Mindfulness Teacher Training
A year-long teacher training program to bring mindfulness to young people, designed and taught by iBme teaching faculty.
Join our June 2023 – June 2024 cohort!
Authentic Real-World Mindfulness
You want to make an impact. You know mindfulness works, but you need more tools + confidence to launch it in your life + career. You want to bring mindfulness to your community, but haven’t quite put the pieces together to make it happen. Your teens are being left out, and you want them in. Sensing truth in any of this? This teacher training is for you.
What will I learn?
Show up in an authentic way
Learn how to bring a fun, lively approach to teaching mindfulness, meet the unique needs of a diverse audience, and develop sensitivity and responsiveness to whoever is in the room.
Help students integrate mindfulness
Support students in how they navigate social situations, make meaningful connections, and step into the challenges of their lives.
Communicate on many levels
Learn how to communicate on an intuitive, relational, and cognitive level. Practice facilitating conversations that dive deep into important issues happening in our world.
Meet the moment
Gain tools to include social justice – inside and outside the classroom – and bring the lens of social justice into mindfulness education.
A Lively, Fun Approach to Teaching
Mindfulness as Play
Benefits from Our Training
Socially-Engaged Mindfulness
Personal Growth
Why take this program?
Personal Growth + Healing
- Gain confidence to step into the next stage of bringing mindfulness into your community.
- Find your voice and a way of teaching that resonates with you.
- Deepen your personal practice. Be more present, patient, and self-aware.
- Give time and space to go deep within a community of like-minded adults.
Make an Impact
- Tap into what’s real, relevant, and alive. Integrate mindfulness into daily life + topics like money, identity, and social justice.
- Become a more compassionate, patient resource for young people.
- Bring mindfulness to your community in a way that fits – so no one is left out.
- Build integrity + social responsibility as a teacher. Lead in a way that doesn’t cause harm and navigate spaces without perpetuating systems of oppression.
One-on-One Coaching with Core Faculty
Go deep, unpack course material, and talk about things you’re grappling with during monthly one-on-one meetings with your mentor. We’re there to support you in all areas of life, not just your teaching and meditation practice.
Accessible Teachers, Small Group Size
We’re shooting for a 50-person cohort with 7 core faculty. That’s a 7:1 teacher-student ratio!
You’ll also be part of a “small group” for mentoring + support, led by one of the core faculty. Capped at 8 people, the groups are a chance to bounce ideas off one another, go deep, and practice teaching.
The small groups, peer feedback, and conversations create a real sense of intimacy – personal, professional, and spiritual – that extends far beyond the training.
Interested?
Enter your name and email to get more details & reminders for this course, and start the application process when you’re ready.
Program Overview
Course Structure:
- Three Teaching Intensives (included in program fee, 5 days each)
- Independent Study between retreats
- Small Group Meetings (1x month)
- Cohort-Wide Facilitated Calls (1x month)
- One-on-One Coaching with Core Faculty (1x month)
- Structured Daily Meditation Practice + Weekly Practice Groups (1x week)
- Practicum
Upon completing of the program, you will receive:
- Certification from iBme
- Graduate Level Credits (available for Teachers)
- Opportunity to receive certification from International Mindfulness Teacher’s Association. (IMTA). We’re the only youth education-focused IMTA accredited program, which allows you to become an internationally certified and recognized mindfulness teacher.
Cost
$7,500 (includes room + board at three retreats)
Learn More.
Dates
Starts: June 2023
Ends: June 2024
Our 2021 Teacher Training is now closed.
Application Deadline
Early application deadline is Dec 31, 2022; Final application deadline is April 15, 2023.
Dates for Intensives
Three 5-day intensives, exact dates TBD
COVID-19 Policy
Who’s teaching?
NOTE: This is the faculty from the 2021 Teacher Training cohort. We’ll announce the faculty for the 2023 training in 2022.
Jessica Morey, MA
Jessica Morey leads meditation retreats across the US and offers one to one meditation coaching. She is a co-founder and lead teacher for Inward Bound Mindfulness Education. She began practicing meditation at age 14 on teen retreats offered by IMS. She is currently in the IMS 2017-2021 Teacher Training Program. Before joining iBme, Jessica worked in clean energy and climate policy and finance. She holds a BA in Environmental Engineering and Masters degrees in Sustainable Development and International Affairs. She loves dancing, yoga, and being in nature.
