F.A.Q. teacher training

You will be able to deepen your journey into mindfulness with a group of like-minded people and benefit from it in a way that it will enhance your personal growth. Furthermore, those around you, your family, friends and colleagues may enjoy your growing insights and benefit from you flourishing and being more at peace.

After the first year, you will be able to use your learning in your workplace – either in your practice as a coach or in more structured setting such as silent pauses or introductions into mindfulness at work.

After the second year, you will be able to teach a complete 8-week (MBSR) programme to an audience of your choice. You will have deepened the experiential nature and cognitive elements of your mindfulness practice and you will be part of a group of future trainers who have grown together with you. This element of community will be an essential part of the programme. You will be able to support and motivate each other on your journeys.

We would encourage you to only start teaching a complete 8-week course towards the end of the second year. Your first teaching experience should be in a supervised setting. After the first year, you will be able to teach an introduction on mindfulness with guided meditations.

We ask for some form of higher education to ensure that you have adequate learning skills for this programme. While these requirements have proved to be useful in the past, they are not set in stone. Every person is different and has different skills and backgrounds. We would therefore encourage you to get in contact with us, so we can discuss your application.

Simply submit your application via our contact form together with your motivation letter and certificates. In case you trained with Brussels Mindfulness, it is sufficient to provide the dates of the activities you followed.

Yes, you can pay in up to 3 instalments per year, depending on your moment of registration. If you would like a different financial solution, please get in touch with us. It is also possible to pay the full amount per year in one instalment. Please let us know upon registration in how many instalments you would like to pay.

You will be practising during every module in small groups. In the first year, we will mainly focus on guiding meditations. In the second year, we will be focusing on inquiry and delivering the theoretical parts of an 8-week course. In between the modules you will receive assignments to practise teaching in small groups. We will provide as many opportunities as possible for you to guide meditations, for example during the morning sessions in each module or in assisting the teachers of Brussels Mindfulness during the monthly mindful happy hours.

Ideally you should be practising Yoga, Tai Chi, Chi Gong or some other form of mindful movement as part of your personal practice. However, this is not an explicit requirement.

While there is no international body which recognizes certified mindfulness teachers, there are various professional associations in different countries that guarantee the quality of mindfulness teachers. Each has slightly different criteria for admission, although most are converging towards the MBI-TAC (see ‘assessment’ for more details).

As an example, the Flemish association of mindfulness trainers (Moment vzw) has listed this training on their website. We are currently also in contact with other Belgian associations about this training.

After the last module of the second year, you will be able to start teaching your pilot mindfulness course in collaboration with a supervisor. You will be required to do at least four sessions of supervision. You will need to submit the required material such as four guided meditations and a video recording of one session of your course. Once you have submitted all this material, you can apply for assessment. You will receive a document about the assessment process at the beginning of the advanced programme.

The assessment will be a two-way collaborative process where the student is involved. However, if your assessor considers your material as incomplete or the recordings as insufficient, there will be an invitation to resubmit some of the material.

Upon your registration, we will send you the primary reading list which you can start with if you like. But most importantly, we encourage you to deepen your practice and to make sure you put aside at least 30 minutes every day for formal meditation practice. It is also recommended to journal on your meditation experience. Ideally, you would also take part in a retreat before starting the teacher training. Click here for our upcoming retreats.

According to our Terms and Conditions, no refund can be given after the initial 14 days after your registration. However, in case of severe illness or force majeure, you can switch to the following teacher training course with an administrative fee. Please get in contact with us as soon as possible should this be the case, so we can discuss what will be required.

Organising your pilot training is something you will be doing individually. In the second year, we will give you practical information about how this could best be done. Ideally, you should find at least six people who are willing to take a mindfulness course with you. You will be asked to meet (in person or through skype) at least four times with your supervisor during and after the course and to submit a reflective writing of your teaching experience after completion of the course.

Supervision starts in conjunction with your pilot training (at the end of year 2). It is best that you use your supervisor for questions arising during the teaching process and involvement from your participants. For any other feedback and support, the teachers of Brussels Mindfulness will be available throughout the two years.

You will be asked for some reflective writing at the end of each year. In the first year, this will be about your own process and practice. In the second year, this writing will be mainly be about your teaching skills. There will also be small working groups between the sessions, where you support and encourage each other and for which you will be given with specific assignments.

There will be at least five teachers for the whole teaching period and most of the time two teachers per module. You will receive an agenda with the topic and teachers ahead of each module.

There will be maximum 20 participants in the course; with a minimum of 12 participants for the teacher training to take place. In case we do not reach the minimum amount of registrations, we will refund you entirely.

We would encourage you to practice as much as possible with the recordings of Jon Kabat Zinn and Mark Williams. It would be best to practise the main meditations: body and breath, body scan, sounds and thoughts, yoga and 5-elements meditation (body, breath, sounds, thoughts, emotions) as often as possible so that you get used to the wording. We also encourage you to do journaling (reflective writing on your experiences) as part of your process throughout the two years of the course.