Dates: 26 July- 31st July 2024

Booking info: Please contact info@mindfulnessassociation.net for the booking link

Times: The retreat starts at 3pm on Friday 26th July and ends after lunch on Wednesday 31st July 2024.

Location: Samye Ling, please contact bookings@samyeling.org to book your meals and accommodation. If attending in person please book your accommodation and meals for the weekend directly with Samye Ling by emailing bookings@samyeling.org. They will need to know the dates that you would like to stay, what room you would like (please click here to see the room types and prices), your name, and the name of the second person if you are booking a twin room, your address, phone number and preferred email address for the booking. No room bookings can currently be made via the Samye Ling website. 

Cost: £473.00 which can be paid in five monthly instalments of £94.60. If you cancel this retreat less than eight weeks before the start date your retreat fee will not be refunded. However it may be possible to transfer to a subsequent retreat for an administrative fee of £100.00

On the first day of a mindfulness teacher training I look around the room. I see a circle of people who are each on the brink of developing a new potential within themselves, the potential to teach the wisdom of mindfulness to others. It gives me goose-bumps to imagine that in a year or two that potential will be travelling out into the world reaching many people and places.

Personally, I’m so grateful to have found work that has authenticity and humanity at its heart. All around me I see work situations which promote attitudes, lifestyles and values that create cycles of suffering, degrading individual, collective and ecological wellbeing.

Like many who decide to teach I had found mindfulness to be the answer to my prayers and the answer to questions that I had been brewing throughout my adult life. Crucially for me, it was also the one thing that laid down a workable path through chronic pain, when nothing else had helped. As I trod this path, I gradually rebuilt my life and my inner world from the bottom up, discovering a new way of being that was able to remove some of the causes of the pain and accommodate the remaining pain. In this way my pain changed from being devastating to being meaningful.

So much of the suffering in society (like my chronic pain) comes from a lack of understanding of the human mind, body and heart. If only it could become normal to learn this humane intelligence from the beginning, maybe the world could be the different place that Jon Kabat-Zinn believes it could be. Becoming a mindfulness teacher means that we can give ourselves to this worthy project and contribute what we can.

I believe the world needs mindfulness and it needs mindfulness teachers with genuine, thorough, in depth training. Brief, superficial training misses and therefore cannot transmit the true wisdom of mindfulness. Human beings on a mass scale need to learn and embody new ways of being in a graduated, long-term way. Genuine mindfulness enables us to whittle away at unhelpful habits and attitudes to ourselves, our relationships, to work, to society and to the environment. Grandiose Kabat-Zinn’s mission may sound, but we’ve got to start somewhere!

Training to be a mindfulness teacher is one of the best things I have ever done. It enabled me to turn my own arduous journey through chronic pain into an initiation and a training. Many people who train to teach do so because they want to share the amazing benefits of mindfulness that they have experienced themselves, with others. This was true for me. What could be more fulfilling!

While I learned to teach mindfulness, I had to continue to practice like my life depended on it, still suffering a lot with pain, but I knew that this was grist for the mill. Not only was I learning the skills, techniques and theory for teaching skills, but I was being seasoned and matured by my struggles and this I knew would be the deepest source of my readiness to teach. There can’t be many professions where your biggest challenge becomes your greatest qualification!

Training to teach accelerated my own practice. It put me right on the crest of the wave of the moment and I had to rely on being present as my ballast, not just quietly and privately but in a group setting. My practice was my ground when I felt under intense pressure, leading practices and conducting inquiries with my peers for the first time. The learning atmosphere was compassionate, but still all my patterns of perfectionism and avoiding failure kicked in and I had to find ways to remain present, be kind to myself and continue. What a challenge! And what a profound learning! And the group had an incredible feeling of powerful compassionate fellowship, which is a rare thing to find. After benefitting from this compassionate fellowship as a participant learning mindfulness, then as a teacher learning to teach, we can finally have the privilege of facilitating this kind of group experience for new mindfulness participants.

I think we all need the wisdom of mindfulness more than ever right now and I hope you will join us on the teacher training and become part of this movement, offering sanity in a chaotic world.

