The Contemplative Group Dynamics Eremo di Ronzano Retreat provides a week-long occasion to practice mindfulness in silence complemented by periods using speech to describe in real time one’s experience. One’s description then intersects with that of other members so that attention is extended from subjective toward intersubjective experiencing, from the private to the shared.
The practice of both silence and speech is structured using the four foundations of mindfulness. Thus the sharing of observations serves to ground attention in presence and reduce wandering mind.
Contemplative Group Dynamics explores, in real time, the communication exchanges among members based on the four foundations or abidings of mindfulness. Individually and as a group using speech we ground our attention and presence by starting with the basic level of body sensation. We then sequentially proceed to feeling, mental events and experience. This gradual approach helps integrate the use of speech to describe moment to moment experience whilst not getting taken by story or narrative: individual, social, or cultural.
