How to Teach Mindfulness and Meditation | Part 3 - Techniques, Templates, & Credentials
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- All right, welcome back for another episode on these keys of teaching mindfulness. My name is Sean Fargo, founder of Mindfulness Exercises. Really grateful to have you here today to deepen your mindfulness teaching, your meditation teaching so that you can make a greater impact

on the people who you serve. Today is part three of our four-part series. First two parts covered the foundation of effective mindfulness teaching, how to overcome imposter syndrome, how to introduce mindfulness to others,

We've been including a lot of really practical tips and tools for you to teach mindfulness with integrity and confidence. Today, we're going to be talking about some more aspects of teaching mindfulness, including how to make mindfulness and meditation relevant to the people who you want to support. We're going to be talking about templates and credentials used by a lot of today's top mindfulness teachers.

We're going to talk about how to lead meditations with authenticity and also a little bit of creativity.

So whether you're just starting out in teaching mindfulness or leading meditations, or if you've been doing this for a while, I hope that you find some valuable insights and methods here that you can start using today to help others be more present, self-compassionate, and resilient. Let's dive in and let's get started. Fourth key aspect of teaching mindfulness is

Three techniques to make mindfulness practical and relevant. Here's how I learned it. So after teaching mindfulness and meditation in a couple of prisons as a part-time volunteer, I was becoming more comfortable that this wasn't as complicated as I had feared. So I wanted to start helping other types of people too.

So one day, one of my colleagues at Spirit Rock Meditation Center asked me if I'd like to try sharing mindfulness with kids in their family program. I said, of course. I'd been taught mindfulness as a kid. My life would have been very different. Probably would never have become a monk though. But how do I teach mindfulness to kids? Convicted muscle-bound inmates are very different from innocent little kids.

But without much experience being around kids at that time, I became more afraid of the kids than the inmates. Kids tell you what's on their mind. What if they don't like me? They're going to run all over me. So I asked the Spirit Rock family program a lot of questions. What's worked well for other mindfulness teachers who teach these types of kids? What's not worked well?

What do these types of kids want? What do they need? What types of experiences can kids be most mindful of? What techniques work for them and how do I sequence them? What kind of feedback do the kids give? And what kind of feedback do the parents give? So the family program answered these questions for me which helped me prepare for my first session with the kids. During my first class, there were about 10 playful kids

They didn't sign up for this. Their parents wanted them to be there. So I utilized the advice that the family program gave to me. And I listened to the energies these kids were presenting in that moment. I asked them, how are they feeling?

what was going on for them. And then we organically brought mindfulness to however each of them were feeling and then gave them some options to sense into their belly while breathing if that felt safe and comfortable and doable, their emotion that they were feeling in their body or name five sounds they could hear, five colors they could see, five sensations they could feel.

And we would talk about these simple practices and relate mindfulness to what was organically coming up for them in that moment. And they seemed to appreciate that approach rather than go through a rigid structure of whatever I wanted them to learn. Even uncovered some pretty sensitive stuff in some of the kids, which led to a warm connection.

a sense of vulnerability and rawness that felt special in our group. And at the end of the session, I asked each kid to say what they liked and what they didn't like about the mindfulness practices, which gave me some really valuable feedback. The next week, I checked in with the parents when they picked up their kids to ask how I was going so far, soliciting their feedback and their insights.

So this approach of preparing, listening, and asking helped me to improve with each session to become more impactful with these kids learning mindfulness.

It also gave me a framework for helping me succeed in teaching mindfulness to other types of people, which would soon surpass my wildest dreams. So that's how I learned how to make these practices practical and relevant. Here's how you can use it today. So before teaching mindfulness, you can prepare. This may be the most important part.

It can help you identify your avatar, who these people really are, a detailed representation of your average or ideal student or client in that group. You can research and ask about their demographic details, their age, gender, income, education level, psychographic details, their interests, values, beliefs, and lifestyle, behavioral details, habits, and patterns.

