Letting Go & Creating Safe Spaces: Rituals for the Conscious Classroom

For teachers feeling overwhelmed by global challenges and classroom responsibilities, this episode offers a lifeline of wisdom. Amy Edelstein delves into the transformative power of letting go—not as abandonment of responsibility, but as a profound acceptance that creates space for growth.

Just as great trees stand witness through storms and seasons, we can bear witness, standing still, mindfully being with emotions without trying to fix them. We can practice being present with our own anxiety, grief, or despair. Inner work is essential. When we metabolize our emotions, we become capable of authentically seeing our students as unique individuals deserving of personalized attention.

The Refuge Ritual: How 5 Minutes Before Class Can Change So Much

In this episode Amy gives several practices, so you can create that space for yourself and as you create inner space the outer space will be there too. 

Magic happens when we educators do our inner work: students feel our authenticity and respond with trust. They become willing to step outside their comfort zones, support each other, and experience the joy of learning in community. In a world of educational bureaucracy that can unintentionally dehumanize, these practices bring humanity, personalization, and connection back into our classrooms.

Ready to transform your teaching experience? Listen now, then visit innerstrengtheducation.org for more resources to support your journey toward conscious education.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Conscious Classroom
• 1:40 Letting Go as an Educator
• 3:43 Sitting with Difficult Emotions
• 6:00 Creating Space for Student Growth
• 9:45 Taking Refuge Before Teaching
• 13:47 Setting Intentions and Walking Mindfully
• 19:35 Closing Thoughts and Gratitude

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Welcome to the Conscious Classroom podcast, where we're exploring tools and perspectives that support educators and anyone who works with teens to create more conscious, supportive and enriching learning environments. I'm your host, amy Edelstein, and I'll be sharing transformative insights and easy-to-implement classroom supports that are all drawn from mindful awareness and systems thinking. The themes we'll discuss are designed to improve your own joy and fulfillment in your work and increase your impact on the world we share. Let's get on with this next episode. Share let's get on with this next episode. Hello and welcome to the Conscious Classroom Podcast. My name is Amy Edelstein. I'm happy to be with you today, wherever you are and whenever you happen to be listening. I've been reflecting a lot lately on the capacity to let go as an educator when you're responsible for lots of people who, as independent as they may be, are still relying on you to form the container and the context for their growth and transformation In our increasingly fraught world where, whether we acknowledge it or not, the pressures of the times create an emotional response in us.

Speaker 1: 1:40

We're human and we care about war and starvation. We care about species extinction and polluted airwaves. We care about forest fires and tsunamis. We care about the bleaching of the coral reefs. We care about the poverty of a sixth of the world's population. We care about those we know who have addiction or mental health issues. We care about those we know who have financial or relationship issues, and usually what we do is we seal ourselves off from that. Caring and especially when we put on our teacher face and walk into the classroom is that we take the time and space to allow ourselves to metabolize all of our difficult emotions together with others, so that we're not alone. We recognize that as a member of the human family, we share so many common cares being present with what is tending to, sitting quietly next to whatever is arising, as a companion, as a witness in the ways that the great old trees sit next to you, stand tall next to you as you process. They don't move towards, they don't move away. They're rooted in the ground. They've seen nights and days. They've seen suns and winds and rains. They've lost big branches and storms. They've had infestations of bugs. They've been home to birds and creatures. They've seen larger animals walk past them or take shelter in their shade. In that way we can sit with and be with practice, mindful awareness and companionship with ourselves.

Speaker 1: 4:28

That practicing of companionship is ultimately a letting go. It's a letting go of trying to fix things. It's a letting go of our limits on what we believe we can process. It's a letting go of our insistence that things be different than they are. It's a letting go that allows our innermost being to open and in that opening we can see new shoots emerge. We can see new growth, and when we start to see that new growth in ourselves, when we allow our innermost recesses to thaw, then new shoots emerge and that is the most energizing and thrilling and moving aspect of our humanity, our aliveness that we can transform.

Speaker 1: 5:36

Now, being busy educators, we may not speak about this with our young people, but what happens when we allow ourselves to experience and open, together with others, the emotional weight and pain that we often feel? Students were more able to see their joy and see their potential and see their innocence and see their desire to individuate and actualize. So when we're able to let go for ourselves, we're not holding up barriers. When we're actually in the presence of our students, we see them as unique individuals. We allow them to cross-reference with each other, to support each other, to be kind to each other, to be supportive of each other. We allow their different voices to come in the lazy ones, the apathetic ones, the over-talkative ones, the ones that bring everyone together and make them feel good, the thoughtful ones, the reflective ones, the shy and anxious ones. We find ways to include everyone. For our shy and anxious ones, who are terrified of speaking in front of everyone, we can simply say you're going to have to speak, but with the class. Since she's so terribly shy to speak in front of others, why don't you carry on little side conversations so I can hear what she has to say? And over time, maybe two or three days, you keep doing that. You keep allowing for that child's anxiousness but insisting for that child's anxiousness, but insisting that their voice be heard, that their voice is valuable, that they have something to say, that it needs to be said, and you enlist the rest of the class as supportive classmates. By the end of a few days, everyone will have bonded in that support. End of a few days, everyone will have bonded in that support and that shy student who was too anxious to speak in front of everyone will forget and just start speaking and everyone will share in that victory. Everyone will share in that growth If we don't face our own anxiousness and fear or despair or grief, it will become very hard to authentically give space to our students.

