CPD Weekend – Inquiry Skills and Group Dynamics for Mindfulness Teachers

7:00pm 23 March 2018 - 3:30pm 25 March 2018

Cost: £150.00

Venue: Samye Ling

Please contact info@mindfulnessassociation.net to book your place.

Once your course place has been confirmed please book your accommodation at Samye Ling by clicking here.

Please join us for a weekend dedicated to developing skills in two areas – inquiry and group holding (Domains 5 and 6 of the MBITAC). 

If you have completed the Mindfulness Association Level One Teaching: Introduction to Teaching Skills or the Level Two Teaching: Mindfulness Based Living Course you are eligible to attend this weekend. 

We’ll be taking a practical, experiential, and at times, theoretical approach to deepening these skills, working in pairs and within small groups to cultivate confidence and dexterity in group facilitation and natural curiosity and ease in inquiry.

We intend to look together at how we can create a sense of safety in our groups. Flight/fight/freeze responses can take hold and play out in groups settings, limiting where the group can go. Establishing a basic felt-sense of safety together is a prerequisite for participants’ receptivity to learning and practicing mindfulness. This also enables authentic communication which brings forth the powerful experience of common humanity.

We also hope to spend some time looking at how we ‘view’ our groups, experimenting with the idea that if we work with our view, we may find that fresh responses and new openness can arise within us in the moment when we’re facilitating. In this way we’ll see that a lot of what happens is just what groups do and we’ll begin to see the group more as a dynamic field, rather than simply as a collection of separate individuals.

We’ll be surfacing the difficulties that we all fear in relation to holding a group and inquiry and will explore what works well and what does not in relation to specific situations that can arise. We’ll be asking you to bring with you examples of situations you’ve experienced and we’ll work with these as a group, using role-play to bring a sense of fun to the process.

As a foundation for all of the above we’ll be spending time working with grounding and mindful movement, reminding ourselves that who we are and how we are, is fundamental to how we facilitate.

When you book for this weekend you’ll be sent the following two questions to help us prepare and co-create the weekend with you:
-          Do you have an example of a challenging situation that you’ve experienced or that you are afraid of experiencing when teaching mindfulness in a group?  

-          What in particular will you like to have learned by the end of this CPD weekend?

The weekend begins at 7pm (evening meal at 6pm) on the Friday evening, between 8am and 8pm on Saturday and between 8am and 3.30pm on Sunday.

Tariff and Charges Guest Info
The Buddhist principle is to be everybody's friend, not to have any enemy.
Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche
Meditation means simple acceptance.
Choje Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche
Only the impossible is worth doing.
Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche
Whenever we see something which could be done to bring benefit to others, no matter how small, we should do it.
Chamgon Khentin Tai Situ Rinpoche
Freedom is not something you look for outside of yourself. Freedom is within you.
Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche
Hasten slowly, you will soon arrive.
Jetsun Milarepa
It doesn’t matter whatever comes, stop judging and it won’t bother you.
Choje Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche
Whatever obstacles arise, if you deal with them through kindness without trying to escape then you have real freedom.
Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche
To tame ourselves is the only way we can change and improve the world.
Choje Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche
I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama
In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher.
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama
Strive always to be as kind, gentle and caring as possible towards all forms of sentient life.
Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche
Every sentient being is equal to the Buddha.
Chamgon Kentin Tai Situ Rinpoche
Wherever and whenever we can, we should develop compassion at once.
Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche
Reminding ourselves of how others suffer and mentally putting ourselves in their place, will help awaken our compassion.
Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche