Mindfulness: The Teacher Question (Part 1)

[deannaburkett]

Hi, Everyone!

Am working on some reflections around teaching mindfulness . . . Would welcome feedback; will be posting Part 2 in the next few days . . . Thanks! And be well~

2014 has been called the Year of Mindfulness. Even TIME Magazine got on board with its February cover story, "The Mindful Revolution."

Last week I was at a mental health conference to announce an upcoming mindfulness course. A woman approached me after the announcement to ask how attending a course could help her if she'd already read a lot about mindfulness and understood it pretty well.

Her question is a fair one. The course she was curious about is 8 weeks long, meets for 2 hours each week, and requires mindfulness "homework" every night. The course costs $300 and is not covered by insurance. It is an investment of time and money, and with mindfulness being the thing to do right now, the course could easily be perceived as a way to cash in on a trend.

It was the end of the day, and although she had stayed behind she was standing on one foot ready to leave, so I gave her the short answer--reading about mindfulness isn't the same as practicing mindfulness, just like reading about swimming isn't the same as getting in the water and learning to swim. The benefits and insights of mindfulness come from practice, and the 8-week course supports participants in learning to practice.

It is understandable that much of the recent media hubbub around mindfulness might not do justice to mindfulness practice--journalists writing about mindfulness have not necessarily practiced mindfulness themselves, and if they have, I can sympathize that writing about the act of swimming isn't easy and doesn't come off as very flashy.

And yet, where fails to emphasize the importance--the utter necessity--of practice. And this leads to the Teacher Question. "Who teaches someone to practice mindfulness?"

"Who can teach someone to practice mindfulness?" is a very different question than "Who can teach mindfulness?

The importance of the distinction becomes clear, I think, if we return to the swimming analogy and what it means to learn how to swim from a book or from a teacher who has learned swimming from a book.

This analogy is just a place to start and is not the only place, since mindfulness is thousands of years old and is taught in countless venues along the secular to spiritual continuum. This means that questions and answers around who teaches mindfulness can vary widely (infinitely) depending upon the teaching venue and the motivations of the student.

Here I am focusing on the secular/health-care industry as the teaching venue, with two goals: 1) de-mystify the training and experience of one particular group of teachers, MBSR Teachers, in this setting and 2) emphasize that a teacher's personal mindfulness practice and willingness to submit this practice to the discernment of more experienced mindfulness teachers/practitioners is the experiential foundation a mindfulness teacher ultimately works from.

[piedwagtail91]

these are the good practice guidelines. it takes around 2 years to train to teach mindfulness, a lot longer to teach teachers.
UK Network for Mindfulness-Based Teacher Trainer Organisations
Good Practice Guidelines for Trainers of Mindfulness-Based Teachers
Trainers need to meet and adhere to the Good Practice Guidelines for Teachers.
In addition they need to meet the following Good Practice Guidelines for Trainers of
Mindfulness-Based Teachers:
1. Have had full teaching responsibility for at least nine mindfulness-based courses over a
minimum of three years.
2. To be offering training pathways which have a minimum of 12 months duration.
3. To be a proficient teacher of mindfulness-based courses – as assessed by experienced
colleagues and potentially through the use of the Mindfulness-based Interventions:
Teaching Assessment Criteria (MBI: TAC).
4. Have trained to be a trainer via an apprenticeship with a more experienced trainer and
demonstrated a competency in training others.
5. To continue to teach mindfulness-based courses to people with varying levels of
experience as a teacher, alongside training teachers.
6. Be in a regular supervisory relationship in relation to teaching practice and its interface
with personal mindfulness practice, and engage in peer relationships with other trainers.
7. Attend annual retreats which facilitate practice at depth, some of which are at least 7-10
days in duration.
8. Stay up to date with the current and developing evidence base for mindfulness-based
interventions, with a particular emphasis on the training organisation’s area of expertise.
9. Be up to date with current methods of assessing mindfulness-based teaching competency
and maintaining good practice.
10. Be steeped in the practice and understanding of mindfulness which is informed by both
relevant current scientific and/or clinical understanding as well as its historical
antecedents from relevant spiritual and philosophical traditions, the most common
example of which is the Buddhist tradition.
11. Be a compassionate and strong team player - willing to operate in the context of a training
team and in connection with others who are training teachers in the UK context.
Mindfulness-based teacher trainers need well developed skills, understandings and attitudes
in the following areas:
1. An experientially gained understanding of the complexity of mindfulness as an
approach and its transformational potential.
2. An in depth understanding of the aims and intentions of the full range of curriculum
components within the mindfulness-based course they are training others to teach.
3. An understanding of the underlying theoretical principles of the mindfulness-based
courses they are training others to teach.
4. Understand and have the capacity to train others in the principles underpinning the
adaptation of mindfulness-based courses to different contexts and populations.
5. Skill in working with groups, especially the creation of a safe and challenging
learning environment.
6. The ability and skill needed to support trainees in identifying their strengths and
learning needs, and providing feedback which facilitates new learning.
7. An understanding of the complex interface between MBAs taught in a therapeutic
context and mindfulness as taught in traditional or specific cultural contexts and a commitment to being transparent in regard to which context(s) mindfulness
teaching/training is being offered.
The trainer will work within the ethical framework of his/her profession or training and will
additionally have particularly developed sensitivities in relation to:
- Only training within the limits and boundaries of competence
- Only asking trainees what is asked of self in relation to informal and formal
mindfulness practice