Speaker 1: 8:37

It's critical that we allow our own cares and concerns so that we can become creative in our classrooms. As we allow for our own cares and concerns, with more impartiality and more sense that we are part of a planetary aliveness that experiences so many different things, we are not separate and alone in what we're processing Then we start to feel also a tenderness and an awakeness and a passion for the possible. One of the ways that we can cultivate this and practice this is by, as we enter our classroom, having an internal ritual, having an internal orientation. In the Buddhist tradition, when you sit down to practice, you take refuge. You take refuge in those who've walked before us, who have discovered profound wisdom before us, who have discovered profound wisdom. We take refuge in the fact that there is a wiser path to walk and we can find that. And we take refuge in the wise ones who travel with us. And I would add to that, we take refuge in the ten generations to follow us. And as we take refuge in the ten generations to follow us, we become more intentional about our actions.

Speaker 1: 10:38

So as you walk into your classroom and sit down at your desk in your own way, in your own words, in your own container, you create your own container of what are you taking refuge in? What big tree is providing stability and shade for you? And also, as you take refuge and feel that support of the wise ones who've come before, of the fact that there are positive choices we can make and we can discern them, that we're not alone and there are others all around the world who we can align with and walk together, and that our actions matter, that in some way the future generations are looking down on us and hoping for the best and encouraging us to reach for the most caring response. And then we set our intention that we intend to help our students grow and develop and transform. We intend to bring joy and happiness to ourselves and to others. We intend to walk softly, with care. If you make that your ritual, as you come into your class before you straighten your desk and check your email and pull up your lesson plan and lay out your name cards or your materials for the day, you will feel like you're in the center of your lesson. You will feel like you have aligned with what is most important to you and what will guide you in the class.

Speaker 1: 12:48

This is how we create conscious classrooms. This is how we make a conscious environment that the expression of which is trust and safety for all those who come into that environment. They feel our care, they feel our intentionality, they feel our passion, they feel our responsibility ourselves. And when an adult is being responsible for themselves in this deep way, out of care and love, not fear and discipline it creates an environment where the students themselves also feel trust, feel respected, feel invited to be heard, feel excited, even in their shyness or awkwardness or boredom or laziness, to grow. They feel willing to step out of their shells and to bond with each other and hold each other. When students feel able to be themselves, it creates an amazing bond where they feel respected and heard and seen and able to be different without conflict. It creates a sense of joy and really all you need to do is be yourself and let go.

Speaker 1: 14:30

So, as we approach this new school year and as you're thinking about these last weeks of summer, allow yourself to process and take time with others, to embrace all of yourself, all of your feelings about this moment in time, all of your sense about the future, letting go of any need to control or act, because the process of being mindful, without leaning towards or away from, of being with yourself like that tall tree, is with you. Will do the best to prepare you for whatever comes in this year ahead, head. It'll do the best to prepare you to allow for community to authentically emerge in your classroom, to allow the unnecessary control and discipline and inhumanity that comes into school systems, not as a fault of anyone in particular, but as a result of the large bureaucracy that school districts are a part of. You can bring humanity and personalization and independence and connectedness back into your classroom and students will love it and they will reward you with their joy at being together, at being with you, at learning, at feeling that they matter, at learning at feeling that they matter. And, of course, as an educator, when we feel that our students are blossoming and growing, we feel that our work has meaning and that gives us energy for whatever we might find.

Speaker 1: 17:08

So, in addition to taking refuge in those wise ones who have walked before us in the path that incorporates more care and love and insight and directionality, and in the community of good people who are standing with us shoulder to shoulder and in our intention that we make conscious and solidify each time we walk into our classroom. I invite you also to incorporate into your day the practice of mindful walking, of noticing your feet connecting with the earth, with the floor, the solidity of the floor beneath you as you move from place to place. Anytime you remember, let your thoughts turn towards the immediacy of walking and your intention, as you move from place to place, to walk in peace, to walk in care, to walk in connectedness, to walk in purpose, to walk in your own unique significance, to walk in love, by being mindful of each step and by being mindful of our intention, our deeper intention for our own life to be fully fulfilled, fully unfurled, for our own life to be fully fulfilled, fully unfurled, fully what it could be, way beyond our expectations. We can walk in peace and mindful awareness, and that walking will not only carry us to our immediate destination, will not only carry us to our immediate destination. It will also carry us forward at a heart level, and that is one of the best things that our students can experience and absorb from the quality of our own being.

Speaker 1: 19:34

Thank you, until next time. Thank you for listening to the Conscious Classroom. I'm your host, amy Edelstein. Please check out the show notes on innerstrengthfoundationnet for links and more information. And if you enjoyed this podcast for links and more information. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend and pass the love on. See you next time.