Global MBSR Teachers' Meeting (MBSR-TM)
with MBSR Teacher Trainer Rebecca Eldridge

When: 10:00AM-noon US Eastern, the second Sunday of each month
Join as few or as many monthly sessions as you like
NOTE: Can’t make it to a session? Each session will be recorded and shared with all who register.
Cost: A donation of any amount. Suggested donation amount: $12-$25/session.
Next session: Sunday, May 11
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The East Coast Mindfulness Global MBSR Teachers’ Meeting (MBSR-TM) will gather monthly for learning, professional development, and community building.

The MBSR-TM is open to MBSR teachers who have taught at least one 8-week MBSR course and want to continue to learn, grow, and be in community with other MBSR Teachers and with MBSR Teacher Trainer Rebecca. No matter when you initially trained to teach MBSR, or through which organization you trained (or maybe you’re still in the process of training), hopefully you never want to stop learning—about teaching MBSR and about yourself as a human and as an MBSR teacher.

During sessions, we will explore topics related to MBSR and teaching MBSR. These may include assumptions about what MBSR is and what it is not; what “good teaching” of MBSR is and what it may not be; what it means to practice mindfulness and MBSR; the underpinnings of MBSR curricula; best practices of teaching MBSR; your personal and professional experience of teaching MBSR; your questions and wonderings; your own meditation practice; and more.

You will be invited to occasionally practice-teach parts of the MBSR curriculum (optional), and to receive feedback from your teaching colleagues and teacher trainers. We will also hold space for exploring what is alive for you around teaching MBSR.

As members of the MBSR-TM, we will all—

  • Participate. Your presence and participation matters. Our live interaction and in-the-moment bonding will provide the buoyancy for good learning, good community, and good care-taking of ourselves and each other. Each session will also be recorded and shared with everyone who registers for a session. The recording will stay posted for review until our next month's session.
  • Practice-teach. While you won't teach during every session, there will be opportunities for you, with "beginner's mind," to teach various aspects of the MBSR curriculum. This may require you to consider what may have become habitual (perhaps even stale) in your MBSR teaching, and explore fresh ways to take the teacher's seat.
  • Receive and offer feedback. The feedback process is grounded in deep caring and respect for something that all MBSR teachers want—to provide excellent teaching that benefits those we teach.
  • Explore MBSR curricula. We will explore various topics both during and between sessions—through our day-to-day experiences, through contemplation and practice, reading and studying, and more.
  • Inquire and speak your truth. We will all learn from each other if we all show up ready to truly wonder; to speak to what we know and don't know, and what we think and feel; and to listen deeply as our colleagues do the same.
  • Maintain a personal practice. We will each maintain a personal practice that fits our life, and consider how our own formal and informal practices of mindfulness are informing our life and our teaching.
  • Engage in exploration between sessions. We will explore various topics between sessions—through experiences of our own life, through contemplation and practice, reading and studying, occasionally planning for practice teaching, and more.
Prerequisites
  • You have trained to teach MBSR
  • You have taught at least one 8-week cycle of MBSR either online or in person
  • You want to be part of a community of MBSR teachers who are willing to be seen as human—perfectly imperfect and totally okay.
The Weekly Process:

Engaging a process at each session will provide a structured freedom to move us toward understanding, acceptance, action, further wondering, connection, and other things we can’t possibly name until they arise in our midst.

The process, with approximate times—

  • Landing & welcome: 5 min.
  • Brief check-in from each person: 10 min.
  • Mindfulness practice: 20 min.
  • Introduction of topic: 15 min.
  • Start processing around topic: 10 min.
  • PAUSE: 5 min.
  • Speaking & Listening, Small &/or Whole Group: 25 min.
  • Gathering: What do we know now? 15 min.
  • For next time: 10 min.
  • Closing: 5 min.

NOTE: Everyone (those present and those who registered but have to miss) will receive an email after each session, with a link to the recording of that session and what to focus on for next time.

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Rebecca Eldridge

Rebecca served as an MBSR Teacher and MBSR Teacher Trainer at the Center for Mindfulness at UMass Medical School, creating the training for their own MBSR teaching faculty to deliver their first online MBSR course in 2016, and creating and teaching the first online Fundamentals training at the Center for Mindfulness. She is certified as a calibrated rater for assessing MBSR teaching, and is a member of the International Mindfulness Integrity Network, a worldwide group of teacher trainers exploring ethics and standards of mindfulness training programs.

