Threads of Interest is a simple, ongoing series where I follow ideas as they arise in real time. These posts aren’t formal essays—they’re starting points, half-formed reflections, and notes from the middle of learning. Each piece begins with something specific: a line from a book, a thought during practice, a question I can’t let go of. The writing helps me think things through. Topics often touch on Buddhism, education, language, and daily life. If you’re interested in the process of making sense of things, this series is a place to pause and think together.

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More Threads…

Following Presence: Notes and Wonderings

An informal thread of reflections across different ways of understanding presence in educational and contemplative life.

Thread One: Presence as Attunement

This is where I often begin—presence as a kind of attunement. Noticing. Feeling-with. It’s the kind of presence that emerges in moments of close attention, not only to words but to gesture, tone, tempo, and space. It’s the way we "read the room" with our bodies. It’s also the way a child might sense if we’re truly with them or simply monitoring.

This kind of presence feels relational. It’s less about self-awareness and more about a shared field. —not just auditory listening, but a kind of presence through receptive stillness.

Questions I’m sitting with:

How much of presence is sensory and embodied, not cognitive?
What does it mean to be attuned to silence, not just behavior?
Can presence be felt without being seen?

Related references:

Carlina Rinaldi, The Pedagogy of Listening

https://www.reggioalliance.org/downloads/pedagogicalconsulting.pdf

Thread Two: Presence as Technique or Tool

In some educational spaces, presence is treated almost like a skill—something to learn, refine, and apply. Mindfulness programs in schools often fall here. So do some adult strategies for co-regulation and emotional attunement. There’s value in this—it offers language and practices that help people try to be more present.

But something troubles me about it. When presence becomes a tool, doesn’t it also become a performance? If I’m using presence to get a certain behavior from a child, is that still presence—or is it a kind of management?

I wonder where the line is between being grounded and being in control.

Questions:

Is presence still presence if it’s used strategically?
What is lost when presence becomes a technique?
Can presence be taught without becoming something to do?

Related references:

CASEL’s Social-Emotional Learning Framework: https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/
Mindfulness-Based SEL programs like Inner Explorer or MindUP
Critiques of instrumental mindfulness: Purser, McMindfulness (2019)

Thread Three: Presence as Undoing

This is where I keep returning lately. Presence not as something to practice or get better at—but something that arises when I stop doing anything at all. When I stop managing the moment. When I forget my role, my plan, even my intention.

It’s uncomfortable, this kind of presence. It feels like falling through space without anchoring. But in that undoing, something very quiet starts to appear. Not stillness I’ve created—but stillness that was already there.

This is where I start to think with Krishnamurti (carefully, and only when I can verify), and sometimes with early Buddhist language: presence as not interfering, not fabricating. A kind of awareness that doesn’t divide.

Questions:

What if presence isn’t a state, but the absence of interference?
Can presence survive intention?
How much effort can presence hold before it collapses?

Related references:

J. Krishnamurti, The First and Last Freedom, Chapter on “Awareness”

https://www.jkrishnamurti.org/content/first-and-last-freedom

Early Buddhist distinction between sati (mindfulness) and sammā sati (Right Mindfulness)

See: Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path:

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/waytoend.html

Thread Four: Presence as Ethical Encounter

Some approaches to presence suggest it’s not about attention at all, but about how we relate—ethically, vulnerably, without manipulation. Not presence as a container, but presence as being seen and being changed.

Sometimes I glimpse this when I pause long enough to not know what to say, or when I stop trying to protect my image. Presence, here, becomes an act of availability—to the child, to the moment, to the possibility that I might be undone.

This isn’t presence as stability—it’s presence as porousness.

Questions:

Can presence be a form of mutual risk?
What does it mean to be present without defensiveness?
Is presence only full when we’re open to being changed?

Related references:

Martin Buber, I and Thou (1923), on I-Thou vs. I-It relationships
Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach, Chapter 1
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, ethics as encounter

Thread Five: Presence Across Cultures

Much of what’s called “presence” in Western early childhood discourse aligns with stillness, eye contact, and undivided attention. But this is not universally understood as attunement. In some cultures, attentiveness looks like withdrawal. In others, warmth is expressed through motion, rhythm, or speech.

I want to be careful not to universalize presence as a particular posture or vibe. What if presence includes movement? What if presence is collective, noisy, or fleeting?

Questions:

How do I distinguish between aesthetic preference and relational presence?
What gestures of presence exist outside of stillness?
Whose presence is validated in early childhood settings—and whose is not?

Related references:

Cultural Variations in the Role of Emotion in Teaching and Learning, Tobin, Hsueh, Karasawa (2009)
Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited, Joseph Tobin et al.
Nirmala Erevelles, Disability and Difference in Global Contexts

Thread Six: Presence With Children

This is the thread that brings me back to the real. To the dirt on fingers, the wobble in a child’s voice, the way they scan your face when you’re not saying anything.

Sometimes I catch myself trying to be present—holding eye contact, softening my tone, adjusting my posture. But when presence actually arrives, it’s not because I did any of that. It’s because I let go. Because I stopped filtering the moment through adult logic. Because I allowed myself to not know what should happen next.

And often, the child notices first.

Questions:

What are children reading in us that we’re not aware of?
Can I be with a child without doing presence?
How often do I mistake performance for connection?

Related references:

In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia, Carolyn Edwards
Bev Bos, Don’t Move the Muffin Tins (presence through play, not instruction)
Teacher Tom blog: https://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com

Thread Seven: Presence and the Wild Ones

There’s a different kind of presence required in the forest. Animals know the difference instantly. They don’t respond to posture or words or softness in the voice. They respond to something much deeper—something quieter. It’s not stillness for their sake, or carefulness with an agenda. It’s what remains when effort drops away.

In my experience, animals don’t approach when they are being observed. They come when they are being felt. Or rather—when they feel you, not as a watcher, but as part of the field. They consent to proximity when there is no reaching in your energy. No disturbance. Just being.

Sometimes this means they come close. Sometimes they stay nearby. Sometimes they look back before disappearing. It always feels like a kind of conversation, though no words are spoken.

Questions I’m sitting with:

What is it that animals sense in our presence?
What are they responding to, or withdrawing from?
Can I carry that same kind of non-intrusive presence into human relationships?
How does presence become a form of consent—not through permission, but through mutual ease?