Abstract

Well-being is both a personal and societal quest. Any imbalance in well-being promotes stress. The stresses faced by teachers lead to negative consequences that can undermine their ability to sustain emotional health and positive interactions. Teachers are in a situation where they teach to stress or stress to teach. Through the framework of a Foucauldian critique of technologies of the self and positive education (Reveley, 2015), I use narrative inquiry to conduct a critical narrative analysis of literature and anecdotal accounts of teachers who practice Jyoti and Mindfulness meditations to identify any roles meditation may play in their well-being. My three research questions include the perceived part of Jyoti and Mindfulness meditations to teachers' well-being, how teachers who turn to meditation relate their practice to stress management, and why? Furthermore, whether individual teachers seem to accept the narrative of using their meditative practices to solve social and political problems imposed by their job. Teachers’ use of Mindfulness meditation is associated to Foucault's technologies of the self in this study (Foucault, 1988). Findings indicate that participant teachers practice meditation individually and sometimes with their students. These teachers perceive meditation as beneficail both to them and their students. I did not observe any collective effort by the teachers to confront the multifaceted challenges that besiege the teaching profession. Hence, while meditation leads to individual transformation, the system remains unchanged.