secrets of the

confident and successful NEW

Mindfulness teacher

By
Shamash Alidina

© Shamash Alidina Ltd. All rights reserved

Can you remember a time when you met a mindfulness or meditation teacher that inspired
you? So much so that you took up the practice of meditation and discovered greater peace,
clarity and happiness.

If you want to inspire others to be more mindful ‒ to teach the art of greater stillness and
inner calm ‒ the 7 secrets in this digital book are the way for you to get there.

The principles are based on the insights of almost 20 years of both practicing and teaching
mindfulness to thousands of clients from children, the general public, lectures, workshops
and within the health service and corporate organisations.

Read through them and picture yourself in the shoes of an inspiring mindfulness teacher ‒
someone who can transform the lives of others with confidence, compassion and joy.

1. Practising mindfulness with joy.

I wonder if you have some struggles in your personal mindfulness practice? Many people do
at some point.

If you do find meditation a struggle, imagine you having no problem with practising mind-
fulness ‒ because you enjoy it so much! It s not so much a question of discipline, but rather
how much time you re willing to set aside for mindfulness and meditation. You love it!

This joyful mindfulness practice is key to teaching mindfulness in a confident and successful
way.

Your sense of mindful presence will immediately attract your clients to mindfulness. They ll
be able to see the inner peace in your eyes.

Some ways of achieving this include making yourself really physically comfortable when you
practice mindfulness meditation. Another way is to gently smile as you meditate.

But the most powerful way to add joy into your mindfulness practice is through right
attitude . An attitude of non-striving, of gentleness with yourself and giving yourself space to
discover something new in each meditation practice you do.

2. Guiding mindfulness
meditations with confidence
and compassion.

We believe that meditation is at the heart of

mindfulness. And for beginners, practising
meditation can be a challenge.

© Shamash Alidina Ltd. All rights reserved

One of the best ways for beginners to start the journey into mindfulness is through experienc-
ing powerful mindfulness meditation guidance from you, the teacher.

We ve found the best way to achieve this is to enter a state of mindful awareness, yourself.

We have a saying: Mindfulness is contagious. The more mindful you are, the more mindful
your clients are.

When mindfulness is guided in this deep, authentic way, clients leave the session feeling ener-
gised, refreshed and wanting more.

This is the power of guiding from a state of mindful awareness. You feel peaceful, happy and
calm when teaching mindfulness, and so do your clients. You create a win-win scenario.

3. Naturally sharing kindness with

your clients by starting with yourself

Ultimately, your clients want your care and compassion

more than anything else. And do you know why?...

Because love is one of humanity s deepest needs. As a

mindfulness teacher you re in a privileged position to both
offer kindness and help your clients to love themselves for
who they are.

To achieve this, you need to discover how to be kind to

your clients and kind to yourself.

And we don t believe you can authentically share kindness

without being kind to yourself.

When you re kind to your clients, they love you, and can t
wait to come back. It is as though you re offering water to a
person in the desert. What a wonderful gift to give a human
being. But how is this done practically, you may ask...

There are short meditations based on metta meditations

that you can practice to cultivate self-kindness. And follow-
ing those exercises, you change your thinking patterns and
behaviour so you re being kinder to yourself.

When you re living a life of self-kindness as a way of being,

you feel happy, relaxed and peaceful. And you can t help
but let that kindness spill over to your clients, too.

Another win-win situation!

4. Cultivating breakthrough
experiences easily
Average teachers teach average techniques. Inspiring
teachers facilitate transformative breakthroughs. I ll explain
how

© Shamash Alidina Ltd. All rights reserved

Think back to the last time you experienced a break-
through in your life facilitated by a teacher. If you ve had
such an experience, can you remember how the teacher
facilitated such a life changing experience?

Having trained hundreds of mindfulness teachers, we see

breakthroughs happen with every group.

But they don t happen by accident.

Breakthroughs in mindfulness classes are created through

a skilful combination of three dimensions: deep medita-
tion, quality questions and silence.

Your ability to create a space for deep meditation arises

through your own joyful practice, as explained above. We
share many other tools for you to achieve this too.

Quality questions are questions that arise from your intu-

ition. You can never plan what question will lead to a
breakthrough experience. But as you listen to your client,
the quality question will arise.

This skill of quality questions is developed through giving

yourself permission to listen to your own intuition in daily
life. Mindfulness exercises like the body scan develop your
bodily awareness and the accuracy of your gut feeling.

After asking your quality question, you need to be silent.

You need to discover the value of insight that arises in
your clients. The flash of insight your clients will get, will
come out of that silence.

I still remember the first time I used this formula. I asked a

client a question and there was a silence. The silence
lasted for an uncomfortably long time. But the personal
insight he achieved was life changing. In some ways, I had
done nothing. Yet he said it was the best session he d ever
had.

You too can use this same process for yourself.

As you are coached to deepen your meditation, there ll be

more silence in your mind. And through that silence and
bright mindfulness, you ll have lots of breakthroughs hap-
pening quite naturally to yourself.