Khalila Archer
Khalila Archer is a mindfulness and yoga instructor with 20+ years of personal practice. Introduced to yoga and meditation in her teen years, she has attended many multi-day silent meditation retreats, including two month-long retreats. Her background includes over a decade as a wilderness educator leading multi-day expeditions for a variety of educational organizations, as well as teaching interdisciplinary curriculum in formal classroom settings and beyond. She holds a B.A. in Adventure-based Environmental Education from Prescott College and over 500 Yoga Teacher Training hours. Khalila teaches meditation retreats for all ages through Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (iBme) in both residential settings and remote wilderness environments. Her teaching is grounded in nature awareness and connection, mindfulness meditation as a means for insight, care, and well-being, and social justice praxis that recognizes our interdependence and collective need for freedom. Khalila currently serves on the iBme Board of Directors and is part of the core faculty for the iBme Mindfulness Teacher Training.
Charisse Minerva Spencer, MA
Charisse Minerva Spencer brings to the Mindfulness arena a background in Arts, Science, and Youth Development. She earned a B.S. Degree in Medical Technology from the Medical College of Virginia/VCU. However, her love of the Arts led her to divert her path in order to live her passion for dance and choreography. Later Charisse returned to school to get a Masters in Performance Studies with a concentration in Dance Anthropology from Tisch School of the Arts/New York University. Her eclectic professional experience coupled with more than 30 years of practice in the Soka Gakkai International (SGI) Buddhist organization led to her interest in Mindfulness. Charisse brings a scientific and artistic approach to the field investigating the existence of contemplative practices, its individual and cultural significance, as well as how these practices can be introduced in ways that are broad-based. She has worked with Mindfulness in Schools Project (MiSP), Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (iBme), is Mindfulness Coordinator at Friends School of Virginia Beach, and has done workshops in schools, festivals, corporate offices, detention & treatment centers.
Enrique Collazo
Enrique Collazo is a Buddhist meditation teacher and experienced public speaker. Enrique is trained to teach Buddhist meditation by Noah Levine (Dharma Punx). Enrique has also been teaching mindfulness to young people sense 2008. Presently the majority of his work is with youth. Enrique works for Challenge Day during the school year, teaching emotional intelligence and social skills for thousands of young people each year and teaches mindfulness retreats for young people in the summer. He has extensive experience bringing meditative interventions into jails, youth detention centers, and addiction treatment facilities. Enrique believes that one of the key comments so working with young people is by building authentic relationship.
Sara Shapouri
Sara Shapouri is an Iranian-American meditation and mindfulness instructor, artist, musician and lawyer. Sara’s experience with sharing mindfulness and meditation include curriculum development and instruction at Awake Youth Project, a program offering meditation and mentoring to teenagers in Brooklyn, and teaching meditation retreats with Inward Bound Mindfulness Education. She has completed teacher training programs with the Interdependence Project in 2016 and with Inward Bound in 2018. She has also trained in conflict mediation with the New York Center for Interpersonal Development, completed the year-long caregiver training program at the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care in 2015, and in 2019 finished the Indigenous Focusing Oriented Therapy in Complex Trauma training. Sara is currently participating in the Community Dharma Leaders Program through Spirit Rock and is also in the Dharmapala Training through Sacred Mountain Sangha. While she is currently retired from the practice of law but remains committed to social justice, particularly issues related to human rights and children’s rights.
Anthony Maes
Anthony “T” Maes found mindfulness during college when struggling with addiction, and it saved his life. He has practiced mindfulness meditation since 2003 including many weeklong and monthlong silent retreats. He’s been teaching teens in mindfulness retreats and weekly class formats since 2009 for various organizations including Spirit Rock and IBME. On retreat he enjoys teaching emotional intelligence, diversity and inclusion, relational mindfulness, multi-racial liberation, and acrobalance. He is a teacher and coordinator of the weekly Teen Sangha meditation group at East Bay Meditation Center. He has worked as a wilderness mentor for middle-school boys with Stepping Stones Project and Back To Earth. He is passionate about supporting college-aged young adults, and has founded a leadership program for “aged out” iBme alumni. “T” graduated from UC Berkeley in 2004, completed the yearlong Commit2Dharma program at East Bay Meditation Center in 2011, and is currently part of the Community Dharma Leaders training at Spirit Rock Meditation Center.
