In this 3.5 hour class, you’ll learn how to write and guide a meditation in a way that fits with your particular experience-level and interest. Each person will write and guide their own short script and workshop their creations in small groups. We’re all about hands-on learning over here!
We’ll explore the fundamental awareness skills that underlie all meditation and spiritual practices, how to ensure these skills are threaded through different “forms” or techniques (from body to sound to imagination, in stillness, in movement, and in life), how to language your guidance to make it maximally accessible, and finally the importance of honesty and teaching where you’re at. I’m excited to share my passion for teaching and expect it to be a fun workshop.
Now the caveat.
The teaching of meditation is a vocation like anything else. It takes years to gain proficiency, and it absolutely must be founded on the teacher’s own experience and personal practice. There are many excellent comprehensive programs out there now for professional meditation teacher training. The newly-launched International Mindfulness Teacher’s Association(not without its controversies) is one place to find these programs. I recommend a minimum of 200-hour certification for people interested in making a livelihood here.
This workshop is not a professional certification; it is more about basic inter-personal hygiene and responsibility. A rudimentary understanding of the dynamics of self-regulation and the role of practice is something every human being should have, just like every human being should understand the basics of a healthy diet and the value of exercise.
This is my fiercest personal belief, one I’ll defend until my dying day. Which isn’t a very meditative thing to say, but then, I’m not a very meditative meditation teacher. The good news is you don’t need to be!