ABSTRACT
A lot of modern life involves mental chaos—too much information, too much stimulation, no time to process what is coming in or going out. The teaching methods we use in much of higher education exacerbate this problem. Meaningful learning involves four basic steps information acquisition; emotional engagement or caring about the information; application of the information via behavioral change or problem solving; and placement of the information and its emotional substrate into the metacognitive neural system through which the student makes sense of the world. Poetry and metaphor are often used to help students reflect slowly on the issues they are considering. The purpose of incorporating contemplative practices into higher education is to slow down and deepen inquiry, and poetry is one of the vehicles often used to accomplish this purpose. Contemplative practices can provide a bridge between the two pedagogies if student affairs professionals are able to explain the pedagogies of their profession to people who use other pedagogies.
