Skillset to teach Mindfulness
Seeking nature-based pathways to wellbeing is becoming increasingly sought after by people looking for physical relaxation and emotional restoration. Consequently, runnning mindfulness sessionsmoutdoors has become an attractive proposition.
As a result there has been a sharp rise in people wanting to learn more about the ‘what’ and ‘how’ to facilitate them offering Mindfulness as an add-on to their existing outdoor service-user provision.
What is alarming is the lack of awareness from people who seem to believe they just need a few pointers, to effectively build their own confidence for running mindfulness sessions for service users. I have written this post to explains the potential issues with this way of thinking.
Keeping people safe
There’s more to teaching mindfulness outdoors than many imagine. For a start, in my experience the majority of attendees are likely to be seeking ways to feel differently inside than they do. Ther person running the session needs to structure sessions accordingly, to keep participants emotionally safe.
If people attend Mindfulness sessions and the teacher does not carry out in-depth interviews prior to the session(s), the Practitioner is effectively working ‘blind’ and therein lies potential issues in relation to keeping people safe. A ‘best practice’, qualified Mindfulness teacher would ask for pre-disclosure of any psychological or emotional issues and go to some length to ensure there are no contra-indications for each person who wishes to participate in a mindfulness session, whether delivered indoors or outdoors.
What’s your skill-set?
If you’re thinking that it would be okay to run ‘light’ Mindfulness sessions without being suitably qualified, then you really need to think again.
To explain, very briefly, it’s not at all uncommon for psychological or emotional issues to surface in participants engaging with Mindfulness exercises that invite ‘going inwards’, because they relax, let go and ‘stuff’ they’re holding in bubbles up. That ‘stuff’ can be a cause of major discomfort to complete overwhelm.
When I work with students we discuss such incidents, which most of them have experienced and is one of the reasons they are attending training, If you sit in a group and ask people to sit in a circle and reflect on what is making them feel the way they do, perhaps writing it down and then throwing the pieces of paper on a fire, it doesn’t magically result in inner harmony and peace. tIt’s really not unusual, in such a scenario, to find people becoming a little tearful. It’s less likely to have someone run off in a distressed state into the surrounding trees, but it can happen.
Running Mindfulness sessions in non-clinical, or lifestyle settings, can be much more demanding than teaching in a clinical environment of a practice room or online. The key take-away here is, those wanting to deliver Mindfulness based activities to service-users need to consider their own skill-set carefully in relation to what activities they are planning on inviting people to engage with.
Keep it simple and sensory
Teaching Mindfulness is, in very simple terms, concerned with teaching people to develop intentional focus to notice more. Simple sensory activities such as inviting people to slow down to notice sounds they hear in nature is an activity that can be linked with teaching mindfulness, which is also encouraging people to actually connect more deeply with nature.
Let me be very clear here; a suitably unqualified person Inviting people to engage with any kind of relaxation inspired scripts that are read to them while participants sit with their eyes closed, or lie on the ground to feel closer to the earth (helping people feel ‘grounded’?), is something that needs to be avoided by anyone not suitably qualified as a Mindfulness teacher.
To put this into context – The Forest School Association have been striving for some years now to clamp down on people delivering “Forest School” when they are not suitably qualified to do so, becasue it leads to bad practice and loss of faith in the process Forest School embodies.
It’s really just the same in connection with Mindfulness. If you’re not suitably qualified then don’t run sessions called something like ‘Mindfulness in Nature’. If your thinking is that using the term “Mindfulness” is the way to get what I call ‘bums on logs’ then please consider how mindful (aware) you are being.
Wellbeing/Mindfulness In Nature
Accredited training and purely experiential options available
Support and signposting
Service-user sessions that involve delivery of formal meditations should be led by a qualified Mindfulness teacher and/or Counsellor with relevant experience.
Anyone leading mindfulness sessions needs to be aware of issues that can arise for service-users. They also need to be knowledgeable and confident in appropriately supporting people and in relation to signposting.
Easing suffering
Since the Pandemic we know that there is a thirst for mental health support and certainly there seem to be growing numbers of people seeking solace in nature. However, you need to consider the reasons why? Perhaps they haven’t admitted to themselves that formal counselling would be more appropriate for their need? Maybe they can’t access, or can’t afford a counsellor? Maybe they want to pursue an ‘alternative’ way to help ease their suffering. Now ask yourself – what’s your skillset?
It’s natural for unqualified people to seek to include mindfulness-themed content if there’s a market for it. However, dismissing the need to be responsible is irresponsible.
Please be strongly advised, you should not consider delivering Mindfulness sessions if you are not appropriately qualified to do so.
Mindfulness in Nature
The “mindfulness” aspect of sessions run by unqualified people should be implicit, e.g. teaching different ways that people can engage with nature to slow them down to deliver the delights of being in the present moment; doing so refocusses their mind away from unhelpful, stress-inducing thinking loops.
Guiding people to slow down and really connect with nature, noticing far more than they might usually do, is harder than you might think. But, it is in the slowing down and the noticing that delivers awareness of the wellbeing benefits to be gained from just setting an intention to spend more time outdoors.
The types of ‘mindful’ activities to deliver should be about helping people become more aware of not only how being in nature can help them feel better in themselves, but deliver awareness of how integral nature connection is integral to human flourishing, being rooted to ourvevolutionary past, when co-existing with nature was a fully integrated part of day to day living.
Generally, when people really connect with nature they feel it delivers a soothing balm to their senses. They feel ‘at home’, can find it easier to regulate emotions and experience other wellbeing related benefits. Such activities are, I would advise, best promoted as “Nature Connection for Wellbeing”, rather than “Mindfulness in Nature”.
Appropriate delivery
I hope this post has helped explain why, before you offer mindfulness, in any form, to your service-users, you need to learn to walk the walk before you start to talk the talk, to ensure you do no harm.
The Mindfulness in Nature course we run aims to share ‘best practice’ to help you make sound judgements in relation to your own skillset and what is going to be most appropriate for you to run at your own setting.
The training requires you to attend mindfulness sessions yourself, geared to deliver deeper self-insight and understanding about mindfulness. Whether you’re a therapist, a counsellor or a lay person with a passion to engage others in nature-connection to benefit their wellbeing, this could be what you’ve been searching for.. will also deepen your understanding about Mindfulness in general and hopefully, in the future, you may decide to go on and qualify as a Mindfulness Teacher, something I can thoroughly recommend.
Recent Comments