In Mundair’s (2017) article I found many similarities with my own spiritual journey. Although I started off as Catholic and Mundair started off as Sikh, I find that we both started from a religion with very strong beliefs and customs and somehow, we both felt the need to question these and explore other beliefs or spiritual approaches to life.

I found myself in a very suffocating and uncomfortable place. As a young person every time I entered a church I felt inadequate and forced to go through a channel that was in the way of my communicating with God. I felt this was not right and so proceeded to ‘escape’ both by moving to a different country (perhaps a bit drastic I know, but other reasons where at stake) and by looking for different spiritual approaches.

I too like Mundair, explored yoga and meditation and appreciated the sense of acceptance and community.

In meditation, I found the positive sense of slowing down and of letting go of judging myself. The idea of allowing myself some space, time, silence was medicinal.

Somehow though, possibly as Mundair experienced too, I then felt the need to take on something more established, rather than an independent practice. Who knows, perhaps the strong catholic background, the rules, where pressing me and so I needed to commit to something more official. So I explored Hinduism a lot further, but then I found not only that I was becoming so fanatic about it that I was starting to lose my connection with the day to day life (letting go a bit too much perhaps); but that the very founders of the Hindu yoga centre I affiliated myself with, had been accused of sexual harassment by several of his female disciples.

How could I reconcile this disappointing finding with a practice I thought was good for me? What should I do? Was there a perfect religion after all?

And so in terms of teaching practice the same questions arise again: how do we support students in their beliefs whilst ensure they are safe? Should we help them to question their beliefs or simply observe and protect?

I don’t even know if it’s ok to incorporate a teaching practice that questions religion vs one that accepts it full stop. Perhaps the way forward is to encourage students to voice the positive aspects of their practice and share them with other students, whilst slowly identify and modify those that are discriminatory.

Reference

Mundair, R. (2017) Guru Nanak and the realm of Chlorophyll Cathedrals In Shades of Noir, 2017 Higher Power: Higher Power: Religion, Faith, Spirituality & Belief at https://issuu.com/shadesofnoir/docs/higher_power Accessed on 25th May 2022