What kind of language do they use? What words and terms do they use to describe their challenges and their goals? Can empathize beforehand with what they may be going through and adopt mindfulness principles, techniques, and meditations to their likely situation in a way that may seem most interesting and practical for them. While teaching mindfulness, you can listen, meet them where they're at, bring mindfulness to their current situation or feelings,

listen to and use their language, relate mindfulness to their expressed values,

and help them overcome their actual challenges and meet their goals. After teaching mindfulness, you can ask. Ask your students how it's going. Ask them to complete periodic surveys and assessments, asking for feedback and outcomes. You can Google mindfulness assessments and surveys to get started with that. You can ask for quantitative data, measure your answers over time,

On a scale of one to 10, how would you rate your ability to focus before a session? And over time, you can see how quantitative data rises or falls to give you statistics as to the effectiveness of your teachings. You can ask for qualitative data, measurable answers, or rather open-ended answers in your own words. Describe your experience.

So prepare, listen, and ask. This is something that most mindfulness and meditation teachers do not do. So using these techniques will help you to stand out, being more practical and relevant than the vast majority of teachers. So that's how you can use it today. So at this point, I'm curious, who do you want to teach mindfulness to and why?

So please let me know in the chat section, who do you want to teach mindfulness to and why?

So this will help me to help you, your mindfulness teachings practical and relevant. All right, so let's talk about the fifth key aspect of teaching mindfulness. We'll talk about the top templates and credentials used by the most respected mindfulness teachers and wellness professionals. So teaching mindfulness to inmates and kids was illuminating and rewarding,

But it wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I left the monastery. I didn't picture myself in a prison or with a bunch of kids. I love kids. I have a daughter right now, but I didn't imagine that when I was at the monastery. So I was curious about how mindfulness teachers from Spirit Rock were helping people in healthcare settings.

corporations, yoga studios, retreat centers, schools, global organization. How do regular people like me teach mindfulness to other regular people? Like in the workplace or coaching programs, how does that work? So I got up the nerve to how to ask one of my teachers how he was teaching mindfulness at Google. He told me that he had began by getting a certification

from an accredited coaching program called New Ventures West. So I Googled it and I applied for and received a scholarship. And in two years of training, I earned an accredited certification. It gave me the reputable training, templates, and certification I needed to coach people in professional settings. During this time, I also met Chae Meng Tan, the founder of Search Inside Yourself, the brand new mindfulness program

at Google. He was speaking at Spirit Rock with Jack Kornfield one evening. So I asked Meng how someone becomes a mindfulness teacher at Google. And he invited me to apply for the Search Inside Yourself teacher training. So I applied for and received another scholarship, partly because I had zero money because I was a monk for so long. And in one year, I became an official instructor for the program.

That also gave me the reputable training templates and certification to help people be mindful at work. So New Ventures West and Search Inside Yourself were both $10,000 programs. I saw what the world's most premier secular mindfulness teachers were teaching. I saw the teachings that were being taught in a variety of industries. And I'm super grateful for the generous scholarships that they gave me. And

They were both really expensive, $10,000 each. They were both in-person trainings, which made logistics really challenging. I had to take a lot of time off work. The trainings were limited to one or two years, and the lead teachers didn't offer personalized support. It was all just group training. Both used certain kinds of language and frameworks, but offered no new groundbreaking wisdom.

These practices of mindfulness and emotional intelligence are really quite simple. In retrospect, these expensive training programs boiled down to two things. They're teaching templates, gave me the accepted and engaging structures I needed, and their accredited certifications opened up new doors, gave me the credibility I needed. So templates and accredited certification. These two things helps bring more of my confidence

and ultimately my career teaching mindfulness. So grateful to everyone in those programs, I was now ready to leave spirit rock to begin teaching mindfulness in the real world. So that's how I learned it. Here's how you can use it today. In terms of templates, I recommend a book called A Clinician's Guide to Teaching Mindfulness. It provides templates, techniques, and tools for teaching mindfulness and meditation, not just in clinical settings.

