Meditation Teacher Training—Learning All About Mindfulness Meditation

Have you ever wondered how mindfulness became so popular? To this day, you can find lots about learning all about mindfulness and a ton of different kinds of mindfulness practices!

It all started from the mindfulness-based stress reduction course and now there are lots of practices like mindful eating, mindfulness-based care for patients with dementia, those with relapse prevention, those undergoing recovery therapies, and much more, mindfulness now even has found its way into the virtual world as phone application and lots of internet resources. It seems like new mindfulness-based practices and therapies sprout every day and it comes in every form as a wellness therapy according to a specific need.

Once I asked my meditation instructor, “is mindfulness an actual therapy in itself?” He said mindfulness is first and foremost a method that stabilizes and relaxes the mind by encouraging it to pay full, non-judgmental attention to the present moment. Mindfulness is simply the process of becoming aware of our thoughts and feelings in the current moment.

A practice that can be incorporated into your daily schedule and cultivated gradually, mindfulness is the opposite of what most of us do most of the time: obsess over past or future events, worry about to-do lists, stress about life, and seek constant reassurances from others.

When we practice mindfulness meditation, we train the mind to remain rooted in the present. We do this by focusing our attention on an object – often the process of breathing – for some minutes. By turning our attention inwards and training the mind to settle, we find that our ability to remain composed and peaceful even when life presents us with curveballs increases greatly and our attitudes about life are transformed.

As the great American psychologist and philosopher William James put it over a century ago, “The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.”

Quick Facts About Mindfulness

What is the first thing that comes to your mind whenever you hear the word “mindfulness”? I remember mentioning this word to my friend who’s currently undergoing chemotherapy and she said that she has heard of it and has been practicing it together with her treatment.

What is mindfulness?

Mindful.org defines mindfulness as:

“The basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.”

It can be put simply as the practice of the awareness of our mental and sensory experiences, our thoughts, and emotions. Mindfulness is a natural part of ourselves and there’s growing research showing that when you train your brain to be mindful, you’re remodeling the physical structure of your brain.

What is meditation?

You’ve heard maybe even read a lot about meditation but trying out meditation is so much different in actual practice.

On my first try during the meditation teacher training, I realized that the mind is certainly not going to be easily devoid of thoughts as what the traditional meditation exercises might ask or tell you to do so. It is something that cannot be done simply as it involves mental exploration and a suspension of our judgment and unleashing our natural curiosity about the works of the mind and relieving our experiences with warmth and kindness to ourselves and others.

How mindfulness and meditation go together?

Mindfulness can be practiced through meditations, body scans, and mindful activities like mindful eating, mindful photography, or it can be as simple as appreciating the pause before you answer the phone instead of quickly responding “Hello”.

Father of Mindfulness

In 1979, Jon Kabat-Zinn introduced the concept of “mindfulness” which took meditation to a pedestal where scientists, doctors, and researchers took it seriously and use it as a kind of scientific-based intervention.

He was the one who developed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), an eight-week course to help people with pain management. Since then it has been used as an intervention to help depression, anxiety, and other pathological and non-pathological issues.

Clinical researches about mindfulness were first done at the University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Stress Reduction Clinic which was founded with the help of Jon Kabat-Zinn and is currently known as the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society. His original researches now have led to a lot of other MBSR studies, he has also authored a lot of books the most famous is, Wherever You Go, There You Are (1995), and has since started a practice that centers about the concept of: “If you attend to your mind, you can change your life.”

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

Mindfulness-based stress reduction is a formal eight-week program with a day-long intensive created by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979. This program is now being adapted to a workbook format (authored and co-authored by Elisha Goldstein and Bob Stahl respectively) to help people who wanted to do this work. This program is in over 250 hospitals around the country and many more around the world supporting people with stress, anxiety, depression, chronic pain, alleviating stress related to medical conditions, and much more.

Below, William Baum relates how the MBSR came to its fruition.

“Jon told the doctors in the chronic pain unit to give him the patients that the medication was not working for. He thought that helping them work with these progressive set of mindfulness practices in a group format would help them develop the ability to see the pain more objectively and learn how to relate to it differently so they would suffer less from it.