Fay Adams

Train to Teach Mindfulness Online with Fay Adams and Tina Gilbert over 12 evening sessions starting 16 January 2023

Don’t imagine / Let go of what may come

Don’t think / Let go of what is happening now

Don’t examine / Don’t try to figure anything out

Don’t control / Don’t try to make anything happen

Rest / Relax right now and rest

“Six Words of Advice” from Tilopa

Yesterday I experienced a conversation with my whole mind/body. I don’t mean I was talking to my body, more like I was in conversation with my partner, when I realized my body was also listening and responding – in a way that I had never experienced before. I had an experience of this is how things are – like a veil had been lifted between me and my actual experience.

The Gardener, as I like to call him, doesn’t sit on cushions gazing into nothingness; he gets his connection to stillness and peace from having his hands in the earth, growing onions, feeding the birds, watching the wind and banging nails into things. I like this. He is Mr Zen, he watches the birds and the world through his green eyes which are full of peace and tranquility and tenderness. Me? I have to work at it.

He knows I am a mindfulness practitioner and in the past has taken the opportunity to test me by saying things like “well that’s not very mindful”. This is funny, now. Might have irritated me a tad before, and I would imagine maybe pouring his tea on his head (mindfully). But now – I am ready for the obstacles – in whatever form – snarky comments, direct challenges, subtle rejections….I am with it all (as best I can be). Of course lots of it, ok well, let’s be honest… all of it, the angst of it all, originates in my mind. Seeing this as true… is what Pema Chodron calls this ‘the wisdom of no escape” ! (It’s a book – I recommend it!)

The Gardener and I muddle through and without actually talking about mindfulness all the time (that would drive him nuts) – this balance of keeping it inside me with a commitment to be mindful as much as possible has been good to keep me in the practice zone rather than the blether zone. What’s beginning to happen.., is that now he – is beginning to initiate conversations about ‘being present’ and being ‘in the moment’ and has even gone as far as watching Eckharte Tolle on the subject.

This week I happen to be on “Week 5” delivering the Mindfulness Based Living Course (MBLC) for the first time to my first ever group of willing participants, after passing my mindfulness teacher training in July- so far – it seems to be going really well. The teacher training is intensive and prepares us well.  I was slightly apprehensive about my talk on  the undercurrent and observer as a model to help us to understand which part of the mind we can train and which part we can’t.  So I had been reading around this, and had been practising the practice of observing the undercurrent – the endless flow of thoughts, images, and objects arising, passing and dissolving and with a soft detection of any attitudes and judgements that come on along with them…just under the surface…(this was very helpful for my group – it really helped them to think of thoughts form this different perspective. And, it helped me too, to revisit the practice in such depth.)

The next night I was relaxed in my knitting chair, with The Gardener opposite engaged in a conversation in which a difficult memory had been rekindled for him. I had a fully embodied experience of mind and body, which unfolded as we spoke; I was first speaking with, listening, and thinking, then I felt I was assimilating this interaction with him and noticing this, and this and…now this.. I had slipped into a broader awareness. I noticed I was trying to manipulate the conversation to make a point instead of listening. Pulling it around away from its source and yanking it off over here. His reaction was to speak a bit louder, to frown at me this made me feel ashamed in my belly. I let go immediately.

He was rapt in the story of the past traumatic event, which had been triggered by an imagined future event – the death of a family member. I could feel he was reliving it in his mind and perhaps (a guess here) projecting the same thing into the future and I could feel the tension and anger build up again in the body which now my body was reflecting too –  my body felt covered in armour – restricted – fearful – I didn’t like it  – I noticed I didn’t like it –  I wanted the feeling to go away – very strongly  – but I saw this too. I wanted the words to stop and the reliving of this thing to stop, but he needed to speak it again. Which meant feeling it again, and for me too. The energy was becoming fractious and uncomfortable, palpable, it was alive again.

Let go of what has passed. Let go of what may come.

The feeling was tense, hot, ripping. I floundered a bit with what direction the words were going to go as I had just slipped out from under a veil – I had literally just come out of being lost in the river, in the undercurrent – and found myself dripping and observing from the riverbank – which involved an immediate shift in the place where the language was coming from – a letting go of needing to direct the conversation – or say what I thought – just a seeing feeling compassion for this painful reliving. It is not compassionate to stop someone in a full flow of feeling like this, I thought. But I am feeling this tension too in a way experiencing it but it is a mere reflection. I breathed deep into my body bursting with sensations and listened deeply to his words with embodied presence as they tumbled out. Seeing the futility in wanting it to stop I surrendered to whatever was there. I melted back into soft body – I felt fully present with my partner and able to be fully with him, which was really all he needed.

