Table 3.

Middle circle examples

Middle circles	Examples of what might be brought to supervision	Interview example
Teaching skills	The curriculum, leading practices, making CDs, timing, conveying teaching, handouts, resources, all the preliminaries before even beginning to run a course, feedback on teaching	The person I can think of was having tremendous difficulty not getting everything upside down and back to front. So it was to practice the order, the sequence of the guidance. And to do it in a place that felt quite safe rather than the anxiety of the class. (Sally 2012)
Theory/understanding	Theory from MBCT/MBSR, broader understandings of mindfulness or Buddhist understandings	They said, “What’s the intention behind doing body work again in MBCT?” And when you get questions of that order it’s a reminder that that is where this person is at and they need a real kind of immersion in the course and what all its different components are. But with some inquiry of what do you feel when you do the movement practice. (Lucy 2012)
Participants/the group	The relational aspects of teaching, the individuals in the class, the group process, and co-teachers, often aspects of the inquiry	I was supervising somebody on Friday and one of the participants was taking him off on a very intellectual stream and the question was how to come back from that, how to not just let it burble on but how to bring the focus back to the present moment. (Sally 2012)
Personal practice/process	Particular issues/struggles in relation to practice, reflections on practice, overwork, busyness, confidence issues	Sometimes I am helping to evolve practice- giving pointers, working with distraction or the inner critic or, if people haven’t been meditating for that long and are much newer to the whole thing, I have suggested particular approaches that might be helpful for one’s own practice and also supporting teaching. (Rachael 2012)