For many years, faculty in the IWL community have incorporated Contemplative Pedagogy in language teaching and learning and have yielded fruitful outcomes. Contemplative approaches center human flourishing and well-being and foster deep learning through focused attention, reflection, and self-awareness of body-mind connection. Diverse strategies and techniques have been used by IWL faculty to quiet students’ minds and cultivate their capacity for insight, such as contemplative inquiry, mindful movement practice, contemplative reading and writing exercise, breath work, visualization, and so on. These help students lower stress levels, decrease anxiety, develop a more compassionate understanding of themselves and others, improve concentration and attention, enhance positive emotions and resilience, and create a more just, compassionate, and reflective mind. In many language classes at UVA, faculty strive  to create an open space for silence and reflection that makes possible transformative dimension of language learning. 

Faculty witness numerous benefits in classes, for example, better health, a steadier mind, increased insight, improved relationships, to name a few. Many also report feeling refreshed, and re-invigorated, and most importantly, having changed perspectives of what an ideal language curriculum could do to create a safe, passionate, and motivating learning environment.

In May 2019, IWL and UVA Contemplative Sciences Center co-organized a faculty retreat on contemplative pedagogy across language programs towards a more mindful learning experience. Since then, the sustained use of Contemplative Pedagogy continues to bring about meaningful experience to students’ studies and life in the academic and interpersonal spheres.