected of me?
You will be asked to recall specific episodes or events in your life as a mindfulness teacher
and Insight Dialogue (ID) practitioner in which you experienced the phenomena we are
investigating. I am seeking vivid, accurate and comprehensive portrayals of what these
experiences were like for you; your thoughts, feelings, somatic experiences and
behaviours, as well as situations, events and people connected with your experience.
Given the interview will take the form of ID practice it may offer the opportunity to
investigate the experience of authenticity ‘in vivo’.
Your comprehensive depictions or descriptions of your experience will help to illuminate
my questions:
o How would you define authenticity?
o How do mindfulness teachers experienced in the interpersonal mindfulness practice of
Insight Dialogue experience authenticity in teaching mindfulness?
o Related to the practice of Insight Dialogue, what factors contribute to the capacity for
authenticity?
o What hinders authenticity?
o Does authenticity contribute to the efficacy of mindfulness teaching and if so how?

Heuristic research recognizes that the lived experience of the researcher is a central part
of the research. With this in mind I will also be closely attending to my own experience of
authenticity during the interview process and in the transcribing and this will also form a
significant part of my final thesis.
Please let me know your availability for taking part in a 60-90 minute interview. You can
contact me by email at XXXX
I value your participation and thank you in advance for your commitment of time, energy
and effort. If you have further questions before signing the consent form please contact
me via email address or on my mobile.
With warmth and gratitude,
Jane Brendgen

Co-researchers Information sheet
1. Research study title
A Heuristic exploration of experiences of Authenticity.
2. Name and position of researcher
This research is being conducted by Jane Brendgen, a student at Bangor University
as part of an MSc in Mindfulness-Based Teaching. Jane is being supervised by Jan
Mojsa (Overall Supervisor) and Rebecca Crane (Project Supervisor) at the Centre
for Mindfulness Research and Practice at Bangor University.
3. The nature of the study and the reasons why the research is being conducted
Mindfulness teachers experienced in the interpersonal mindfulness practice of
Insight Dialogue are being invited to participate in this research. The study is being
carried out to explore what role authenticity plays in the teaching process and
what, if any, benefit this might bring to the learning process for participants.
It is my hope that this research will contribute to the understanding of the teacher
competencies associated with authenticity and refine current training practices
through illustrating the potential the teacher-student relationship holds for
increased intervention efficacy. Furthermore, research that acknowledges the
fundamentally relational nature of MBI programmes would help to move this
important teaching variable into the foreground of mindfulness pedagogy. It may
also support a shift in the current teacher training paradigm such that
interpersonal mindfulness is recognised as an essential practice to cultivate
embodied relational presence.
4. What happens next if I do decide to take part?
If you decide that you want to take part in the study, please let me know. I will
then send you a letter outlining what will be required of you as a co-researcher and
will attach a consent form which I’ll ask you to sign. We’ll then need to arrange a
60-90 minute skype or face-to-face meeting. The interviews will take the form of

Insight Dialogue (ID). We will work in an emergent way, exploring your experiences
of authenticity within ID practice, your mindfulness teaching and potentially ‘in
vivo’, within the ID interview process itself - the practice guidelines may support
the arising of authenticity whilst engaged in dialogue. Though the process will be
unstructured in terms of the format for questions, I will have a series of questions
in mind to support the process if necessary. However, my hope is that in the flow
of mindful dialogue material will emerge that will useful to my research question.
The interview will be audio recorded and transcribed into a written format. I will
be using the services of a very reputable company associated with the university to
support me with the transcription process. I will explore each individual’s own
personal experience of authenticity carefully to develop a composite depiction.
Following the transcription of the interview I will write up a depiction of what we
discussed. I will then send this to you for your approval or amendments. Should
the depiction need amendments we may need a second interview of up to sixty
minutes. I will give you as much notice as possible. It is important to remember
that you can stop the interview at any time, as well as withdraw any time before,
during or after the interview.
5. Confidentiality and Anonymity
It is important to emphasise that your participation in the study will remain
confidential. The interview will be anonymous and it will not be possible for other
people to identify you. Any details in the transcriptions that might identify who you
are will be changed. Some of your recorded narrative might be discussed with
other researchers or used as quotes in written reports. The audio MP3 files and
transcripts from the interviews will not be identifiable by personal names, and
these will be kept in a secure place which only the researcher will have access to.
The MP3 files and any documents relating to the study will eventually be
destroyed. Any electronic data from the research which is kept on a password-
secured computer will be coded and completely anonymous. The audio files and
any documents relating to the study will be stored for five years, after which time
will be destroyed.

6. Are there any known or likely risks from taking part in the study?
I know of no disadvantages or risks involved in taking part in the study.
7. Is there any payment for taking part?
As this study is not being funded participation is solely voluntary.
8. What will happen to the results of the research study?
The results will form the basis for my MSc thesis and may be used in other written
reports (e.g. Journal Publications). They will also be made available to the Centre
for Mindfulness Research and Practice on request. A copy will also be made
available to all participants who have participated in the study on request. You will
not be identified in any report, though the report may consider something you
quoted in your interview that is deemed pertinent to the findings of the study.
9. Who has reviewed the research study?
The research has been reviewed by the School of Psychology’s Ethics and Research
Governance Committee, Bangor University.
10. What if I have any further questions?
If you have any queries, or want further information about the study, please
contact the researcher Jane Brendgen at XXXX
11. Complaints
If at any time you wish to make a complaint about the researcher, or the way that
the research has been conducted, please contact XXXX.

Co-researchers consent form
Mindfulness Inquiry Research Project
Researcher: Jane Brendgen
Consent Elements Please initial
I consent to the interview being recorded.
I understand that the interview will be transcribed and may be
reproduced in the thesis.
I understand further that my identity will be kept confidential and in no
way will I or any other person I may refer to during the interview be
able to be identified.
I understand that my participation is voluntary and that having given
my consent I am still able to withdraw at any time during the interview
and up to a week after the interview.
I understand that I may decline to answer any questions I do not feel
comfortable in answering.
I have read the above information and consent to participate in the interview and be part
of the research.
Print Name: _________________________
Signature: __________________________ Date: _________________
I confirm that I have explained the study to the research participant and he / she has had
an opportunity to ask questions.
Name: Jane Brendgen
Signature: __________________________ Date: _________________

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