And there's a book, Learn to Teach Meditation and Mindfulness, which also covers the same. You can also utilize the MBITAC that I mentioned earlier with detailed breakdowns of high quality mindfulness teachings. You can also study the Google program, Search Inside Yourself. I have an online course of it on my website, mindfulnessexercises.com.

It's the only place you can find it. And so you can find it in our courses area. Some people study it and have said that their teachings are inspired by the mindfulness program at Google. Most people find that the best options for them are to either

download our own done for you curriculum with 15 hours worth of monetizable teaching scripts slides teacher guidebooks and student handbooks in other words i already have a full curriculum you can use and just download and modify it however you want or you can become certified through our own mindfulness meditation teacher certification which is

also internationally accredited now. It's endorsed by the world's top teachers, takes 80 hours of self-paced online study and practice. It offers two to six hours per week of optional personalized support from me and our senior teachers.

And it offers premium mindfulness teaching templates that I mentioned earlier and gives you lifetime access to everything in a fraction of the price of the other programs. So that's how you can use this today, the templates and the credentials. Now let's talk about the sixth key aspect of teaching mindfulness. How to lead guided meditations with authenticity and creativity. Here's how I learned it.

So with newfound certifications, teaching templates, and now I had a beautiful fiance who I later married in love with to this day, I was ready to leave Spirit Rock Meditation Center or what Jack Kornfield referred to as my halfway house.

between the monastery and normal lay life so that I could try teaching mindfulness and meditation full time. I posted my new certification credentials on LinkedIn and a new startup found me on LinkedIn pretty quickly and messaged me. Do you want to teach mindfulness in healthcare? I thought, sure.

So the CEO of Wellbrain Healthcare invited me to tea and check my intentions for teaching mindfulness. And Wellbrain was fantastic. They hired me to write and record hundreds of evidence-based mindfulness meditations.

the doctors could use to prescribe to their patients suffering from anxiety, depression, addiction, and chronic pain. I had never done anything like that before, so it felt like a steep learning curve, to say the least. I had to learn how to write meditations for guiding them verbally for speaking, which is very different

from writing for someone to read. I taught myself how to write introductions to meditations, segue into different parts of a meditation, make meditations relevant for certain feelings, emotions, and outcomes, and write inspiring conclusions and calls to action. All my practices now continue to be evidence-based.

I was inspired by many teachers, books, and meditation recordings that I found on places like Insight, Timer, DharmaSeed.org, and YouTube. I typically follow this general sequence, welcome them to the guided meditation, introduce the topic and intention, and then I'll share it with them.

Remind them that mindfulness is about noticing what's here rather than forcing anything. Begin with grounding into the body, focus on the breath or physical sensation. Invite awareness of whatever the main topic is about. Notice what comes up. Practice gentle awareness, allowance, non-judgment, caring curiosity.

segue into self-compassion or loving kindness and conclude with an intention, a brief summary and further steps. So the more I practice writing these meditations and recording them, the more I realize that there's actually no rules to guiding mindfulness meditations. As long as you invite gentle awareness of moment-to-moment experience, you can be as creative and playful as you want.

Next, I had to learn how to record meditations. So I bought a simple USB mic, found a comfy quiet spot in my closet with soft surfaces,

downloaded free audio recording software, and uploaded the recordings to a shareable folder in Google Drive. It was really helpful for me to meditate myself in a dark closet before recording. I can't emphasize this enough. The more present you are, the more effective your meditations will be when you guide them for others. If I would ground in my body, open my heart to the people who I'm wanting to help,

and allow my energy to be as natural and heartfelt as possible. I would press record on my computer once and record myself practicing saying each line until it felt right and heartfelt. And then I would continue to the next line after that, knowing that an audio editor would be able to clean it all up later.

