From Silence to Embodiment – A Teacher’s Conversion to the Science of Happiness
An imagined narrative in Marc’s voice
By: Michael Rost
Introduction from Michael Rost: As with all meaningful, long-term relationships in our lives, I co-authored numerous life chapters” with Marc Helgesen, a longtime colleague, friend, and confidant, who passed away in the spring of 2025. One of the most salient centers around Marc’s reinvention of himself during his extended stay at the Wat Pu Khao Thong Buddhist monastery in Thailand some twenty years ago. Over a period of years, extending up to our last meeting in late 2024, Marc revealed various aspects of his experience there, and how it transformed his life in both subtle and major ways. (I can certainly attest that it transformed his teaching, authoring, and presentation styles.) After Marc passed away, I felt compelled to write a memoir of Marc, and as his series editor for English Firsthand, I wanted to sculpt it around the principles he and I developed for the series over its 40-year evolution.
I titled the book the “Teach Happy, Learn Better: The 5 e’s Framework of English Firsthand” (No spoiler alert: you’ll have to read the book to find out what the e’s are– it’s free https://online.flippingbook.com/view/148566908/3/). In one of the chapters, the final one on “Embodiment” (well, partial spoiler), I describe what I learned from Marc about his stay at the monastery. I include how the experience provided him much-needed rest, an opportunity for a full physical refresh, for a deep professional reset, for a renewed life orientation. I decided to write it in the first person, in Marc’s voice, as I felt that would be more compelling, more “embodied”, if you will. As all writers know, when we’re in the flow of writing, we occasionally experience a kind of channeling from inner voices. I very clearly heard Marc giving me permission for this literary freedom.
I still remember arriving at the monastery in Thailand for what was supposed to be an eight-week retreat.
I carried with me a small backpack, a restless mind (yes, I realize that’s a cliché), and the vague hope that silence might help me rattle me enough to make sense of the noise in my life. I had been teaching for years by then—juggling classes, textbooks, writing projects (English Firsthand was about to enter its fourth edition), and conferences. I had started speaking at conferences around Asia, not just in Japan.
Don’t get me wrong: I loved the work, and I loved being busy, but somewhere along the way I felt I had lost touch with something essential.
I was teaching communication, that was supposedly my specialty, yet my own inner voice had grown weaker, hoarser.
The monastery was a world apart. Dawn began with the sound of a gong, followed by slow walking meditation through the grounds. Meals were simple—rice, vegetables, sometimes a bit of fruit—and always eaten in silence. Before I knew it, I had dropped a ton of weight. After a few weeks, when I noticed my reflection once in a glass door – no mirrors in the monastery – I didn’t even recognize myself. (Well, I had also shaved my head – no attachments, not even to hair — which gave me a clean look.) Surprisingly, after a week or so, I had lost my desire to eat more than one meal a day, and my craving to drink alcohol!
Afternoons stretched long and uneventful, broken only by chores around the grounds, chanting, or more meditation. But at night, whoa! The forest came alive with insects and frogs, while the monks sat in stillness under the basket ball-sized stars.
At first, I fought against it. (Yes, that’s my nature: challenge, resist, reinvent…) The silence was maddening. My brain kept pulling me back to unfinished lesson plans, responses to reviews, conference deadlines, and the constant hum of professional ambition. I would sit on the meditation cushion, legs aching, back stiff, and think: What am I doing here?
But maybe around the fourth week, something began to shift.
Every morning, we had a walking meditation. Our daily instruction from the Chao Awat was to notice one thing we had never noticed before. A particular flower starting to bloom, a dragonfly hovering over a plant, an odd turning of the path. One morning, during walking meditation, I noticed my lips curve into a smile.
An internal smile? Was that noticing? Did all noticing have to be visual, auditory, or sensory? Isn’t interoception noticing too? Do mental impressions count? I was noticing a rhythm in my walking, a bouncing in my steps.
There was no reason for my smile or the rhythm — no punchline, no success, no reward. It was the simple joy of the morning sun, the soft flow of my robes across my torso, the rustle of leaves, and my own breath. All in a kind of harmony. That feeling startled me. It was as though happiness had been waiting all along, patient and unnoticed, ready to surface the moment I stopped chasing it.