As you may be seeing by now, a pattern is emerging. The

more personal breakthoughs you make, the more break-
throughs your clients enjoy. That s the essence of our
training philosophy.

5. Embracing creativity and fun in

each class you re in.
When did anyone say mindfulness is a serious business?
I ve got some great news. Mindfulness is supposed to be
great fun. And for good reason

© Shamash Alidina Ltd. All rights reserved

 Just cast your mind back to your favourite teachers at
school? Were they the boring,
monotonous ones, or the ones that made the subject fun
and exciting? The fun ones of course!

Now I know you may be thinking… but I m no good at

making things fun ...well, don t worry…

We ve discovered a powerful way to make your classes fun,

with little effort.

Just make the class fun for you!

Yes, that s right. Use whatever strategies that you enjoy. And
you know what?

Your clients will love it!

When you re enjoying teaching the mindfulness class, your

clients will immediately notice. You won t be nervous ‒
you ll be excited!

We ve been using this approach in our online training

sessions, and it s gone down really well.

6. Filling up your practise and client list

Hopefully you want to have your classes filled up. In your dreams, maybe you ll even have a waiting list.

You can do that. And the way is through….drum-rolls…..

Specialisation! I ll explain what I mean.

Imagine you re a prospective executive client looking for help with workplace stress. Two results come up
on Google. One is Mindfulness Course . The other Mindfulness for Stress: A course in stress management
for executives.

It s obvious you d go to the specialist!

And here s another secret (we like sharing secrets!): If you re specialisation genuinely helps people with a
desperate need, they ll come running to you. Sometimes literally.

Here s some examples: consider the suffering people go through with chronic pain, relationship break-
downs and anxiety.

If you re qualified enough to help them through the use of mindfulness, you could help them….sooooo
much. And they would come running to see you.
Imagine how much they d love you if you could help them with these difficulties in an effective way. That s
certainly an occupation worth investing time, money and energy in.

One of the strengths of our program is the creative and fun way in which we encourage specialisation.

© Shamash Alidina Ltd. All rights reserved

We achieve this through a unique approach of a mindful project .

The final assessment is a fun project which focuses on applying mindfulness to a particular
specialism that appeals to you. You can create a booklet, course outline, powerpoint presen-
tation or other journal that develops your speciality. We check through it and help you to
develop the program.

7. Teaching mindfulness with

confidence (and humility)

Confidence. That s one area people often struggle in.

Interestingly, we ve found that the best mindfulness teachers often lack in self-confidence at first.
They re unsure of themselves. And that makes total sense - they don t know how to teach, and they
know that for sure!

But some teachers get stuck with that lack of confidence. Even when they know how to teach. We ve
found there seems to be five distinct stages that inspiring mindfulness teachers go through. They are:

Stage 1 - No confidence and no knowledge.

Stage 2 - No confidence despite lots of knowledge about how to teach.

Stage 3 - Beginning to grow in confidence as you apply the knowledge in a safe environment.

Stage 4 - Confidence grows rapidly after more experience and positive feedback. You actively seek out
opportunities to teach. This is the tipping point which leads to runaway success.

Stage 5 - Following long term experience, you re fully self-confident in your ability, yet humble enough
to continue to discover more everyday.

These stages don t happen by fluke. They are designed to happen through our program.

Many people that train to teach mindfulness get stuck on stage 2.

To get from stage 2 to stage 4, the tipping point, you need good quality positive feedback.

So that s what we give positive feedback on our program in two ways:

1. Positive feedback comes through the teacher trainer first and foremost. S/he focuses on what you, the
new teacher, is doing well. The negative stuff will eventually drop away - there s no need to focus on that
at the moment.

2. Positive feedback from the mindfulness co-coach who you work with on the program. You practise
both giving and receiving postiive feedback in your mindfulness teaching….and your confidence grows
and grows!

© Shamash Alidina Ltd. All rights reserved

You get into a positive feedback cycle. There s no stopping you now as you venture into stage
3 and 4….and inevitably one day soon….stage 5!

In Teach Mindfulness, we offer lots of tools for you to move through the stages, to set you up
to reach the heights of a confident, and yet humble, mindfulness teacher.

The Teach Mindfulness Program©: A fully live, online training and

support system to becoming a Certified Mindfulness Teacher - from
the comfort of your home.

Just by reading these seven steps, you ve seen a new way of

thinking about teaching mindfulness. In this way, we re
unique. But good ideas become reality far more easily and
readily when you are given the structures and tools to make
them bloom in your life.

This is what the Teach Mindfulness Program provides: A fully

proven training and support system to help you take the 7
transformative steps you ve just read about.

Next Steps:
1. Check dates, and fill out a brief application at TeachMindful-
nessOnline.com to let us assess if our program is right for you.
2. If accepted, join our Teach Mindfulness program and com-
munity!

Any questions?
Contact us on
+44 207 060 3392
or email: info@shamashalidina.com

© Shamash Alidina Ltd. All rights reserved