Turns out he was right. Since 1979, there has been a tremendous amount of research coming out of Harvard, UCLA, Stanford, UW-Madison, and many more high-ranking institutions providing us the insight into how this approach is helpful and how it not only works but how it actually can change our brains for the better.”

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl once said: “Between stimulus and response there’s a space, in that space lies our power to choose our response, in our response lies our growth and our freedom.” This emphasizes that split second we have in choosing how we react to stress and pain that we encounter in our life. However, we seem to disregard this moment of choice “between stimulus and response” because of our habitual patterns of reacting to life.

MBSR trains people how to savor and be aware of that brief moment of choice before reacting to things that usually turn into emotions like anger, fear, etc. This interrupts the cycle of behavior and creates more choices in dealing with life. Maybe upon reflection, we realize that reacting to the guy who cut us off in the line will only increase our stress and didn’t make a difference to the other people in the line.

So in the future, we become more aware of this reaction by noticing how we crinkled our foreheads that make us aware of the stress reaction occurring— at that moment we are present and are sitting in that space between stimulus and response. We then choose to take a few deep breaths, let our shoulders relax a bit, and even consider the unpleasant state the other driver must be in to be driving that way. Maybe we even wish him well, because if he was, he wouldn’t be cutting the long line.

In doing the work of this program, participants begin to realize that they can break through long-held fears that have held them back from living the lives they wanted to live.

Aspects of Mindfulness

A mindfulness certification program is just one way to learn more about meditation and mindfulness. Mindfulness can be practiced successfully through these three different aspects:

1. Intention – Mindfulness need intention. The strength of your intention is one way for you to be motivated to put mindfulness into practice. Your intention is what you want to achieve from mindfulness it can be to reduce stress, find emotional balance, and fully discover oneself.
2. Attention – Mindfulness needs attention to the inner and outer experience. Mindful attention can be developed through different types of meditation – either formal, traditional, or informal – when talking, cleaning, or driving, for example.
3. Attitude – Mindfulness needs to look at certain attitudes, and practice these attitudes, are curiosity, acceptance, and kindness

Types of Mindfulness Meditation

As a kind of meditation, mindfulness meditation is an activity where you make time deliberately and consciously for cultivating mindfulness.

Mindfulness is the act of being consciously aware of mindful attitudes. You can practice mindfulness over any length of time, for the duration of a single breath or your whole life. You can practice it while waiting in a queue, talking to your partner, or walking down the street.

Clinically proven courses usually contain certain common mindfulness meditations such as:

• Body scan meditation: This kind of meditation does not need any specific posture, it can be done, sitting on the floor, chair even lying down. This practice focuses more on bodily sensations. You also begin to discover how easily your attention wanders off to other thoughts and how to be kind to yourself rather than self-critical when this happens.
• Movement meditation: This meditation is a physical mind and body exercise, that is done together with yoga, t’ai chi, qi gong, pilates, or other bodily exercises. This involves focusing on your bodily sensations, breathing, and watching with full awareness, and perhaps letting go of any thoughts and emotions arise as you practice. Slow walking meditation is another possibility that’s sometimes used.
• Breathing space meditation: This is one of the quick meditations that was taught by our meditation instructor, it can be done whenever you experience a highly distressing situation or whenever faced with a difficult emotion like anger or fear. This practice can span up to a maximum of three minutes to create a mindful consciousness of what’s happening instead of avoiding it. This meditation approach has been shown scientifically to be much more effective than avoidance.
• Expanding awareness meditation: This meditation is usually done sitting but can be practiced in any position. The meditation involves focusing, often in this order, on your breath, body, sounds, thoughts, and feelings, and finally developing an open awareness where you’re aware of whatever is most predominant in your consciousness.

