April Newsletter

News from members & more upcoming opportunities to connect in-person & online

Dear Members

It’s been a busy and exciting few weeks with the launch of the new Dublin in-person connection mornings and the continuation of the Cork mornings, our online deep listening and council circles. Over the coming months there are many more opportunities to connect in-person and online and ways to get involved.

The board met in Ballyvalloo last month for a weekend of reflection and planning together. We look forward to sharing these plans with you over the coming year and to hearing from members on what supports and opportunities they’d like to see more of.

Warm wishes

The MTAI Board

Recent Member Events

Cork and Dublin in-person connection mornings

There was a shared sense of community across the country on the morning of 6th April as members gathered in Cork and Dublin to practice together for the morning and share their personal and professional experiences of mindfulness practice. The gatherings were facilitated by Blanca in Cork and by Ciara and Sarah in Dublin.

You can register now for our next connection morning which will be on June 8th from 10am-1pm in Cork (UCC) facilitated by Aedamur Kelly, and in Dublin (venue TBC shortly) facilitated by Maryrose Buckley and Esther O’Neill.

Thanks so much to all the members for offering their time and practice to facilitating these nourishing gatherings. If you are a full or associate member and would like to facilitate an in-person connection morning with another member, please let us know and we can support you in finding a venue and sharing it with members. Students are very welcome to attend too and may find it especially helpful to hear from other members about what they are doing since qualification.

Upcoming Member Events

In May and June we will continue with our online deep listening sessions (10th May and 7th June) and council circles (30th May) as well as our in person connection mornings in Cork and Dublin (8th June), all of which you can register for here. As always, these supportive gatherings are free and open to all members regardless of whether you are currently teaching.

To celebrate our newly approved recognition of the wonderful international Mindfulness-based childbirth and parenting (MBCp) Teacher Training Program, we will host a session with international MBCp teacher trainers Michele Kavanagh and Jennifer Averill Moffitt on May 12th at 7.30pm to talk about the MBCp programme itself and about facilitating mindfulness-based work with expectant and new parents. You can register here for this free members event.

Save the date - In-person AGM & Autumn/Spring Retreats

We’re delighted to share that our Autumn retreat this year will be held in Teach Bhride in Tullow, Co Carlow from October 3rd to 5th. Our spring retreat in 2026 will be held in Ballyvalloo, Co Wexford from February 6th to 8th. More details on facilitators and bookings will be shared over the coming months but we’re sharing early so you save the dates in your calendar if you’re interested.

This year, for the first time since the pandemic, we will host our AGM in person in the Abbeyleix Manor Hotel on the morning of 15th November. This will be a wonderful opportunity for members to come together, to hear updates on developments of the MTAI to share experiences and feedback and join us for a mindful walk across the Abbeyleix bog project.

News and offerings from members

In this beautiful post, member Hilary Smyth shares about her path to and experience of teaching mindfulness and compassion in healthcare, including the context of cancer care and with healthcare staff.

Another inspiring post shared by member Cora Garvey on how she’s adapted the MBSR programme over the years, with an especially interesting case of working with a group for an 8-week MBSR programme focused on the topic of perimenopause and menopause.

Josephine and Sarah-Jane are offering a weekend of Active Hope for Times of Chaos and Crises in May with a special discount for MTAI members which you can read more about here.

MTAI chair Sarah-Jane presented at a recent webinar with Workplace Wellbeing Ireland on Mindfulness at Work - Beyond the Taster Session. You can watch the recording here.

If you are trying something new, have completed a mindfulness-related project, or have something you would like to offer our community by way of a blog, a seminar/ info session, workshop, co-facilitation of a retreat, please reach out to the board and let us know. Sharing our stories, our experiments and learnings will allow us to energise and inspire one another.

Interesting international events and opportunities

Our membership of EAMBA continues to offer our members access to their events which include an EAMBA exchange on May 6th on The Power of Forgiveness with Joyce Cordus & Frits Koster from 6-7.30pm; and Mindful Voices from Primary Care: Cultivating Mindfulness and Compassion in Primary Health Care with Alison Sedgwick-Taylor on June 11th. There are many other interesting events and retreats available to view on their events page.

There are two upcoming events from the Mindfulness World Community which include a gathering for Earth Day 2025 with guided practice on Tuesday, April 22nd 2025 from 3.30-5pm (Irish time) and a webinar on Embodied Wakefulness in Action: An Online Meditative Inquiry on Climate Change and Tending to the Earth and to Ourselves. with Jon Kabat Zinn & Kritee Kanko, June 17th, 2025, 3-5pm (Irish time).

The Mindfulness Initiative are launching a pilot programme “Sharing Your Treasure: Realising Innovation in Mindfulness” as part of their Innovations in Mindfulness programme and are looking for participants. If you are embarking on any innovations in mindfulness programme delivery and interested in this pilot you can check it out here.

Opportunities and ways to get involved

If you are interested in any of the below or have any questions, please contact us on theboard@mtai.ie

BECOME OUR EAMBA DELEGATE - The EAMBA network is an extremely supportive resource for the MTAI as it gives us the opportunity to work with other teacher associations internationally to learn about developments in standards and programme recognition, CPD opportunities and member supports, and recognition within national healthcare systems. We would love to engage more in the EAMBA network so we can share their work with our members and vice versa. However we are restricted in our time as volunteers and would like to invite a member to become an EAMBA delegate for the MTAI. This can be purely to attend meetings and gatherings of interest, or you can be nominated to join the EAMBA board as a guest member and feedback to the MTAI board.

BECOME ONE OF OUR PRESS ENQUIRIES CONTACTS - Our new website will launch shortly and we would like to include a contact email for press enquiries. We are putting together a group of members with some media experience who would be willing to be part of a group that could be contacted when there are press enquires to the MTAI.

JOIN THE MTAI MEMBERS’ WHATSAPP GROUP: This is an existing WhatsApp group for MTAI members that all current members are welcome to join. It is a group where mindfulness-related questions can be posed, invitations to connect around special interests posted, and interesting events shared that are relevant to the community. As the group grows, we will likely migrate to a WhatsApp Community, Slack or an alternative platform to allow for subgroups to emerge, but in the meantime feel free to join the group. You can join by clicking here.