Last year, I found I was tired and often in pain and began to look for ways to deal with these issues. Cautiously, I examined the concept of meditation and a mindful practice. This morphed into more, as I began to read about the topics and I completed an individual and directed study as part of my doctoral process. I am provided with an opportunity to explore the self who teaches and lives this life during these quiet moments. I discovered a need for a mindful life, where I was fully present and meditation serves me well.
Each morning, I get up and begin my day with a quiet, mindful space:
Each morning’s practice
I fall awake into day
Embrace the calmness.
Most days, I walk to the local coffee shop where everybody knows my name and continue my practice. Even in the noise of the place, I mindfully read and drink my tea. Part of it is the walk.
With each of life’s steps
Earth receives me graciously
And we become one.
Each afternoon, I try lay down for an hour. I rarely sleep. My neck and shoulders ache and they are asking for a break. I focus on my breath and let thoughts flow by on my stream of consciousness.
Embodied mind speaks
Rest the mind and body
Take refuge, sabbath.
Take care and have a great 21st of July, 2012.
About ivonprefontaine
In keeping with bell hooks and Noam Chomsky, I consider myself a public and dissident intellectual. Part of my work is to move beyond (transcend) institutional dogmas that bind me to defend freedom, raising my voice to be heard on behalf of those who seek equity and justice in all their forms.
I completed my PhD in Philosophy of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA. My dissertation and research was how teachers experience becoming teachers and their role as leaders.
I focus on leading, communicating, and innovating in organizations. This includes mindfuful servant-leadership, World Cafe events, Appreciative Inquiry, and expressing one's self through creativity. I offer retreats, workshops, and presentations that can be tailored to your organzations specific needs.
I published peer reviewed articles about schools as learning organizations, currere as an ethical pursuit, and hope as an essential element of adult eductaion. I published three poems and am currently preparing my poetry to publish as an anthology of poetry.
I present on mindful leadership, servant leadership, schools as learning organizations, how teachers experience becoming teachers, assessement, and critical thinking. I facilitate mindfulness, hospitality retreats. and World Cafe Events using Appreciative Inquiry.
I am writing and researching about various forms of leadership, how teachers inform and form their identity as a particular teacher, schools as learning organizations, hope, nonviolence and its anticipatory relationship with the future, as essential elements to teaching and learning.
Academic publications can be found at Ivon Gile Prefontaine on ResearchGate
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 