Facilitator Voices: Eric McCabe

“I didn’t spend a lot of money going to secular based mindfulness trainings. Rather, I gave my life to study the Buddhadharma. I chose not to pursue degrees and certificates in universities, yet I have not completely escaped them either. I’m a Zen Buddhist priest, and I seem to have found a calling when I began offering Zen meditation at a drug and alcohol rehab in 2010. Consequently, this is also where I began to study TCTSY.

Now, I find myself wanting to help people in hospitals and other venues that address mental health and addiction issues, feeling I have something to offer. I second-guess myself, though amidst the PhD’s, and the therapists, wondering if I’m qualified enough, if my living in Buddhist temples has prepared me for this work, thinking about what mental health providers might think of me, and wondering how much I am colluding with a system that unconsciously privileges white people over people of color.

I facilitate TCTSY in my work as a “yoga therapist” in a mental health ward, but the philosophy underlying TCTSY has affected the way I teach Zen Buddhism, as well as my World Religions classes at a community college. TCTSY has influenced me in the way that I work with folks in my role as a religious leader both in one-on-one circumstances and in the classes that my wife and I offer, particularly those that have our sangha study systemic racism.

With the pandemic on the rise, Liz Manion, another TCTSY-F that lives in the neighborhood, and I have decided to pull our resources and work together. We are in the formative stages figuring out how best to serve our local community, mainly by being available. With so much suffering in the world, it seems all the more appropriate that we build relationships with like-minded individuals and communities and share the responsibilities that we shoulder. “Men anpil, shay pa lou” is a Haitian saying that means, “Many hands make the load light.””

Eric’s Bio:

A TCTSY facilitator with over 25 years of yoga and meditation practice. He began to understand trauma while teaching meditation and yoga at a drug and alcohol treatment center. Eric found in the TCTSY methodology a powerful way to relate to survivors that he has documented in a chapter of the new book, Embodied Healing: Survivor and Facilitator Voices from the Practice of Trauma Sensitive Yoga. Eric uses the principles of TCTSY in working in group yoga settings, private classes, in his work as a Zen Priest, and with college students at Des Moines Area Community College. He is a Soto Zen Buddhist priest recognized by the Soto School in both Japan and the United States. His 15 years of residential training in Zen temples taught him to love himself as he is (which is an ongoing process), to be considerate and aware of the needs of others (also ongoing), and to appreciate being an integral part of this intricate web of life within planet earth. He lives in Ames with his wife and son, Malcolm.