Beyond teaching and training MBSR teachers, Rebecca works with organizations to develop and deliver mindfulness programs for living with more authenticity, resilience, and joy; and meditation guidance for promoting restorative rest and sleep. Her personal practice is guided by her teacher, Pema Chödrön, and she was featured giving meditation instruction in two courses taught by Pema Chödrön: Making Friends with Yourself and How to Live with Compassion and Courage. She also loves growing things—from fruits, vegetables, and flowers; to a personal meditation practice that doesn’t fizzle out; to communities that welcome and encourage people as they are.

Required Technology and Preparation:

  • High-speed internet connection

  • Please, no phones

  • Join on a computer that has a full-sized screen on which you can see at least 25 Zoom participants, without having to scroll

  • Ensure that your computer is situated on a stable surface (instead of resting on your lap, etc.)

  • Video and microphone capability (so that you can be seen and heard)

  • A place for practice that allows for being undisturbed

  • Current version of Zoom installed

Schedule Register for the next session

All times shown are US Eastern:

Dates Times Theme
Sunday,
May 11
2025 		10:00AM-noon Trauma Sensitivity in Teaching MBSR

Review whatever curriculum/curricula you use to teach MBSR, and reflect on your own ever-evolving teaching of MBSR. Please focus on opportunities to better meet students and ourselves around nervous system dysregulation and regulation related to mindfulness, specifically MBSR—for meeting our students and ourselves when (and before) we are in the zone of “too much/overwhelm/hypervigilance” and/or “too little/numb, shut down/hypovigilance.”

Please come prepared to share about—

Any adjustments you have made, or can imagine making, to better meet MBSR students to help them move toward and stay more regulated while also “staying true” to teaching the MBSR curriculum. These adjustments may be related to 1) your teaching of MBSR, 2) your guidance of practices, 3) your handling of groups of students and/or individual students, 4) processes of any kind within an MBSR course, or 5) anything else related to trauma sensitivity and MBSR.

Optional: You might want to watch this one-hour video before our session, if you haven’t already. It features David Treleaven speaking about trauma sensitivity and mindfulness.

And if you’d be willing to guide us in a practice or teach anything (5-10 minutes) from the MBSR course in a way that seems to take into account trauma sensitivity, please be in touch and we can make that happen—for the good of experiential learning and continued exploration.

Also, you’re always welcome to bring wonderings for us to touch on as there’s time.
Sunday,
April 13
2025 		10:00AM-noon Diets, Neutrality, Habit: From Class 7

Review whatever curriculum/curricula you use to teach MBSR, focusing on class 7 and opportunities at this point in the course to explore each of these 3 themes:

  1. Diets
  2. Neutrality
  3. Habit
What do you make of (how do you understand) the following as they apply (or don’t) to what happens in MBSR?

  1. Excerpt from JKZ’s 1993 curriculum, class 7—
    2. Theme: How what we take in (diet in the broadest sense of the term) affects our health and well-being. The theme should be mindfulness of impulses….
    He goes on to write: Diets of violence, low self-esteem, abuse, depression, anxiety included. How to move out of self-destructive patterns to more healthy patterns. Mindfulness of obstacles to this, especially mind-patterns.

  2. Excerpt from UMass CFM’s 2017 curriculum, class 7—
    3. Explore if and how mindfulness may impact seemingly neutral areas and habits of our lives, bringing about unanticipated changes and emotions.
Please come prepared to speak to opportunities you offer in class 7 to explore each of the 3 themes, if you do—or even opportunities you can imagine offering.

And, if you’d be willing to lead us in a brief (no more than 10-minute) “changing seats” practice (or something else that you choose from class 7), please let me know. We could most likely learn from experiencing each other teach, guide, and so on.

Also, you’re always welcome to bring wonderings for us to touch on as there’s time.
Sunday,
March 9
2025 		10:00AM-noon Mountain and Lake, Loving-Kindness: From Retreat Class/All-Day Session

The 7.5-hour retreat class happens between classes 6 and 7, and includes a few practices that may not have been focused on much or at all in the classes leading up to the retreat class.

  • Mountain/Lake, or something else from nature
  • Loving-Kindness
Please come prepared to offer a “taste” of either or both of these practices, as you might lead them during the retreat class (this will be casual, brief, and collaborative).

Also, be prepared to speak to—

  1. what you think the purpose of these practices are (why we offer them in MBSR)
  2. why you believe they are placed at this point in the curriculum
  3. your personal relationship with these 2 practices
And…you’re welcome to continue to bring a “succinct” wondering to our gatherings about MBSR in general. These are great to touch in about as there’s time.
Sunday,
February 9
2025 		10:00AM-noon Class 6: Difficult Communication

One focus of class 6 is the cultivation of awareness in intra- and interpersonal communication.

Review any MBSR curricula you use to teach, for guidance about inviting “embodied” exploration of recognizing and working with difficult communication in class 6. Then, come prepared to share what you offer in class 6 to invite such an embodied exploration.

And…you’re welcome to continue to bring a “succinct” wondering to our gatherings about MBSR in general. These are great to touch in about as there’s time.
Sunday,
January 12
2025 		10:00AM-noon Classes 4 & 5: Stress Reactivity/Responding

From JKZ’s 1993 MBSR curriculum, for class 4: “Go over reacting v responding schema. Best to bring it out in discussion rather than straight lecture.”

When teaching MBSR classes 4 & 5, how do you—
1. Move beyond straight lecture mode
2. Move beyond Q & A (where the teacher is the only expert)
3. Engage in interactive dialogue where the participants are the expert in their own “knowing” about stress reactivity and responding

Come prepared to share how you meet your students at this midway point in the course, to support them to make personal connections re: reactivity and responding while not over-helping and over-telling/teaching?

And…you’re welcome to continue to bring a “succinct” wondering to our gatherings about MBSR in general. These are great to touch in about as there’s time.
Sunday,
December 8
2024 		10:00AM-noon MBSR: What We Don’t Know

This topic was rich for us in November, and is ongoing. We’ll continue with it in December’s session.

Understanding the MBSR curriculum is crucial to being an effective MBSR teacher. And it’s also important to know what we don’t know about MBSR. Without that, we can miss learning opportunities, perpetuate unskillful habits, diminish our teaching efficacy, “hide out,” hinder participants’ experience, and so on.

In the spirit of “practicing what we preach” (honoring qualities of curiosity, patience, beginner’s mind, non-judgment, and so on), let’s connect around what we don’t know about MBSR.

Please come to this session with 1 wondering about the MBSR curriculum or MBSR teaching. Writing down your wondering succinctly will help us use our time well.
Sunday,
November 10
2024 		10:00AM-noon MBSR: What We Don’t Know

Understanding the MBSR curriculum is crucial to being an effective MBSR teacher. And it’s also important to know what we don’t know about MBSR. Without that, we can miss learning opportunities, perpetuate unskillful habits, diminish our teaching efficacy, “hide out,” hinder participants’ experience, and so on.

In the spirit of “practicing what we preach” (honoring qualities of curiosity, patience, beginner’s mind, non-judgment, and so on), let’s connect around what we don’t know about MBSR.

Please come to this session with 1 wondering about the MBSR curriculum or MBSR teaching. Writing down your wondering succinctly will help us use our time well.
Sunday,
October 13
2024 		10:00AM-noon The Stress of Teaching MBSR

We’ve all been there—we’ve planned well to teach an MBSR class, shown up prepared and with good heart. But then something happens during class that throws us off, and we struggle to gain balance again.

What’s something that stresses you while teaching MBSR?

Let’s gather our “stress list” at this session and be in community around “MBSR Teacher Stress.” This exploration might actually help us continue to connect authentically as colleagues and friends, and strengthen our new teaching community.
Sunday,
September 8
2024 		10:00AM-noon What is a skillful MBSR orientation?

Bring your teaching plan for orientation, have access to the curriculum you use, and anything else you think would be handy as we consider what might constitute a highly skillful orientation. We will also spend time at this first session of our MBSR Teaching Community considering how we want to be in community.

To register for the Sunday, May 11, 2025 session of the MBSR-TM:

  1. Please make your donation (suggested donation amount: $12-$25).
  2. You'll receive an email from East Coast Mindfulness containing the Zoom link for the session (please check your Junk/SPAM folder in case you do not see this arrive). Note that the Zoom link will be valid only for that month's session.
We would love to have you join us!

Your donation makes it possible for us to continue this offering.
Suggested donation: $12-$25 per session
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