You can break down the expanding awareness meditation into separate meditations, each powerful and transformative in themselves:

• Mindfulness of breath meditation: Breath meditation is putting one’s focus on the inhales and exhales, and every time your mind wanders, you bring your attention back to your breathing.
• Mindfulness of body meditation: Body meditation can be done together with a breath meditation. This involves being aware and feeling the physical sensation in your body at the moment.
• Mindfulness of sounds meditation: Sounds meditation is putting one’s focus on sounds as they come and go. If there are no sounds, one can just listen to the silence and be aware of the effect it has on you.
• Mindfulness of thoughts meditation: This meditation is about being aware of the thoughts that come to mind and putting a distance between yourself and your thoughts allowing them to come and go as they please, without judging or being too attached to them.
• Mindfulness of feelings meditation: Noticing the feelings that come and the emotions bring a sense of acceptance and curiosity to your emotions.
• Open awareness meditation: Sometimes called choiceless awareness, because you become aware of whatever’s most predominant in your awareness without choosing. You may be aware of any of the above meditation experiences as well.

Other kinds of mindfulness meditations are more like visualizations. These meditations slightly expand the definition of mindfulness, which usually involves paying attention to present-moment experiences. However, many people are quite visual and find those kinds of meditations valuable. The two main visual meditations are:

• Mountain meditation: This meditation helps develop stability, a sense of being grounded, and a feeling of more centeredness.
• Lake meditation: This meditation is about exploring the beauty of accepting and allowing experiences to be just as they are.

A Meditation Instructor’s Guide in Choosing A Mindfulness Program

Mindfulness offers different tools to help explore human experiences, emotions, in a variety of situations. I could attest that I learned more about myself during my meditation teacher training. There are a lot of ways to learn about the basics of mindfulness meditation, but there are also specific programs that target particular problems such as depression, addiction, leadership, or childbirth. The following are some of the options people have if they want to try mindfulness-based activities:

• Mindfulness-Based Initiatives

When Jon Kabat-Zinn introduced the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction in 1979, it has steadily grown and continuously developed that there are now related programs specific to the different challenges that people experience.

For example, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy. It is a therapy with a strong emphasis on inquiry or asking questions, it is a powerful way for people experiencing depression to explore their mental behaviors.

Another example is the Mindfulness-Based Childbirth Programs and Parenting which helps soon to be parents to encourage practices for mindful living and parenting to help benefit them during and after childbirth and child-rearing the comes postnatal.

Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training puts attention to one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors toward food to help people understand when they feel full enough so they don’t have the urge to overeat and be mindful of the healthiness of their eating choices.

Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention is helpful for people who wish to develop a lifestyle that supports their recovery.

There are other “mindfulness-based interventions” that can be found on the Internet and other scientific journals that experiments using these interventions.

• Meditation Centers

Meditation is usually associated with religion and most meditation centers affiliated with faith but some centers or programs are for people who don’t want a religion-influenced meditation. In Washington, D.C., there is the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, that conducts lots of retreats, workshops, activities, free online talks, and guided meditations.

UCLA, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Massachusetts are just some of the institutions that offer meditation programs open to the public and encourage community participation.

• The Internet and Applications

The digital age brought the benefit of getting anything we want, whenever— and the truth is, it’s the same with meditation, one can do it anywhere whenever.

Every major meditation center or university has its online resource that offers virtual courses, guided meditations, information about meditations activities like retreats, and workshops. There are also available applications like Headspace which can help just in case. Even just typing the word meditation would come up with lots of applications that could help in attempts of mindfulness. You can also find lots of websites offering mindfulness certification!

• Targeted Training Programs

There are programs intended for professionals who want to practice meditation for their personal needs.

• One prime example is CARE for Teachers (Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education)— which is a program that helps teachers recognize the stresses that teachers experience and adjust MBSR techniques to help educators improve their well-being and better support and develop their students.
• Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training is another kind of practice that uses body-based awareness and attention exercises to train and help police, firefighters, and soldiers cope with the effects of extreme, often prolonged, stress that comes with their line of work.
• The Institute for Mindful Leadership helps leaders find the space they need to be more reflective, to make room for more intuition, to become better team-builders.

Things to Focus on During Meditation

Most types of meditation involve paying attention to an experience and gently going back to that focal point if ever the mind wanders.