And I wouldn't have to worry about getting it all right in one take. In terms of editing, I outsourced it to an audio editor on Upwork and Fiverr at very affordable rates. The hardest part of the process for me was listening to my own voice in the recording. I would cringe.

at hearing my own voice. It doesn't sound like how I want to sound. Is that me guiding a meditation? I was extremely self-critical. I couldn't even listen to five seconds of myself in the beginning. But this process was also extremely rewarding. I brought mindfulness to my own self-critique and I would stay with it.

and I practiced self-compassion through it. I also quickly learned what sounded right, what felt like me,

what pacing made sense, and to get a sense of what other people thought of my meditations, I posted some of my own guided meditations on Insight Timer, an online site and app where hundreds of people listened to them and gave unsolicited feedback. And I quickly got a sense for how I could improve certain parts, which meditations

people resonated with. It did sting a little bit to hear some of their negative comments or read critical feedback, but usually there were kernels of truth that I learned from. Ultimately, I shared hundreds of my guided audio meditations with thousands of doctors around the country.

impacting many of their patients who are looking for medicine without negative side effects. I believe that mindfulness is a form of medicine in a way.

to help us reconnect with ourselves and life. I also posted many of my own meditations on my own YouTube channel, and we now have over 130,000 subscribers with almost 7 million views. Sharing my own meditations in my own voice led to keynote speeches and invitations to speak at medical conferences around the country.

It also led to job offers and a newfound sense of confidence that I could help a lot of people in a way that felt truly aligned with my values. After a couple years, I was ready to start my own mindfulness business. In terms of leading guided meditations, that's how I learned it, and here's how you can use it today.

When we lead meditations, it's important for us to find our own voice. Sometimes people try to sound like people who they like listening to, but that's their voice. It's not your voice. People will sense whether you're speaking authentically or not.

It's really helpful to meditate for a while, empathize with people you're wanting to help, and speak from the heart, from a gentle embodied place like I am right now. In other words, let's get out of our own heads and into our bodies and our hearts.

And remember that mindfulness is not brainfulness, it's not headfulness. The mind encapsulates our whole sensory apparatus, including our head, our heart, and our body. So if we wanna guide a mindfulness meditation, it's helpful if we guide it using our whole being, not just our head. In my opinion, the best way to deepen our ability to guide meditations authentically

and creatively is by meditating a lot, being comfortable in our own skin and sensing into our own heartfelt presence. The best way to meditate a lot is by going on meditation retreats where that's all you do for a day, two days, 10 days, or three months at a time like I did when I was a monk.

And that's really where 90% of my meditation guidance comes from, my own presence that I cultivated through these experiences on silent retreats. So if you haven't done many or any meditation retreats, I highly suggest getting some on your calendar

You can do them freely or paid at various retreat centers, or you can create one at your own home. So that's how you can lead meditations authentically and creatively. Okay, so that brings us to the end of this third episode on the

keys to teaching mindfulness. I hope that this one is valuable for you. Today we explored how to make mindfulness practical and relevant for people, the most effective teaching templates and credentials that top mindfulness teachers use, and how to lead mindfulness meditations with authenticity and

and creativity. In our next episode, which is the fourth and final installment of this series, we're gonna explore the last two key aspects of teaching mindfulness, including how to ensure your mindfulness teachings are trauma sensitive so that we can keep people safe when they're being present for what's here.

and how to build a sustainable and thriving career teaching mindfulness. How can we increase our income, our influence, our ability to be professional in teaching mindfulness, whether it's integrated with therapy or coaching or yoga or other modalities, or as a standalone "mindfulness teacher."

How can we build a sustainable career doing that? Be sure to tune in to the last episode. As always, please leave a comment or review. If you have any questions about these teachings, feel free to drop us a line anytime or go to our website, mindfulnessexercises.com.

where you can learn how to certify to teach mindfulness and become a certified mindfulness meditation teacher and about 80 hours of personal meditation practice, self-study and teaching practice. Thanks again for listening. My name is Sean Fargo. Happy to support you and have a great rest of your day. Thank you very much.