Zac Ispa-Landa
Zac Ispa-Landa has practiced and studied insight meditation for 13 years and has accumulated over 90 days of silent retreat experience. He is a graduate of the iBme Teacher Training program and has been staffing iBme teen and college retreats since 2017.
He is a senior lecturer in the School of Environment and Natural Resources and a professional affiliate in the Leadership for Sustainability Program at the University of Vermont.
As an ecologist, naturalist, and meditator, Zac has deep respect for interdependence, diversity, complexity, self-organization, compassion, and the healing power of awareness. He is particularly interested in the role contemplative practices can play in undoing systems of oppression and creating conditions for collective liberation and sustainability. In both his professional and personal life, he aspires towards embodied compassion, joy, and wisdom.
Josh Kehler
Bio coming soon!
David Treleaven
David Treleaven, PhD, is a writer, educator, and trauma professional whose work focuses on the intersection of trauma and mindfulness. He is author of the book Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing published by W. W. Norton, and currently a visiting research scholar at Brown University. Originally from Toronto, David currently teaches with Generative Somatics, a non-profit organization in Oakland, California, that offers trauma-healing work to social and environmental justice organizers. He’s lectured on trauma-sensitive mindfulness at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and the Omega Institute in New York. Trained in counseling psychology at the University of British Columbia, he received his doctorate in psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and is currently a visiting scholar at Brown University.
Rod Owens
Lama Rod Owens (Mdiv) is an author, activist, and authorized Lama (Buddhist Teacher) in the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism. Lama Rod is the co-founder of Bhumisparsha, a Buddhist tantric practice and study community. Lama Rod is also a teacher with the Daishin Zen Buddhist Temple, the Urban Yoga Foundation, Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (iBme), a visiting teacher with Natural Dharma Fellowship and the Brooklyn Zen Center. Lama Rod has been a faculty member for the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s professional education program in mindfulness for educators and has served as a guest faculty member for the school’s course Mindfulness for Educators. He holds a Master of Divinity degree in Buddhist Studies from Harvard Divinity School where he focused on the intersection of social change, identity, and spiritual practice. He is a co-author of Radical Dharma, Talking Race, Love, and Liberation, which explores race in the context of American Buddhist communities. Lama Rod is a founding teacher for the Awaken meditation app that offers meditations and contemplations focused on social change. He has been published and featured in several publications including Buddhadharma, Lion’s Roar, Tricycle, The Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Spirit Magazine, and contributed the chapter on working with anger for the recent publication Real World Mindfulness for Beginners. He is a regular guest on SiriusXM’s Urban View hosted by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and publisher Karen Hunter. He has offered talks, retreats, and workshops for many organizations and universities including New York University, Yale University, Harvard University, Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School, Tufts University, University of Vermont, and Boston College. Lama Rod facilitates undoing patriarchy workshops for male identified practitioners in Brooklyn and Boston. His current writing projects include patriarchy in spiritual communities, White supremacy in Tibetan Buddhist communities, sexuality and ethics, as well as fatness and spirituality. Lama Rod’s next book will explore transformative anger and love and is due out June 2019. Lama Rod can be reached at www.lamarod.com.
Doug Worthen
Doug Worthen is the Director of Mindfulness Programs at the Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts. Since 2010 he has been supporting and educating the Middlesex School community (students, faculty, staff, parents, and alums) in mindfulness. Doug began practicing mindfulness meditation in 1999 as a member of the UVA national championship lacrosse team and has been a dedicated practitioner ever since. Living through two bouts of lymphoma, including a bone marrow transplant in 2007, Doug has also experienced how supportive mindfulness can be when living with illness. Doug has attended several 1-3 month-long mindfulness retreats, a variety of teacher trainings, and is dedicated to supporting other schools in creating full-time mindfulness faculty positions. He regularly staffs iBme retreats and served on the iBme board from 2010–16. You can read about his classes at Middlesex.