Let go of what is happening now. Don’t try to figure anything out.

Don’t try to make anything happen.

Mindfulness with embedded compassion at its heart gently opens up our awareness with a comfort blanket inside our heart space making way for whatever we may encounter. We can’t fix each other, we are not broken. We can open to How Things Are and without judgement – that is our training – let’s have it – however messy, hot, repugnant, sticky, uncomfortable. Let’s be open to it all with a compassionate heart and rest here.

Relax, right now, and rest.

Mindfulness Challenge

Formal mindfulness meditation practice is a keystone, a touchstone even, for finding the gold in amongst our difficulties. In order for Mindfulness to begin to manifest and grow in our daily lives, there is no way round it – we need to make a real effort to practice.

This week let’s set an intention to bring Tilopa’s 6 words of advice into our practice this week, one at a time. Decide how long to commit to – a length of time that you can comfortably fit in to your schedule. Reminding ourselves of our motivation to practise can help us maintain our practice over time – it gives our intention energy. Using Tilopa’s advice, let’s choose one tip each day as contemplative focus for our practice. How does this unfold for you?

I’ll do this too – of course!

Please do let us know how you get on with this – we love to hear from you.

In the meantime, rest, now, ‘everything happens by itself’.

Kind wishes

Lisa

There are three ways to qualify as Ready to Teach the MBLC.

A: MIndfulness Level 1 > Teacher Training Level 1 ( 2 weekends) > Teacher Training Level 2 (Retreat) > Ready to Teach MBLC Certificate

B: MSc Studies in Mindfulness with University of Aberdeen Y1 & Y2 (MBLC Level 1) > Continue (with MA) onto Teacher Training Level 2 (Retreat) >  Ready to Teach MBLC Certificate

C: MSc Mindfulness & Compassion with University of West of Scotland in London > Ready to Teach Certificates in MBLC & CBLC

To be registered with BAMBA (British Association of Mindfulness Based Approaches) you will need to run 2 x  8 week MBLC courses under supervision.

. . .

My route into the teaching course came kind of by accident on the MSc Studies in Mindfulness, where at the end of each year, there is a chance to undertake the Level 1 Teaching Skills.

This was not too daunting as we sat with our tutor groups for this training, and actually had a bit of a giggle. For example, we quickly learned that if you were at the ‘end’ of the circle, and it was your turn to lead last – then you were a nervous wreck by then and not at all mindful! So I tried to always go near the beginning to get it over with and enjoy the practices.

In order to get on to this Level 1 Teaching Skills Weekend, you need to have completed Level 1 Mindfulness Training. If you have completed COMPASSION and INSIGHT courses, this will definitely enrich your skills as a Mindfulness teacher and give you a deeper understanding of the subtle mind processes in yourself and therefore in your participants.

The Mindfulness Association have a selection of Level 1 courses which are either delivered over 4 weekends, OR you can attend weekly sessions.

From the end of August and starting in September there is the possibility of attending morning Mindfulness or evening Mindfulness Level 1 Foundations of Mindfulness sessions. SEE BELOW FOR UPCOMING LEVEL ONE COURSES starting or continuing in Augiust & September.

If you have attended a Foundations of Mindfulness first weekend, then you can hop on to a CONTINUATION COURSE to finish the Level 1 training. I’ll add links below to the specific courses for you if you are interested.

HOW WE LEARN

So to begin the practice sessions are very short and in small groups of three sharing a bodyscan – I start with the whole body – you do the toes and feet – the next person on the ankles etc, – and as our confidence grows so does the group size… moving up to leading a Settling, Grounding, and Resting practice, by passing the baton so to speak, first person – settling into posture, next – intention and motivation – next – focusing on the breath – next etc etc until everyone has had a chance to lead a little. There is no feedback on these early sessions which gives a lot of freedom, alleviates nerves and allows you to just find your way with the practices and to find your own voice. Embodiment is an aspiration at this stage! – difficult when the mind is engaged with thinking what’s coming next and wanting to giggle at times.

These bite sized chunks in relaxed sessions works well. This is followed by enquiry practice – enquiring into the group’s individual experiences – there is definite methodology in this key and integral part of mindfulness training.