That was my conversion experience—not to Buddhism, though I deeply respected the monks’ way of life. It was a conversion to the idea that happiness is not a luxury or a prize at the end of effort. It is a practice, an art, something to cultivate deliberately.
When I returned to teaching after those twelve weeks, I knew I couldn’t go back to “business as usual.” I began to see language learning in a different light and started to understand my role as a teacher in a new way. My goal previously had been for students to master the language. It was a cognitive process. Now I saw that the goal was for them to get in tune with their own bodily rhythm, their own source of happiness. The language mastery would flow more easily from that sense of embodiment.
When students laugh, gesture, lean forward in curiosity, and have a genuine exchange with a classmate — that’s embodiment. When they act out a dialogue, when they sing a phrase, when they carry the rhythm of a new language in their presentations — that’s when language sticks. Just as in the monastery, meaning isn’t only in the words. It’s in how the body lives those words. And that is the link between happiness and embodiment: both come alive only when they are lived, not just thought about.
I’m not sure my colleagues noticed any particular behavioral change. I still taught my classes, kept office hours, participated in faculty meetings, and turned in grades.
That conviction set me on a new path. I began reading everything I could about happiness, not only from Buddhist sources but also from psychology and neuroscience. Barbara Fredrickson’s research on positive emotions fascinated me—her idea of “broaden-and-build,” that joy, curiosity, and love actually expand our cognitive capacities, making us more creative and resilient. Martin Seligman’s work in positive psychology offered a framework: that well-being isn’t simply the absence of problems but the presence of engagement, meaning, accomplishment, and positive relationships.
The more I read, the more I realized that these findings weren’t just interesting. They were directly relevant to language learning. If positive emotions broaden attention and build resources, then laughter in the classroom isn’t a distraction—it’s a catalyst.
I also turned to neuroscience, curious about what was happening in the brain when students felt happy. I learned how dopamine, often called the “reward chemical,” reinforces memory. How oxytocin, the “bonding hormone,” makes social interaction feel safe and meaningful. How serotonin regulates mood, and endorphins ease stress.
Suddenly, I could see a direct line from those quiet mornings in Thailand to the buzz of a classroom in Sendai or Tokyo. Happiness wasn’t a distraction from learning. It was the very condition that made learning possible.
So, I experimented. Before a listening exercise, I would ask students to take a deep breath, to notice the air entering and leaving their bodies. At first, they looked puzzled, but soon they settled, more focused and calm. I introduced gratitude circles, where students shared something they appreciated that day—often in halting English, but always with genuine smiles. I gave them reflection spaces at the end of a lesson, small moments to notice what they had learned and how they felt. I encouraged playfulness: silly role-plays, language games, even laughter as a legitimate classroom outcome.
The results were unmistakable. Students who once sat stiff and silent relaxed. Their English flowed more easily, their mistakes less weighted with shame. They leaned into activities, encouraged each other, and even lingered after class to chat. It wasn’t magic. It was the art of happiness at work—an art I had glimpsed in Thailand, translated into the rhythms of an English classroom.
Looking back, that retreat was a turning point. I went to Thailand worn out, searching for peace. I came back not only refreshed but re-oriented. I realized that teaching wasn’t just about helping students pass exams or meet performance standards. It was about helping them discover a sustainable joy in learning, the kind of joy that keeps them practicing long after class ends.
And my students gave me the daily proof: that when we teach happiness alongside language, we are not only teaching language. We are helping students live the language.
That, to me, is the real conversion.
References
- Rost, M. (2025). Teach happy, learn better: The five e’s framework of English Firsthand: A tribute to Marc Helgesen. Lateral Communications. Pp. 131-135. https://online.flippingbook.com/view/148566908/3/
Michael Rost (Ph.D.) is an independent scholar, author, editor, and teacher trainer—and member of the Odyssey Swim Club, doing distance swims in the San Francisco Bay. He has written a number of academic books, most recently Teaching and Researching Listening, 4th edition, and is author or series editor of several language courses, including English Firsthand, Impact Issues, and Pearson English Interactive.