Mindfulness Mentoring: One to one support for your personal practice
The intention of mindfulness mentoring is to support ongoing personal mindfulness practice through one-to-one sessions, with an experienced mindfulness-based teacher.
It provides a dedicated space for exploring and developing practice according to your individual needs. This could offer a range of opportunities. For example, you may be wishing to consolidate practice after participating in a course, or tailoring practice so it can become more fully integrated with your life. It encourages and refreshes practice when motivation has waned, this might include investigating different ways of structuring practice and how to work with challenges that arise.
For those who have been practising for some time, mentoring can offer a furthering of creative engagement with practice. This can include exploring the deepening process, the nuances and layers, widening the breadth and depth of practice, developing greater trust in practice and opening to new perspectives through embodied dialogue and inquiry. These explorations may connect with pre or post retreat experience, and making choices about which retreat to participate in and how to prepare.
Mindfulness mentoring can be enormously supportive for practitioners as a way of rekindling curiosity and inspiration, and bringing clarity to the process of developing practice.
Watch a free recording all about mindfulness mentoring via our Community site:
Meet the mentors for more details of their backgrounds, experience and specific interests. Scroll down to find our FAQs and apply for mindfulness mentoring.
Testimonial
“Mindfulness mentoring has been a powerful catalyst for change in my life. Through regular mindfulness practice supported and enriched by mentoring, I have learned to explore my deepest values and align my behaviour accordingly to a greater and greater degree in daily life. Life is more fun, more playful, more creative and so much lighter as a direct result of mindfulness mentoring. I have benefited in my professional life, my partnership and my friendships. Few things have had as much of an impact on the quality of my life and my ability to contribute to communities I am part of.”
Mindfulness mentoring is for anyone who has started learning mindfulness and wants to explore practice further. Typically we work with people who have completed an introductory programme in a mainstream context such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction or Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy or any derivatives.
You might be:
Quite new to mindfulness and want to consolidate your learning and establish a consistent practice
More experienced with mindfulness and wish to clarify and refine your practice
A mindfulness teacher who wishes to give dedicated space to delve deeper into their practice
Mindfulness mentoring supports the process of reflection through a deepening inquiry into one’s ongoing formal and informal mindfulness practice. Your mentor will encourage exploration and discovery, and provide support and guidance where needed.
Zoom or phone based sessions are arranged on a contracted basis with flexible intervals between the sessions (e.g. monthly, to allow time for practice and reflection). The content and framework for the sessions, including frequency of contact, and other practicalities (e.g. how often/ long/when) are arranged during an initial contracting conversation.
The mindfulness mentoring sessions we offer provide a specific focus on inquiring into personal mindfulness practice in a mainstream context. Mindfulness practice does, though, have its origins in meditative traditions, and the process of mentoring may naturally draw on the frameworks which underpin mindfulness as it is taught in mainstream settings, and those from the mentor’s own background and experience.
Through developing practice and increasing awareness, we cultivate our potential as human beings and our capacity to open to life more fully, and to support ourselves and others in creative and beneficial ways.
Our mentors are mindfulness teachers and supervisors who have many years of mindfulness practice experience themselves, and it is from this ground of experience that they are able to offer mindfulness mentoring.
Our mentors are available to offer support and guidance with various aspects of practice, including:
Exploring formal and informal mindfulness practices
Integrating mindfulness into everyday life
Learning to embody mindfulness practice more fully
Developing befriending, appreciation, compassion and other meditation practices which enable the cultivation of attitudinal foundations of mindfulness
Keeping mindfulness practice engaged and alive
Skilfully engaging with obstacles and challenges that may arise in our meditation practice and our lives
Meet the mentors for more details of their backgrounds, experience and specific interests.
Working with a mindfulness mentor is different from therapy/counselling. Mindfulness mentoring has a primary focus on mindfulness practice rather than psychological well-being. Some people come to mindfulness practice to help deal with difficulties such as anxiety or past trauma, finding that mindfulness practice can enable us to explore our problems helpfully while developing kindness for ourselves.
During the initial contracting conversation you have the opportunity to explore with your mentor if it is a suitable time to embark on mindfulness mentoring. Do let your mentor know of any recent changes in your health, life circumstances or any current challenges, to help see if it is a good time to begin or continue further exploration of mindfulness practice. Through deeper inquiry into your practice it may become evident occasionally that therapy or contact with a health professional would be a wise and supportive way of taking care of yourself. In such a case, your mentor would discuss this fully with you, and explore what appropriate support may be needed as a way forward.
Mindfulness mentoring is separate from the role of mindfulness-based supervision in professional mindfulness-based teacher training and continuing development. Mindfulness mentoring can support anyone who practises mindfulness – whether a teacher, trainee, graduate of a mindfulness course, or someone who has developed their mindfulness practice through reading or an app, and wishes to deepen, refresh, consolidate and tailor their mindfulness practice with an experienced mindfulness teacher and practitioner.
Mindfulness-based supervision is for those who teach mindfulness, or are training to teach. It provides a space for the teacher to work closely with an experienced professional, both in ensuring that the content of a mindfulness-based programme is taught competently and safely, but also in highlighting and developing the specific skills that are needed to teach mindfulness. It also provides a space for the teacher and supervisor to reflect together on the content and the process of the teaching. Exploration of personal practice is an important aspect of mindfulness supervision in the context of how mindfulness practice links with and supports teaching.
Mindfulness mentoring goes further, by offering a dedicated space just for reflection, guidance and exploration of mindfulness practice in the wider context of everyday life.
Before applying, you will need to select a preferred mentor. See our full list of available mindfulness mentors. Please read each mentor’s profile with an eye to your personal practice background and requirements, but please be aware that you will not be able to choose a mentor who doesn’t have current availability.
Following receipt of your application, your mentor will contact you directly to arrange an initial half-hour contracting conversation. During this conversation, you will discuss the intention, content, and framework for the sessions, including frequency of contact, and other practicalities, and confirm that you are happy to work together. The fee for this contracting conversation is payable directly to the mentor.
Once agreed, your mindfulness mentoring can begin and you will be able to review the process and practicalities with your mentor.
Your mindfulness mentor will arrange session fees with you directly, which may be dependent on your individual needs. As a guide, the below fees are an average:
½ hour initial contracting session with mentor – £25
