Teaching Methods: Growing a Presentation Tree

Roots, Trunk, Leaves:
1 Presentation, 3 Key Parts:

By Acharya Satyam Ehinger

When writing a meditation presentation it can be helpful to step back to see the key components that must be present for the presentation to flourish. You can think of it as a tree with three major parts: the roots, the trunk and the leaves. 

The roots are the aspect of your presentation that connects it to the timeless resources of the yogic tradition— ancient texts like the Shiva Sutras, Yoga Sutras, Vijnana Bhairava, or others. Like nutrients hidden deep within the earth, these resources take time to excavate and bring to the surface, and when you do they arrive in small concentrated doses that often need to be taken in slowly and consciously. It is rare that a presentation would need more than one sutra to guide it’s message, and we should expect to repeat a sutra many times during a presentation, and unpack it skillfully, if we want to really give our students a chance to receive them. Not every presentation may have a quote from an ancient text, but when it does make sure you give it the space and time it needs to be appreciated. 

Working our way up from the roots, we find the trunk of the tree— literally how those roots have grown up and out into the world over the generations of masterful interpretation. The trunk represents the Satsang texts by lineage masters, individuals who have achieved a high inner realization and are able to maintain their connection to their source as they speak and act in the world. Similar to the roots, we usually don’t need more than one or two quotes of this caliber to support our presentation. What is usually needed is more time spent with the quote, unpacking it’s content from multiple angles, repeating it, and reflecting on it.

And finally, we have the leaves of the tree catching the sunlight of the atmosphere, flapping in the wind, each one unique like a fingerprint. The leaves are our own unique experience of the teachings, experiences that nourish us and are crucial to our growth. This portion of the presentation helps people relate to the teachings in a real and practical way, affirming that it is indeed possible for anyone to accomplish. This is also the part of the presentation in which you can really connect inside, leave the script behind, and hep your students ‘feel’ what you ‘felt’. 

Our own personal experiences are incredibly valuable, but they are also transient— this years breakthrough eventually falls from the tree to become next years compost. A story you tell this year doesn’t necessarily have the same power as the story you generate in the next year of your growth. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just the nature of growth. For that reason we shouldn’t place too much emphasis on our personal stories, but rather use them as ways to unpack the more timeless aspects of the teachings contained in the trunk and the roots. 

So we see that a presentation has three distinct parts:

Roots, Trunk, Leaves. 

Sutra, Satsang, Story. 

As you approach your presentation, you will probably have 1 of these 3 parts in mind. For example, maybe you had a unique personal experience that inspired you, or read or heard something in a satsang text, or became deeply intrigued by a Sutra at a heart level. Start wherever you start, we can’t tell inspiration where to begin, but we can grow our inspiration to encompass the other three aspects of the tree.  Wherever you start, be sure to give the other parts of the tree your attention as well. All 3 parts make up the tree, not just 1 or 2 of them.