[deannaburkett]

Wow, Thanks! I'll have to look into this UK Network for M-B Teacher Trainer Organizations. Interesting. . .

[Gareth]

Mindfulness is so simple, yet the answers to these questions are incredibly complex.

I think the question of who can teach mindfulness effectively depends wholly on the student. What I think is for certain is the fact that a mindfulness teacher really ought to have their own, rigorous practice. My opinion is that it's simply impossible to understand this thing until you've actually done it for a while.

What I have learned so far is from reading, although I'm sure I still have a lot left to learn. There seem to be many people who this doesn't seem to work for though.

This topic appears to have got a little lost somehow. I'm moving it to 'Mindful Living' for more prominence.

[piedwagtail91]

in our area, anyone who wants to go on the teaching course has to do the full course as a participant. then they have to develop a good solid practice for a minimum of 6 months, personally i'd make that a year.
then they can apply to go on 8 week teacher training.
if they get on and through that they have to be supervised as co facilitator on a couple of courses before any decision is made.
in some cases i think some of them need more than that.
it can take a year or two.
it's also recommended to go on mindfulness retreats to deepen your practice.
without a good solid personal practice you just can't teach mindfulness.
sitting down reading a script, reading a script for meditation and giving cds out isn't teaching.
it's got to come from your own practice.
if you don't know yourself you cant pass anything on to others.
like gareth says it is experiential, not something you can learn in depth from reading a book.
even the enquiry process is based on your own practice, it's not a list of questions to ask. everyone is different and so is their experience. as a teacher you need to be able to see that or any enquiry will be pretty pointless.
it takes a big commitment.

[SheilaB]

Interesting topic, and I'm heartened to see awareness of the UK best practice guidelines (which I meet/adhere to as a teacher).

The topic made me think of something my supervisor shared with me during my training which really stayed with me - and which informs the way I try to create a space for students to discover their own learning, through practice:

"It's learning with the heart, not the head".

The nature of structured courses can make it seem like an intellectual endeavour, but I feel it's about having a guide to help us learn for ourselves how to be fully human. At least, that's how I've been fortunate enough to have been guided by my teachers.

Sheila

[JonW]

That's very well put, Sheila.
As my teacher Nick Diggins puts it, "As a teacher I’ll have a certain agenda for each session but there’s only so far that theory will go. Mindfulness teaching involves exemplifying presence rather than teaching ideas. If it’s only about ideas, then the magic of discovery is lost. So long as there’s presence and connection with people, then the session will flow."
The full interview with Nick can be found here: http://www.everyday-mindfulness.org/int ... k-diggins/

[Gareth]

"It's learning with the heart, not the head".

This will definitely be coming to a Tweet near you very soon.

[JonW]

I would tattoo that quote to my forehead but I've got enough tattoos as it is, and I couldn't bear the needle at my age.

[SheilaB]

Thanks for sharing those wise words JonW - good timing for me ahead of teaching a compassion workshop tomorrow. Will definitely read the full piece.

To be fair the line about the heart was actually said by my teacher Colette Power, but I'm sure that - like so much of this stuff - we're all just transmitting what's been passed down by those who've gone before us.