We are taught certain language etiquette but encouraged to do it our own way, while sticking to the syllabus. This is important.

At the start it is easy to get confused with the different parts of settling grounding and resting (SGR). It is really, really helpful to download the free MBLC app and just listen over and over to the practices when walking, or my favourite, first thing in the morning for my morning sit and also at bedtime. My app is like my pocket friend. The voices are familiar and it just helps embed the way of speaking and the slow pace of the delivery. Slow and spacious.

Once you have completed the Mindfulness Level 1 and then the Level 1 Teacher Training first weekend you are invited to write an assignment before attending the 2^nd weekend. Some people just do the first weekend to add skills to their existing practices. The 2^nd weekend is usually around 3 months after the first. The second weekend builds on the first with more leading of longer sessions in slightly larger groups and now with some tutor feedback to guide you. By the time we get to the second weekend we are ready for some tutor and peer feedback.

Once you have attended both weekends you then join the Mindfulness Association as a Trainee Teacher. The trainee teacher membership gives you access to a great library of CPD (Continuing Professional Development) videos and teaching archive and access to regular meet ups on zoom with Heather Regan-Addis who will help you with any questions you may have and also help you to find a peer group of 4 (or more to practice with). You then take yourself through the 8 week course, practicing and journaling every day. You can’t not do this part! The journaling is such a great way to notice process. Tutors will check that you have done this part.

We had about 7 in our peer group as not everyone can attend each session so we were usually 3 or 4 at each session to practice with. I bought zoom (£120) as a way of making sure I did practice! so I took on the role to manage the meetings as I was so keen to keep going. Peer group sessions need to be well managed or it dissolves into chat time, which we all needed actually, but really 2 hours is quite long so if you keep it a little strict about time it prepares you for the Retreat Proper because I tell you, Heather Will Be Watching You with her clock! So each person has 30 mins MAX to lead a little do some enquiry and then have the feedback from the peers about what you smashed! Where you crashed and what was interesting about your session. (Actually “What went well, what could be improved and what was interesting”, or a ‘wild card’, or a ‘tune up’” – these are all terms that appeared during the retreat).

So now we are ready for the Level 2 retreat.

We had been practicing for months and in my previous blogs I wrote about how nervous I was, how difficult it was for me – so much resistance and fear around the idea of ‘teaching’. One way to get through this was for me to really acknowledge the fact that this is facilitating mindfulness. It’s not passing on something from my head to your head, it’s guiding you to have your own experience, and to help you relate to what that means for you. I have nothing to teach anybody in that respect. Only how to have a mindful experience, and even that I cannot guarantee! Your mind is your very own! Connecting with intention and motivation to teach eabled me to connect with WHY. Why am I doing this? This gave me courage in the face of fear.

I was sent lots of documents to read. About 6 weeks before the retreat you are told which practices and talks you will need to lead from the MBLC 8-week course which was devised by Heather Regan-Addis and Choden. Choden is a monk at Samye Ling. Heather and Choden both trained with Psychologist and Buddhist Rob Nairn (who wrote Diamond Mind and several other books which I thoroughly recommend) including from Mindfulness to Insight which all three wrote together. This is the dream team of Compassionate Mindfulness teaching and it was an absolute privilege to be on the course with these truly inspired and inspiring teachers. I am sorry I have never been to a teaching by Rob Nairn but there are a few on the Mindfulness Association’s  youtube channel – Rob talks about the psychology of meditation and has a very engaging way of teaching)

The layered way this course has been arranged is just so clever and well thought out. Disciplined structure and groundrules are set, keeping the process safe for everyone. We are invited to consider rationale and teaching points in each session which build on each other creating a truly supportive structure that will help the teacher to hold the space for the participants and help the participants move through the course in a gradual and gentle way. Continuing CPD sessions on enquiry and other topics help to support the continued growth and practice of the teacher.

We had some of our peer group go through the course before us and when they came back they were just in awe of the depth it had added to their practice. It feels soo good to be writing this and I now saying the same thing. This course adds so much in practice as well as to the knowledge of the theory; the Buddhist philosophy, psychology and neuroscientific underpinnings of the course.

Mindfulness training definitely helped me to allow my anxious feelings to be there, feel them, notice how they feel similar to excitement – decide I am actually a bit excited and then do it anyway!

