the people must be crazy

Today was the first day of my 7 days retreat with Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli in Brunnsvik (Sweden). The participants are mostly all mindfulness professionals (doctors, researchers, psychiatrists, psychologists, and a few lost business people like me). Jon started out by reminding that it is very challenging to ask people to be mindful. Since mindfulness is contra-intuitive: it is about not getting anywhere, not doing anything and not expecting anything, which is completely the opposite of the way we behave in our western world.

If somebody would walk into the room while we are meditating, he or she would probably say: did these people travel all that far and pay all that good money just to sit here in silence and do nothing? They must be crazy.

Well, I can tell you from my own experience: it is very relaxing and very healing to be crazy.

the power of being silent together

Since we behave more like human "doings" than like human beings, we tend to have problems with silence and with non-doing.
We underestimate the power of silence and we don't recognise relaxation as a powerfull emotion.
What would happen if we start our meetings by just coming into silence together for 5 minutes? During these 5 minutes we could do a Body Intelligence Scan by observing how our body feels (what is our gut feeling,), how our heart feels (what are our hopes, desires, inhibitions, irritations) and how our thinking mind behaves (why are we here, what do we want to achieve?)

I am sure many people would feel awkard and uneasy at the beginning, but the question would than be: where do these feelings come from?

Any experience with such an approach? Please share it wit us.