How to Teach Mindfulness and Meditation | Part 2 - Presence, Humility, and a Genuine Desire
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Hi everyone, welcome. My name is Sean Fargo, founder of Mindfulness Exercises, and I'd like to introduce you to the second part of our four-part series on the key aspects of teaching mindfulness. If you haven't listened to the first episode, I encourage you to take a listen. It's about the

the foundation of all effective mindfulness teachings. And today in this second episode, we're gonna be talking about maybe the most common challenge that new mindfulness teachers face, which is the imposter syndrome, fear of judgment, feeling

not worthy enough to be a mindfulness teacher. Maybe we don't feel mindful enough 100 percent of the time to be helping others. We're also going to be talking about how to introduce mindfulness to others for effectiveness and impact to help people

be open to practicing mindfulness without too much skepticism. So if you've ever wondered, am I really qualified to teach mindfulness? What will people think of me?

How do I get started? This episode is for you. We tried to pack it in with as much practical tips and tools for you to actually use so that you can make an impact yourself because the world needs more mindfulness and meditation. We'll talk about how to move past these doubts, help you to help others with more confidence, clarity, and credibility.

and I hope that you enjoy this episode. And now let's talk about the second key aspect of teaching mindfulness. We're going to talk about strategies to overcome self-doubt, fear of judgment, and imposter syndrome. So here's how I learned it. So I became a monk. Monk life was awesome. I wore monk robes for quite a while and it was the hardest thing I had ever done. I shaved my head and

I wore monk's robes, slept on a hardwood floor with no pillow, walked around random rural villages and farms with my alms bowl, collecting enough food for my one meal a day. I was ordained in, uh,

rural Thailand for a while, also Northern California for a while. And I had no screens, no money, no entertainment. It was the most austere monastic tradition I've ever come across. And it was hard. But there was a profound beauty with a simple way of living. All I had to do was practice mindfulness and meditation.

I wasn't so caught up in Buddhist theory or anything like that. For me, it was just about cultivating the sense of presence. My heart continually broke open, my struggles turned into resiliency, and I felt much more embodied and connected over time. So I was ordained for two years, at which point I wanted to share the gifts of mindfulness with others.

given how so many people around the world seem to be suffering more and more. My monastery had a rule, though, that I had to be a monk for at least 10 years before they would even consider allowing me to teach anything to others. And even if I did teach, my monk teachers wanted me to teach Buddhism.

which is way more nuanced and complex than simple mindfulness practices. So in a way, I kind of felt trapped. Why am I not allowed to teach simple mindfulness practices even though they've brought me so much benefit? Am I not good enough? What if I just helped a few people be mindful just a little bit? I really wanted to share mindfulness with others.

I also at the same time felt like I would be an imposter. I'm not a full master yet. Will people accept me as a mindfulness teacher knowing that I'm Sean Fargo from Bakersfield, California?

who maybe drank a little bit in college. I was afraid of being judged. Who does he think he is? And I was also comparing myself negatively with a lot of famous mindfulness teachers. Like, maybe I need to sound like Jack Kornfield or Thich Nhat Hanh or Tara Brach. I was afraid I wasn't good enough.

So maybe some of you are in this boat now. I literally had a recurring nightmare about feeling like an imposter mindfulness teacher and I had this nightmare all the time. The nightmare always went like this. So I'm dreaming and I find myself in a grocery store pushing my shopping cart around the aisles

And then I turned a corner and I accidentally bumped my cart into a very senior, well-respected mindfulness teacher. We looked at each other face to face. There's no avoiding him. And he said, hey, Sean, I heard you're wanting to teach mindfulness. Who do you think you are to teach mindfulness? And then I would wake up sweating, afraid of being found out.

It's the last thing I want to happen. And I never wanted that to happen in real life. So I told myself, you know, maybe I'm not good enough. Maybe later in life I can do it. But after a few of these nightmares, after wrestling with a lot of self-doubt, I wanted to be free of this fear. So I did something a little scary, which is to bring this gentle awareness, this mindfulness,

to the fear itself. So I imagined a scenario, the same scenario from the nightmare where I'm in the grocery store reliving that experience. And then after feeling all that fear, I would feel it in my body. I would bring this very gentle, spacious awareness to the fear in my body. And I would feel, okay, there's heat in the forehead, constriction around my heart and my chest.

butterflies in my belly, tingling in my feet. These sensations felt very unpleasant, which I usually judged as bad, and I reacted to them with feelings of shame and guilt. This time, I stayed with these sensations of fear with more and more gentle awareness, which took all of my courage to be with it.

and to not judge it or react to it. Knowing that the pain of not facing my fear was larger than the pain itself. I was tired of running away, tired of judging myself, tired of feeling like an imposter. So breathing in, I feel these sensations of fear. Breathing out, I feel these sensations of fear. And over time, these sensations of fear began to subside.

And then something remarkable happened. I had the nightmare again. I was in the same grocery store with my cart. I turned the corner, bumped into the cart of the same teacher who said, hey, Sean, I heard you're wanting to teach mindfulness. Who do you think you are? But this time the fear was gone. I actually had the courage to respond to the respected mindfulness teacher.

