Welcome!

What makes an excellent mindfulness teacher?

By Shamash Alidina

TeachMindfulnessOnline.com

My aims today

• To have some fun• To share some of my ideas about

teaching mindfulness well – please be skeptical

• To be interactive and read your thoughts and comments as we go through

• Little advert: To finish by sharing my own mindfulness teacher training program and today’s offer incase you’re interested – just log off if you’re not interested!

What else do you hope to get

from the session today? Let me know

now please

About me in 60 seconds

• Author of a bunch of books on mindfulness –some of them number 1 Amazon bestsellers

• Studied mindfulness at Bangor University’s Centre for Mindfulness for 3 years and at UMASS Center for Mindfulness in USA

• Worked in schools and trained school teachers for 10 years

• Now run innovative Mindfulness Teacher Training programs online

What is a mindfulness teacher?

• On one end of scale, someone who may integrate some mindful breathing in a coaching session one to one

• Other end of scale, can be teaching clinically proven mindfulness courses in a hospital setting

• Where are you on that scale?

1. Personal practice

• A mindfulness teacher needs to practice mindfulness!

• The more, the better

• The intention of each practice is more important than the quality of each practice

• Life is the ultimate practice!

• Don’t expect you to be perfect – you’re a human being

2. Mindful Attitude

• What do you think are the key mindful attitudes a teacher needs to embody?

• Compassion

• Curiosity

• Acceptance

• Openness/detachment

• Light heartedness

3. Experience in their specialty

• If you want to teach mindfulness for depression, you need experience in working with patients who have depression

• Same goes for serious anxiety, chronic pain etc.

• Also, if working with groups, you should have some experience in that domain

4. Integrity

• What does it mean to be a mindfulness teacher with integrity?

• Why is it important?

• For example – if you offer MBSR/MBCT/ACT, you should train specifically in that

• Otherwise, you’re teaching mindfulness in general

• Consider your experience before going out and teaching others

Other qualities of a mindfulness teacher

• What would you say?

• Deep listener - enquiry• Always learning• More like a facilitator than authoritative

teacher• Works within their skill/boundary but also

challenges themselves• Attends silent retreats of some sort or practices

them within themselves• Gets regular supervision from a more

experienced teacher or co-teaches• Passionate about sharing mindfulness with

their students/clients/friends

Our offering: TeachMindfulnessOnline.com

• 10 x 2 hour sessions live using this system• All recorded for you to keep forever• Covers MBCT and some MBSR syllabus but trains

you to teach mindfulness• Ideal for those who can’t travel to a university easily

to train• Make excellent contacts with other great colleagues

specialising in mindfulness• Optional live day in London too• Dates Mon 29th Sept to Fri 3rd Oct 2014• Early bird ends this Thursday – save $700• Investment is $2299 fully inclusive• Visit TeachMindfulnessOnline.com and complete

short application to register on early bird today and get three of my books for free too!

• Any questions about this or anything else?