MBSR Essentials is the first step in the Global Mindfulness Collaborative’s MBSR Teacher Training Pathway. It offers a highly experiential exploration of the MBSR curriculum, cultivating evidence-based teaching competencies and understanding from the inside out. Whether you intend to teach MBSR or integrate mindfulness into your professional field in other ways, Essentials is a special opportunity to deepen practice. As we discover greater degrees of freedom in our own lives, we are able to bring the essential transformative elements of mindfulness to others in the service of minimizing harm and maximizing human flourishing.

MBSR Intensive Practice and Teaching (IPT) is the second formal training on the pathway to teach, providing a deeper dive into the MBSR curriculum’s form and essence and greater clarity to its intention, content and flow. True to its name, this training is an intensive immersion in MBSR that strengthens teaching skills and personal practice. As a trainee, you will expand your experiential and cognitive understanding of MBSR through practice teaching, receiving feedback from peers and trainers, study and self-reflection, mindfulness practice, and the support of the learning community. The IPT aims explicitly to develop teaching skills as well as the embodied presence and qualities of heart that support freedom from suffering for ourselves and those we serve. 

The Group Practice and Teaching (GPT) training marks the entry into Level 2 of the MBSR Teacher Training program and is designed to support your continuing development and refinement as an MBSR teacher. With the dynamic support of the GPT group and trainer, you will investigate the intentions and components of various curricular elements, and have opportunities to reflect and practice teaching according to specific needs and requests. Explorations of pedagogical issues, MBI-TAC domains, teacher competencies, and teaching as transformational practice are woven organically into the GPT program. Personal meditation practice continues to be the cornerstone of all investigations and is intrinsic to the course.

Individual Supervision of the MBSR Teacher is the final course in Level 2 of the MBSR Teacher Training program. This training offers the MBSR teacher continuity and connection through the close relationship with their mentor throughout the full eight-week MBSR teaching cycle. This MBSR teacher training program is designed with the intention of providing individual guidance and support, as well as clarifying concepts and deepening understanding of the underlying principles of the MBSR program. Through the intention and commitment to work directly and intensively with their mentor, the trainee is able to refine and update the teaching of the MBSR program.

Silent retreats are a requirement throughout the MBSR Teacher Training Pathway. Applicants must complete at least one qualifying retreat before MBSR Essentials, and an additional retreat prior to the IPT. Four retreats at a minimum are required for full certification. MTTA faculty offer several retreat opportunities a year which are suitable for teachers in training.

The MBSR TAC is the culmination of years of study, practice and teaching by the MBSR teacher candidate for certification. Through a review and certification process verified by the Mindfulness Research and Practice at Bangor University, identifying in the teacher candidate how the knowledge, skills, attitudes and competences are expressed in the teaching. Strengths, areas for development and recommendations for post-certification learning are assessed for a “continuing education” process that is essential as part of the MBSR teacher’s holistic development.