I said, a lot of people are suffering right now. Many of them are wanting help, needing help, and I feel called to help them. And I know a few simple mindfulness techniques that can help them. If they want help, and if I feel called to help them, and I know I can help them a little bit,

Who am I not to help them? How would I feel if I stood by and watched them suffer, not extending the support that I have to offer with the same practices that have helped me? That would feel really bad just to kind of stand by and watch them suffer and not do anything about it. And then the dream ended, like the dream just kind of dissolved and I felt empowered like, yeah, who am I not to help them? I can do this.

And, you know, the mindfulness teacher in my dream didn't have anything to say. He's like, I guess that makes sense. And then I felt free knowing that, you know, if anyone challenged me on teaching mindfulness, this is what I would say. You know, people want help. People are hurting. I can help them even just a little bit. So who am I not to help them? Do you want to stop me from helping people? Yeah.

That would be on their conscious, that's their karma. I want to help them. I wanted to teach mindfulness to help people who needed help. Sensing this new mindset, I began contemplating my exit from the monastery, which is a big deal. That's how I changed my mindfulness teaching mindset from fear to compassion and sense of agency and service. Here's how you can use this.

You can sense into any fear that you may have. You can think of yourself teaching mindfulness and then reflect on any fear of judgment, sense of unworthiness, or feeling like an imposter. You can sense into the physical sensations of any fear without judgment. Allow these sensations to be here. Breathe with them, explore them gently, and sense like where are the physical sensations of fear in the body?

What's their temperature, their shape, their size? Are they dense or hollow, tingly or still?

They feel like they're pulsing. In other words, be curious about how it actually feels. Can you drop names of fear, doubt, or shame, replacing these words with energy or just sensations? Can you remember that many other people feel similar feelings? Then it's totally normal, this common humanity we're talking about.

And can you give yourself the same sense of care that a friend would give you during this time? So give that same sense of care to yourself. You can take the pressure off. We can welcome skepticism. We're not trying to convince anyone of anything. We're simply offering these simple tools for people to try to see what works for them. That's all we can do. Some will like me, some won't.

Some won't like mindfulness, some will, but either way, we're planting seeds.

It's not about me. It's not even about mindfulness. It's about helping others to give them tools and practices they can try and see what works for them. And also there's a very common rule of thumb among very senior mindfulness teachers that when they ask dedicated junior practitioners if they want to become mindfulness teachers, they want to teach mindfulness, it's actually a good sign if the person isn't sure if they're ready.

or if they express doubt as to their experience level, or if they express interest in wanting to learn more about how to do it. Conversely, it's usually a bad sign if the person expresses a sense of strong confidence or immediately speculates that they're going to change the world with their unique vision and wisdom right away.

or if they think teaching mindfulness is always super easy, or that they're going to be great at it all the time.

These signs may mean that they're focusing too much on themselves. Their motivations are not in the right place. Their ego may be getting in the way of them actually being able to connect with people with a deeper sense of care and humility. So when people are considering teaching mindfulness and meditation, we always need to check our motivation, our level of care for the integrity of the teachings themselves, and our level of compassion.

that we have for the people we want to help. So that's how you can use this mindset today. Let's talk about the third key aspect of teaching mindfulness, which is the essential fundamentals for anyone wanting to introduce mindfulness to anyone.

So how do you introduce mindfulness to anyone? Here's how I learned how to do it. So after two years and much consideration, I left the monastery to share mindfulness and meditation with others. I was soon hired at Spirit Rock Meditation Center to coordinate mindfulness classes for teachers like Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, and Tara Brock. I wasn't teaching the classes. I was coordinating them with these teachers.

It was a dream job where I supported over 50 revered teachers, my heroes, and over 100,000 students over the course of the next five years. While I was coordinating one of the events, I saw a flyer in the hallway where I was working at one of the events. It had a photo of three muscle-bound men

Huge, massive guys meditating inside a prison cell. They were convicted felons finding peace. The flyer was looking for people who wanted to learn how to teach mindfulness to people on death row in maximum security prisons. And I thought, oh my goodness, wow, death row?

I felt terrified by the thought of going into a prison with convicted felons. This looked like my first opportunity to actually learn how to teach mindfulness. So I registered for the training without any idea of what I was getting myself into. The leader of the training, his name is Jacques Rodin,

who is a very respected mindfulness teacher who brought mindfulness into prisons across California and across the country. He's highly revered by inmates and the general public alike, Jack Kornfield. And so in Jacques' mindfulness teacher training to go into prisons,

Days before we went into an actual prison together, Jacques urged me to try introducing mindfulness through guided experience rather than a long verbal explanation about what it is. You can't adequately describe the taste of an apple. You need people to actually taste it to know what that experience is like.

