Create an online course here?

[Oatie]

Hi, I'm new to this site and it looks really helpful and friendly. Thanks for creating it. I suppose I am looking for some ongoing communication about mindfulness/self compassion on a structured basis so that set me thinking...
I checked out the thread on online courses and great if you can afford them but I wondered if it might be possible to put an experimental course together on this forum for free? Maybe some of us could put a few ideas down about a very flexible schedule and then do it and discuss as we go along? Be interested to hear your thoughts on this.

[JonW]

Hi Oatie,
Welcome to the forum.
Must say, excellent idea.
I'd definitely be up for that sort of thing, time and energies allowing.
I'm only in the early stages of mindfulness teacher training so not sure how helpful I could be. But I'm willing to try.
All good things,
Jon, Hove

[piedwagtail91]

There's a free mbsr not mbct course that ideas could be 'borrowed' from here http://palousemindfulness.com/selfguidedMBSR.html
I haven't checked it out fully but I've seen some of their other stuff and its ok.
I guess it depends how structured you want the course to be.

[Oatie]

Hi Jon, thanks ver much for your welcome.
Glad you like the idea.
So just throwing about some more ideas.... Maybe the course could run as an ongoing cycle of 7 or 14 days so anyone could join at the beginning of each cycle.
Maybe first week focusing on mindfulness and the second on compassion?
Each day would have a theme that could either guide practise or not, or be woven into what ever you were working with.
Their could be levels of commitment from intensive, eg checking in daily or once every two or three days and posting a comment about practise... or maybe a more relaxed approach, only checking in weekly. Maybe at some point, an intensive and a relaxed group running concurrently to suit people's needs? I'll stop there for now. Could some of that work? What else might be good?

[piedwagtail91]

If its a course for beginners to learn mindfulness it would really need to run over weeks not days. One day per session isn't enough to learn a deep enough practice.

[Oatie]

There's a free mbsr not mbct course that ideas could be 'borrowed' from here http://palousemindfulness.com/selfguidedMBSR.html
I haven't checked it out fully but I've seen some of their other stuff and its ok.
I guess it depends how structured you want the course to be.

Hi pied wagtail
Thanks for the link. Yes, it does look good. Maybe the guy would like to join the forum! There's prob lots of good ideas out there.
Maybe a retreat structure might work too but spread over a week rather than a day.

[Oatie]

Hi, we're cross posting here pied wagtail
I posted the initial post in the wrong section. It should have been in the more experienced section. So maybe it could be for more experienced meditators initially, as a starting point?

[piedwagtail91]

Sorry, my mistake.i just get links to my phone.i always forget to check which part of the forum they're in. Not the first time and probably won't be the last.

[FeeHutch]

Hello Oatie

I think an online course is something we have been thinking about at various times since the forum began but as those of us who run it all have other jobs no one has felt they had the time or the ability to take it on. Not yet but I don't want to start predicting the future

[Gareth]

By all means, take the idea, and see what you can do with it.

Have a look at this topic that ran for a long time:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3274&p=3510&hilit=elephant#p3510

Your idea is certainly the sort of thing that the forum was created for.