The Global Mindfulness Collaborative
The Global Mindfulness Collaborative (GMC) is an international network of MBSR teacher trainers committed to offering evidence-based MBSR Teacher Training in alignment with high quality standards and best practices.
For those wanting to become Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program (MBSR) teachers, the GMC is a resource of high quality and consistent teaching and learning.
World-Wide Access to Highly Regarded MBSR Teacher Training
The GMC fosters MBSR Teacher Training across the world with highly regarded curricula and pathway based on the teacher training pathways develop by the Center for Mindfulness (CFM) at the University of Massachusetts and the Mindfulness Center at Brown University (MC@B). Some of the most experienced teachers in the world, GMC members meet regularly to discuss the training curriculum, minimum requirements, and standards. GMC members incorporate feedback from all members to ensure high quality and to meet specific cultural and language needs.
MBSR as a Transformational Path
The GMC members view MBSR as a means of transforming the human heart and mind. As individuals and as a collective, we aspire to embody the wholeness, wisdom, and recognition of inherent sovereignty that MBSR offers as a practice and way of being.
We adhere to the global ethics, embodied practice, and current standards for teachers and teacher trainers as articulated in the International Mindfulness Integrity Networks.
The GMC members serve our global communities through offering our MBSR Teacher Training program curricula leading to certification for those who train with our member organizations. We adhere to the Standards of Practice and Good Practice Guidelines for Mindfulness-Based teaching and teacher training. Our shared lineage of training with our teachers at the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at UMASS Medical School and the Mindfulness Center at Brown University, and deep trust in one another as colleagues, collaborators, and practitioners is expressed in our policy of reciprocity: any student who initiates training with one of our member organizations can continue towards certification with another. (The sole exception to this is the Mindfulness Center at Brown University, a GMC member with a separate academic Certificate Program through the Brown University School of Professional Studies).
We believe that effective MBSR teaching can only emerge from a deep personal mindfulness meditation practice. The practice of mindfulness builds our capacity to stay present with what’s arising in any moment–within ourselves, individual participants, and the group. As we invite our MBSR course participants to respond with curiosity and care to what’s unfolding moment to moment, we aim to inhabit this practice ourselves–in the MBSR classroom, and in our lives.
To support our trainees in deepening practice, we have rigorous retreat requirements throughout the Teacher Training pathway.
Supervision is an additional means of supporting trainees in bringing the practice to bear right in the midst of the challenges of teaching, and of daily life. It is a required part of the pathway and encouraged throughout one’s teaching career.
We rely on the scientific literature on MBSR as an important support for excellence in teaching and teacher training. In addition, GMC members contribute to the burgeoning field of mindfulness-based interventions by conducting original research on MBSR and similar programs.The research evidence for meditation’s benefits on health and well-being has expanded in recent years, with important contributions from MBSR studies. MBSR uniquely adds to the strength of meditation research because it includes standards and guidelines, and rigorous training and depth of practice of MBSR instructors. We recognize scientific research as essential for furthering our aim of increasing accessibility to MBSR in the communities we serve.
We recognize that our strength as an organization lies within the diversity and depth of experience of our community of practitioners and peers. We see collaboration as a support for individual and collective accountability, authenticity, and excellence.
We support one another in staying close to our practice roots, and in engaging in organizational, training, and daily life demands as an opportunity to inhabit the practice of mindfulness.
We share a lineage of teachers and training at the CFM and MC@B, learning from those who founded and developed MBSR and the original MBSR teacher training pathway. We aspire to honor our teachers and senior advisors by adhering to the heart of the programs and practices, ever keeping close to our humanity and inherent resources for transformation and flourishing.