He asked me to keep mindfulness and meditation as simple and experiential as possible. No fancy postures, no hyper-promotion, nothing complicated or cerebral. If inmates voiced skepticism, boredom, or angst or anything, that's okay. We can welcome it. We can validate it. We can honor it. When there's space for conceptual teachings, we can note what mindfulness is, what it isn't,

and how it may be helpful in the moments that they need it most. So we can ask them, when could you use a sense of presence or peace?

and then apply it to those moments. Simple enough, right? We walked into San Quentin, which is a maximum security prison where inmates are sentenced to life. There are hundreds of convicted felons walking around us in these blue uniforms, and I felt all of their eyes on me. I never felt so vulnerable in the presence of convicted murderers, thieves, rapists, all around me.

Jacques and I walked into a large room with about 30 inmates sitting in chairs in a circle. We sat down with them, introduced ourselves, shared that we felt honored to practice mindfulness with them.

And we shared our heartfelt intentions to support them in their difficult situation. It's helpful to be Jacques' assistant mindfulness teacher, to allow him to answer some of the questions I had never answered before, get a feeling for being a mindfulness teacher without being the sole focal point.

Having a co-teacher can be really helpful and I encourage that to anyone listening. If you know someone who can teach mindfulness even a little bit, consider being a co-teacher for a little while. But together we led some mindfulness meditations, answered a few questions and debunked some common misconceptions about mindfulness like about clearing your mind of all thoughts, you need to be religious to meditate,

Meditation requires time, space, and sense, music, and other stuff. Mindfulness requires years of practice to benefit. Mindfulness is only about that moment, and then you get back to life. These are all misconceptions, and so we address some of these to help demystify mindfulness, make it more practical and relevant for people.

people. My first mindfulness teaching experience went okay. No one beat me up. No one killed me. I survived the tale. A few inmates even said it was the first time they felt peaceful in a long time, which made me feel really, really, really, really happy.

And I went in to teach in a few more prisons and my journey to teaching mindfulness had begun. So that's how I started learning some mindfulness teaching fundamentals. Here's how you can use it today. So we can welcome skepticism. You're not trying to convince anyone of anything. You're simply inviting people to try some practices to see what works for them.

can remind people that this isn't religious or belief-based. Mindfulness can actually enhance whatever they already believe. You can emphasize experiential practice over concepts. No need to be overly formal. We can even invite playful curiosity of however we're feeling. I often don't tell people how long we'll practice for. This keeps them on their toes with the actual practice.

To convey concepts or lessons, you can try the method of story, teach, tool. You can begin with a story, convey the lesson of the story, and then give them a tool that they can use. You can mix up your teachings with poems, quotes, infographics. You can relate teachings to current events. You can review mindfulness teaching fundamentals with the MBITAC, Mindfulness-Based Interventions Teaching Assessment Criteria.

which goes over these six domains of teaching mindfulness with examples of good and bad ways of doing it. How to encourage courage to practice mindfulness. So you can think in your past, how has a lack of gentle awareness of your most unpleasant experiences negatively impacted your life? These days, how has a lack of gentle awareness of your most unpleasant experiences negatively impacting your life?

And in the future, 10, 20, 30 years from now, how will a lack of gentle awareness of your unpleasant experiences negatively impact your life? From your career, to your relationships, to your sense of self-worth, to your quality of presence.

finance, everything in your life, how will a lack of mindfulness impact you? The past, present, future. And then in your past, how has mindfulness, so this gentle awareness of your most unpleasant experiences positively impacted your life? Or how is just this sense of presence with anything, whether it's unpleasant or pleasant, how has this positively impacted your life in the past,

in the present, and in the future, if you practice more and more, what might that do to your relationships, your career, your sense of self-worth, your spirituality, your finances, your dreams? And to cultivate appreciation for this very experience, we can practice mindfulness of death, which is known as the most powerful mindfulness practice.

sensing that this very inhale could be your last, which cultivates acceptance and offer everything that's here now, whether it's pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. We wake up to the preciousness of this moment, regardless of who we are. So that's how you can use some of these fundamentals today. That wraps up our second episode on these keys of teaching mindfulness.

Curious what you think of the second episode. Today we explored how to navigate this self-doubt that a lot of us have, that I used to have.

imposter syndrome, as well as fundamentals of introducing mindfulness to others. Please leave us a review or a comment. Let us know what you think. What do you want to apply in your quest to help others be more present and self-compassionate and resilient? In our next episode, part three out of four, we'll continue this journey by looking at practical strategies for how to make mindfulness teaching more relevant

for the community or the audience who you want to teach. I'm not a big fan of cookie cutter teachings for everyone. I don't think that mindfulness is kind of one size fits all. I think that mindfulness teaching should be changed to be more relevant to the people who you want to help. So speaking their own language, finding what their goals are, what their pain points are,

We're going to be talking about how to make it highly relevant for people. Please be on the lookout for episode three out of our four-part series. In the meantime, I hope that you take the time to meditate, deepen your practice, sense within where your barriers are to your own love and care and presence, and reflect on how you can utilize today's teachings.

in your own life. In the meantime, please take good care of yourself and I look forward to connecting again soon in our four-part series. Thank you for listening.