Wendy Hasenkamp, PhD
Wendy Hasenkamp, PhD, currently serves as Science Director at the Mind & Life Institute. Wendy holds a PhD in Neuroscience from Emory University, where her graduate and early postdoctoral training centered around understanding the pathology of schizophrenia, utilizing techniques ranging from single-cell gene expression to psychophysiology, and from cognitive testing to neuroimaging. More recently, growing out of her personal interest in contemplative practice, she used brain imaging to investigate the neural correlates of dynamic cognitive states that occur during focused attention meditation. In her time at Emory, Wendy was central in the development of the Emory Collaborative for Contemplative Studies, organizing an interdisciplinary seminar focused on exploring the application of contemplative practices in our modern society. She also has been involved in developing neuroscience curriculum and teaching Tibetan monastics in India through the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative since 2009; she has taught summer sessions in Dharamsala for two years and is co-author and editor of several neuroscience textbooks developed through this program. Wendy currently teaches contemplative neuroscience for Lesley University’s Masters Program in Mindfulness Studies, and is also the editor of the forthcoming book on the 2013 Mind and Life dialogue with the Dalai Lama in Mundgod, India.
Miki Kashtan
Miki Kashtan is a practical visionary pursuing a world that works for all, based on principles, tools, and systems that support true collaboration without compromising efficiency. Miki co-founded Bay Area Nonviolent Communication and the Center for Efficient Collaboration, and has taught and consulted with individuals and organizations on five continents. She is the author of Reweaving Our Human Fabric and blogs at The Fearless Heart.
JoAnna Hardy
JoAnna Hardy has been exploring and practicing multiple traditions since 1999. In 2005, her focus landed on Buddhism and Vipassana meditation, which is the premise for most of her current teaching. She teaches; adult and teen weeklong silent retreats, day longs and weekly classes, and works with at risk youth and non at risk youth in institutional and school settings. Helping communities and individuals that don’t typically have access to the traditional dharma settings and building multicultural community is top on her list of priorities. She has been trained in council facilitation with the Ojai Foundation and is an empowered teacher in the Ajahn Chah, Mahasi Sayadaw, Spirit Rock, IMS lineage. She is the grateful mother of CJ and Harris – her main inspirations.
Oren Jay Sofer
Oren Jay Sofer teaches Buddhist meditation, mindfulness and Nonviolent Communication nationally. A member of the Spirit Rock Teachers Council, he holds a degree in Comparative Religion from Columbia University, is the author of Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication, and co-author of Teaching Mindfulness to Empower Adolescents. Oren is co-founder of Mindful Healthcare and the founder of Next Step Dharma, an innovative online program that helps meditators integrate their retreat experiences into daily life. Find him on social media @Orenjaysofer
Curriculum
Origin and Definitions of Mindfulness
- Unit 1: Mindfulness, Awareness, and Attention
Mindfulness of Self
- Unit 2: Stress, Relaxation, and the Body
- Unit 3: Emotions and Thoughts
- Unit 4: Forming the Adolescent Identity
- Unit 5: Trauma, Addiction, and the Descent
Mindfulness in Relationship
- Unit 6: Teaching as Mentorship
- Unit 7: Mindful Communication
- Unit 8: Social Justice, Intersectionality, and Power
Mindfulness in the World
- Unit 9: Play, Culture, and Creative Expression
- Unit 10: Nature Awareness
- Unit 11: Building Mindful Communities
- Unit 12: Livelihood
Interested?
Enter your name and email to get more details & reminders for this course, and start the application process when you’re ready.
Additional Info
Prerequisites
Who this program is FOR...
Who this program is NOT for...
What kind of people do this program?
Why learn with us?
FAQs
If you have any additional questions, please contact us at teachertraining@ibme.com.
Why is iBme offering a mindfulness teacher training program?
Do you offer tuition assistance?
Is there an application fee?
When will I know if I’m accepted?
How many people will the program be open to?
Is there a set curriculum to implement in schools and youth settings?
Is this training appropriate for people who are working in non-educational contexts, such as hospitals or youth detention facilities?
What does the mentoring consist of?
What does the curriculum consist of between retreats, and what kind of learning activities does it include?
Is the training based on a specific meditation lineage?
The application requires that I list my meditation teacher. What if I don’t have a meditation teacher?
Will this training prepare me to become an iBme teacher on a teen & young adult retreat?
Are there recommended retreat centers to meet the prerequisites?
What if I don’t teach youth? Is this TT still for me?
Will this program be offered again?
Interested? Apply now!
Apply now to join our iBme Teacher Training for 2023.
