SESSIONS EVERY WEEKDAY
CPD Workshop – Teaching Mindfulness-Based Groups: Exploring the Inside Out Group Approach
2 x 3 hour workshop sessions Workshop
Description
These two workshop sessions build on the free OMF Guest Talk Session on 3rd January 2024 where the inside out model was introduced, and will offer mindfulness teachers an opportunity to begin to explore the rich capacity of the mindfulness-based group (MPG) and learn how to bring what you learn into your mindfulness-based programme (MBP) teaching – and other mindfulness sessions that you lead in groups.
Up to now the impact of the group has been largely ignored in mindfulness research, much teacher training, and in the practice of many MBP teachers. Yet research seems to show that the participants in our MBPs find that the group is a key factor in how much they enjoyed the course and their learning from it. This suggests that there seems to be considerable added value in cultivating and holding a group process that is safe and inclusive, so that the mindfulness-based group itself enables learning and experience of common humanity that amplifies a sense of wider interrelatedness long after the MBP is over. For many, this results in enhanced personal wellbeing and agency, which may also prove to be helpful in supporting a wider collective wellbeing after the MBP has finished.
The Workshop Sessions
The workshops will be framed around The Inside Out Group Model (Griffith, Bartley, and Crane, 2019) – which offers a simple yet profound structure for learning about teaching mindfulness-based groups.
As this is a huge topic, inevitably we will only be able to touch into some aspects of teaching mindfulness-based groups. However, those who would like to take this further can access other groupwork training and/or read the book Teaching Mindfulness Based Groups, which is directly relevant and very much in line with the sessions and content of what we will follow.
PLEASE NOTE:
The OMF provides Confirmation of Attendance letters to all participants who attend and take part in all aspects of 100% of the training event, including break out rooms, with their camera on.
What will I do on this course?
The training is predominantly experiential in nature and there will some didactic teaching and presentations included. Much of the learning will come from the experience of the group itself and reflections on it. The workshop is predominantly experiential in nature and there will some didactic teaching and presentations included. Much of the learning will come from the experience of the group itself and reflections on it.- There will be lots of opportunity to learn alongside your peers in discussion, reflection, and mindfulness practice in small breakout groups and the large group process.
- Brief practices will be introduced that are simple, portable and very accessible to include in many teaching contexts.
- There is a gap of a week between the two sessions which will enable you to put what you have learned in the first session into practice by reflecting on any group that you may encounter at home and/or at work and use some of the tools we introduced to practice ‘reading’ the group.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the two sessions, participants will have had some opportunity to look at:- Forming the group in ways that seek to cultivate safe inclusive boundaries, and warm welcome.
- Appreciating the foundational quality of mindful embodying and employing very brief practices for the benefit of teacher and participants alike.
- Group development theory and ways of ‘reading’ the MBP group and what it might need.
- Group membership including some understanding of the patterns of margins and mainstream within groups that link with issues. of diversity and inclusivity.
- Looking at ways of maximising the participation of MBP group and include befriending the group as a whole and the individual participants within it.
- Holding the MBP group within guided practice, small and large group processes, and curriculum exercises.
About the Teacher
Trish Bartley
I am a mindfulness teacher trainer and author - and have been involved in mindfulness since 1999 and the beginning of MBCT. I have two special interests within the mindfulness field – one is in relation to work with people with cancer – and the other is concerned with groupwork practice. I adapted a specialist MBCT programme for people with cancer (MBCT-Ca) and published two books on the subject in 2012 and 2017 – the first for teachers and second for people with cancer themselves. I have recently co-authored Teaching Mindfulness-Based Groups. I am one of the founder members of the CMRP core training team and train for the Mindfulness Network. I have a background in community development and have worked in rural development with local people in an ex-‘homeland’ area in South Africa. From 2001 - 2020, I taught regular 8-week MBCT programmes to people with cancer, within a North Wales oncology unit. I now work with a few people with advanced cancer one to one online. I train on the Mindfulness Network (MN) teacher’s training pathway and taught for 15 years on the Bangor University Mindfulness Masters programme until 2020. I supervise teachers from different parts of the world, lead workshops and train mindfulness teachers in Europe and occasionally further afield, and I offer brief mindfulness interventions to UK health professionals through Mayfly https://mayfly.org.uk I am also grandmother to 4 fast-growing young, gardener, border collie companion, and keen listener to music.
