GUIDING EMBODIED INQUIRY WITH INDIVIDUALS (GEII): A TRAINING FOR MINDFULNESS MEDITATION TEACHERS

This is a year-long training for mindfulness meditation teachers to develop the skills for supporting individual students in psychological and spiritual healing and growth. 
 

Mindfulness meditation is mostly taught in the west in a group setting, which is  what meditation teachers typically are trained for. Often, we find that students are interested in meeting with teachers individually to explore  personal practice and bringing their mindfulness skills to their own emotional experience and life circumstances.
 

As mindfulness meditation teachers, we have a unique capacity to support students in their life journeys. We know the great benefit in accompanying students with compassionate presence toward discovery of their own inner wisdom. We can support our students in recognizing and letting go of the holding patterns and beliefs that limit freedom to love life and live fully. The skills of mindfulness are powerful for recognizing and releasing psychological  patterns, healing old wounds, and transforming relationships, which goes  hand in hand with spiritual awakening.

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However, working with individuals requires additional skills that are typically only superficially taught in most teacher training programs. The GEII course provides meditation teachers the opportunity to deepen understanding and practice in the following skills: 

 

• Discerning who can benefit from compassionate presence, deep listening, and guided inquiry, and who would be served by working with a mental health professional instead of, or in addition to, a meditation teacher

• Supporting students in developing embodied presence and tracking experience in the body

• Helping students cultivate their capacity to navigate strong emotions

• Supporting students in exploring their thoughts and emotions as a path to insight

• Supporting the healing of the conditioned self

• Supporting students in working with relationship issues

• Guiding relevant spiritual practices and principles to support growth and development

• Supporting students as they cultivate and encounter spiritual openings
   

Specific strategies that you will have an opportunity to practice utilizing and teaching during the course include:

 

• Attunement

• Reflective listening

• Holding non-judging presence 

• Self-kindness and self-compassion

• Embodied awareness and tracking

• Somatic processing of emotion

• The practice of guiding self-inquiry (e.g., RAIN)

• Deepening questions

• Working with imagery

• Numerous guided meditations that serve to uncover challenges or provide  healing and growth

• Embodied compassion and kindness practices

• Practices to bring mindfulness into daily life

• Meditative reparenting

• Using Buddhist and other teachings to help students reframe their experience 

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Course Structure:

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• Twelve 4-hour online sessions, monthly for one year 

• Practice with fellow students during and between meetings

• Two online individual sessions with a teacher 

• Two online practice sessions with a teacher

• Retreat weekend (online)
   

Application: Please complete this application to express your interest in the course. Applications will be reviewed, and the teacher will be in touch with you about next steps. 

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Tuition: $2,000. Scholarship available on an as-needed basis; contact Stan to apply.

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Highly Recommended Precursor Course: Inquiry 8-Week Course. This course offers direct experience of many of the self-inquiry practices taught in the GEII course. The Inquiry course provides a jumping off place for in-depth inquiry theory and practice (both individually and in dyads) that will allow for a deeper understanding of these practices as they arise in the GEII course. Participants who register for both the Inquiry course and the GEII course will receive a $100 discount on the GEII course. Contact Stan if you have plans to register for both courses.

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Highly Recommended Precursor Retreat: Meditative Reparenting Silent 5-Day Retreat. This retreat offers direct experience of an important self-inquiry practice taught in the GEII course. In Meditative Reparenting, participants practice forming relationships with different younger versions of themselves and then helping those young selves work through unresolved past challenges in new ways so they come out feeling whole and a sense of well-being. This practice has a direct and profound influence on your current-day feelings and relationships.