Different meditations involve different focal points, and that something that you focus on can make a big difference in your meditation experience. The following are just some of the different focal points that are commonly used during meditations:

1. The Breath. This is the most common focal point during meditation. Putting the attention on your breath, going back to it whenever the mind wanders. This is the easiest focal point to use too for those who want to try meditation.
2. The Body Scan. The attention is being focused on the physical sensations felt in the body. You can start putting your focus on your head and then slowly move your attention down. When you have reached the floor, change directions, and slowly go back up until the top of your head.
3. The Present Moment. Instead of putting your focus on something external, simply put your attention on the present moment. Recognize that you feel, experience the now, and what is happening around and in you, and savor it moment by moment.
4. Emotions. Acknowledge your emotions, what you are feeling at the moment, and as the thought was brought up? Are there layers and subtleties in those emotions; are they intense or weak?
5. Triggered Emotion. Recognize the cause of your emotion. How was it brought up, what triggered that reaction? Are these your instant reaction or were there any deep-seated causes at play? Don’t be too hard on yourself about anything – take a step back and observe your emotional triggers and reactions with compassion and curiosity, who knows, you might even get to understand them.
6. Compassion. Focus on your care and love for others around you. Allow this sense of compassion to grow and expand. Let yourself encompass others and yourself with love and care.
7. Forgiveness. As a meditation instructor, this is one of the hardest focal points there is. Think of someone or a person who has wronged you, or someone who you think has wronged you. Allow yourself to feel, remember, and experience all the emotions associated with that thought, instance, and experience, then slowly let those feelings and thoughts of hate go. Choose to forgive.
8. Personal Core Values. Think of your own values. What are the core ideas that you care about? What are the things that you stand for? Are you able to apply those core values now? Are they present in your everyday life and choices?

• Inspiration. Think about your motivation or inspiration, gauge how inspired you feel right now. Are you inspired by this present moment? Explore the details of what makes you feel inspired, and the triggers of how you lose the inspiration.
• Your Goals. Think about your most important goals. What feeling comes up as you think of them? Is there excitement? Pressured? Do you feel challenged? Are you doing the things that could help you achieve your goals?
• Other people’s mortality. Think of the people around you in your life. Bring to mind and remind yourself that they are human, fallible just like you. They can become conscious, they are able of feeling, and are thinking-beings just like you. Take a dip in that shared sense of humanity and rekindle the familiarity of having humanity.
• The Misery of Others. Notice the sorrow and pain of the people around you, and as you become aware of the pain of those around you this can lead you to develop more compassion. Think of those people around you who are in pain – they can be people that you know personally or people you strangers who you see suffering (like the homeless.) You can include thinking about the people who are not within your scope or vicinity, the distant people in the world, like the people and kids in Africa. Put yourself in their shoes and try to let their suffering in, hopefully, this will teach you to respond with love and compassion.
• Happiness. Put your attention on your sense of happiness. Are you happy right now? How does it feel like when you focus your attention on your happiness? What are the ways that could help you increase your sense of happiness in your life? Are you able to share that happiness with others?
• The Heart of the Rose. This is a simple meditation from the book “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.” It involves meditating in front of a rose and simply focusing on appreciating its beauty— the color, the fragrance, the softness of the petals, even the hazards of being pricked by the thorns. Fully appreciate the rose for what it is— spikes and all.
• Breathe in the Good, Breathe Out the Bad. This is like focusing on the breath, but on the inhale, think of breathing in positive emotions like love, compassion, and inspiration. On the exhale, think of expelling negative emotions, thoughts, and experiences from your body, such as stress, anger, or resentment.
• Soothing Music. You can do this by play a piece of soothing, relaxing, or kind of calming music in the background. Put your focus on the music, allow yourself to experience the music fully, let yourself feel things, outpouring emotions are okay.
• The White Light. Most meditators find visualizing white light as calming and rejuvenating. You can try to visualize this light not just as space but something the envelopes you, flowing into you through your breath or even can be emanating from your heart.
• A Recurring Memory of a Conversation. This meditation is best used when there’s a conversation that your mind kept going back on. To start, you can let yourself think and relive that conversation for a few moments. Then try to bring your consciousness back to the present moment. Look and explore the thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations that come from it. This can help you understand and expel any lingering feelings related to that conversation. This is a way for you to face that moment again and accept the present of how it has affected you.
• Conscious Eating. This is synonymous with mindful eating. It is a form of meditation while you’re eating. You can start by appreciating the plate or spoonful that you are going to much on, savoring every bite, crunch, and the different tastes and textures— fully experience your meal as you are eating it.
• Space and Expansion. Think of this as focusing on the bigger space other than what you see and know. Focus on the vastness of the world, the universe, realize how you may be a little part of it but a truly affecting one.

The vast majority of matter is made of space. See if you can feel a sense of vastness, to feel space itself. Can you imagine yourself, floating through space at this very moment? What can you say about the experience?

Specific Mindfulness Meditation for Different Needs

Buddhism traditions note that lasting happiness is achieved by understanding and training the mind. We usually define our happiness in external validation and comfort that the world gives like money, experience, and things. With these things we experience either, happiness or stress, it can even occur simultaneously, these things in the outside world somehow could dictate how we feel. And it is when I took a meditation teacher training program that I learned to look inside and find my happiness with just myself. I mean I’m not really a materialistic person, I just mostly find myself lacking, and my training has helped shift my perception of “being lacking” to “enough and developing”. Meditation teaches us that even when there are ups and downs in our lives, mindfulness and practice of awareness deepens our understanding of life itself and helps us develop the positive enduring qualities that can lead us to stable happiness. This sense of personal well-being could affect others and in a ripple effect, that benefits others as well. The following are the different types of mindfulness meditation according to one’s need:

Mindfulness Meditation for Beginners

What does mindfulness for beginners look like? One way to familiarize yourself with the basics of meditation is to join a local class or group session in a community. Having practice buddies can help you encourage practicing more. You can try the simple tips below before you decide to take on a full mindfulness certification program. There are other beginner tips online, you can simply search and lots of resources will come up, but here are a few basic tips for those who want to try meditation for the first time— this is even useful for those who want to try practicing again:

1. Set or schedule a time The first step for you to successfully try meditation is to set aside a few minutes each day to practice mindfulness. You don’t necessarily need to have a dedicated meditation chair, cushion, or mat to do it. You don’t need to have “special skills” or a certain personality of characteristics. Just setting aside 10 to 15 minutes daily is enough to get you started. You can think about the time of day that is best for you. Are you a morning person or a night owl? When do you best need a clear mind? A lot of people like to sit in the morning before the busy-ness begins, but some prefer evenings or after work.
2. Find your spot and mind your posture The most important thing about your posture isfinding a way to sit comfortably with your back straight, whether you’re on a chair, cushion, or meditation bench. Your body should be dignified, aligned, and relaxed.
3. Synchronize your breath with your body To do this, focus on the present moment. For a while set aside your mind’s busy thinking and try to tune in to the feeling of the “now”. Remain focused on the present by putting your attention to the sensations you’ll experience physically, like breathing. As you inhale, try to be aware of the process of your inhalation. When you exhale, explore the awareness of your exhalation. Don’t analyze or embellish, just impartially observe what’s going on with your body and respiration in the here and now.
4. Recognize the thoughts that come but let them pass
   As you pay attention to the process of breathing, thoughts and emotions will arise and your mind might wander. But the catch here is trying not to react to them. Recognize them but you’re not going to do anything about them. You will acknowledge them, let them pass, and go back to focusing on your breathing. Mindfulness is in the act of noticing, letting go, and coming back IS mindfulness. It’s that simple.
5. Always be kind to yourself
   Every time you realize that you’ve been distracted or when your mind wanders, think of it as an opportunity to come back to the sensation of breathing. You might feel frustrated when your thoughts and emotions interrupt what was meant to be a meditation session to keep you calm.As my former meditation instructor once said, “The essence of “calm” in mindfulness comes from the ability to step back and distance yourself from the thoughts and emotions rather than the ability to suppress them. Enjoy the journey!” Remember that every meditator has experienced agitation, interruption, drowsiness, and frustration. Their success comes from their effort to continue despite experiencing those distractions. Remember to be kind to yourself by seizing this opportunity to discover and explore the things that meditation has to offer.