The Retreat lasted 5 days, starting on a Thursday afternoon, and ending on a Wednesday lunchtime. Practice sessions were interspersed with guided practices from the tutors, rationales, and tutor groups, discussion sessions and tea breaks, with long lunchtime breaks. We had 6 in our group but there may be 10.

It’s intense. Exhilirating. Empowering and connecting.

My first session was a 30 minute session. I had to talk on settling the mind for ten minutes, lead a practice for ten minutes and do an enquiry for 10 minutes. Nothing like doing a talk on Settling the Mind to unsettle the mind!

I used an app called flip timer to time the sessions – it’s is a huge flip clock easy to see on my phone and to start and stop.

We all had to do at least two 30 minute sessions and one shorter session. As we had a small group we were all ‘invited’ to lead another 30 minute session. Best to jump in and volunteer to do the ones you fancy!

As the week progressed we had the felt sense of moving down and out of our heads and into our breathing feeling sensing bodies as we let go into embodied guiding as mindfulness teachers. I learned the best way was to throw the notes away and to fully embody the practice as I was leading it. You need to read up on what you are doing so you know it with your thinking mind – but the delivery is embodied, and you just need to trust yourself and your body to deeply know it. Because if you have got this far – trust me – your body knows it. Just Do It.

My second practice was a short Self-Compassion break, that was a lovely one and to finish I had to lead a reflection practice about our journey to becoming teachers of Mindfulness. I had just finished my talk and practice, my last one for the whole course, feeling elated, when lightning struck nearby and my whole house was suddenly plunged into darkness – all the electric went off even the mobile mast was down and so I found myself sitting looking at a black screen, in the dark, nothing to do nowhere to go! The electric was off for 2 hours. I watched myself feeling so cut off from everyone. So alone! The shock abated into feelin ginto this beautiful silent time to really take it all in and feel such gratitude for what I had just achieved and to the tutors for creating such a wonderful deeply moving, helpful, wonderful, authentic course. May we all take this practice and share the benefits of Mindfulness in ever widening circles!

I went and lit the woodburner. Tried to turn the kettle on to make myself a cup of tea (not very mindful haha) and just sat there quietly taking in the good of the whole course.

Weekly Challenge

The Dalai Lama says that compassion is “the sensitivity to the suffering of self and others, with a deep commitment to try to relieve it”.

After literally going through my resistance to and fear of teaching mindfulness by allowing myself to feel that resistance and be curious about it – that led to me discovering during the retreat that my underlying fears, stemmed from a deep-rooted problem manifesting in many areas of my life as an issue of low self-worth. At the same time I tapped into what it was pulling me towards this course as I was curious about this paradoxical feeling of being torn in two. Compassion. To help others in the way that the Mindfulness Association / Mindfulness & Compassion practices have helped me.

When we allow ourselves to feel and accept our own pain, it transforms into compassion, and we better understand and care about the suffering of others. Compassion gave me courage to face my fears ! (From French word coeur – heart!)

This week I invite you to spend the week using the self-compassion break whenever you notice yourself in a moment of difficulty. Notice what happens as the week goes on. Do you notice any patterns here? Can you feel that you are not alone in your suffering? Just like you, many others are also experiencing these difficult feelings.

If you’d like to share your thoughts or have any questions about the teaching please do email me at membership@mindfulnessassociation.net I’d be so happy to hear from you.

Kind and Compassionate wishes,

Lisa

UPCOMING LEVEL 1 MINDFULNESS

START HERE: LEVEL 1 (FORTNIGHTLY on Monday Evenings)  Starts August 30th

START HERE: LEVEL 1 (Wednesday Mornings) Starts September 22nd

START HERE: FOUNDATIONS OF MINDFULNESS WEEKEND 1 OF 4 – STARTS September 25th

If you have completed a first weekend of Level 1

CONTINUE HERE: LEVEL 1: CONTINUATION (3 x Weekends) August 28th

NEXT TEACHING COURSES:

TRAIN TO TEACH ONLINE LEVEL 1: WEEKEND ONE: 16-17 OCTOBER (& 29-30 January)

TRAIN TO TEACH ONLINE LEVEL 1: WEEKEND ONE – JANUARY 22-23 (& 23-24 April)

TRAIN TO TEACH LEVEL 2 RETREAT: FEBRUARY 22-27