Mindful Moment MTAI Autumn Newsletter 2024

News and Events from the Mindfulness Teachers Association of Ireland

Dear Members,

Welcome to the autumn edition of our Mindful Moment Newsletter from the MTAI. As the leaves turn shades of yellow, orange and golden brown in preparation for their return to the soil, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the months gone by and to highlight upcoming events and supports to keep us nourished for the darker winter months ahead.

We will be sharing much more detail on everything mentioned here and more ongoing MTAI developments at our upcoming annual general meeting (AGM) online on November 16^th at 10am. We look forward to connecting with you there if you can make it.

Warm wishes,

Sarah-Jane 

On behalf of the MTAI Board 

MTAI 7^th Annual General Meeting (AGM)

On Saturday November 16^th we will hold our 7^th MTAI AGM online from 10am to 1pm. Throughout the morning the board and subcommittees will update members on progress made throughout 2024 and plans for 2025. We will also hear from our patron and guest speaker, and seek feedback from members on decisions under review. 

The new board has been working hard this year to better understand the organisation, how we can best support our members and build public awareness of their value. This has included in-depth review of areas such as our website and how the public finds teachers, opportunities for networking and support, CPD and supervision requirements / processes and offerings to support members, and building external recognition for members, amongst many other areas. 

We wish to use the AGM as an opportunity to update you, our members, on these developments and also seek your input on some upcoming changes. We really encourage attendance so we can hear a wide representation of member voices on decisions to be made. It's also a great chance to hear from the MTAI committees and to connect with colleagues from across the country. 

We are delighted to welcome two wonderful speakers:

1. Dr Tony Bates our patron, will join us and talk about his experience retreating for 6 months in Bolton Abbey (Moone, Co Kildare). He will share his insights about wisdom, and what it means to wake up the heart into the mysteries of who we are. 

2. We are also delighted to have Dr Orlaith O’Sullivan join us. Orlaith is currently working on a whole-school mindfulness intervention that is being trialed in India, Kenya, South Africa and Sweden, in partnership with UNICEF. She will talk about her experience so far with this project, and how she supports teachers and schools with creative mindfulness approaches

We hope to see you there if you can make it. Registration details are available on our events page: https://mtai.ie/news/

Member connections over recent months

Our recent mini retreat Frits Koster

In September, we were excited to welcome Frits Koster who offered a 1-day online mini retreat for MTAI members. Throughout the day participants explored the embodiment of mindfulness, wisdom and compassion and how we can integrate and balance these valuable qualities in our life and teaching. There was a mixture of practicing in silence, guided exercises and an exploration of specific themes in an interpersonal way through zoom breakout rooms.

Thanks to Frits for his wonderful facilitation and to all members who participated. 

Last weekend, we held our autumn member retreat in Castletown, Co Laois. The weekend offered members an in-depth opportunity to practice Insight Dialogue and interpersonal mindfulness together facilitated by Catherine Sutton. The focus of the weekend was on the “Three Traps – Demand, Defend and Delusion” where we explored the six guidelines of the powerful practice of Insight Dialogue through teachings, reflections and dialogues.

Thanks to Catherine for her wisdom and facilitation and to all the members who participated. 

Upcoming MTAI events and supports for members

Online, peer-led monthly drop-ins: 

Next Saturday morning November 2^nd, we have our monthly drop-in Deep Listening Peer Practice from 9.30am-11am which is offered by the supervision sub-committee. These sessions use an insight dialogue practice inspired by the work of Greg Kramer. It is a safe, friendly and confidential space where we can practice together and take time to inquire and reflect on what is with us at this time, what is showing up in our lives and our work. 

Next month, on Friday November 29^th from 7pm-8pm, we continue with our monthly drop-in Council Circle for members which is facilitated by members engaged in ongoing training with the Center for Council (US). Council circle is a ‘regenerative’, community-building practice in which we can listen closely and non-judgmentally to ourselves and others, with mindfulness. 

In person, peer-led drop-ins:

On December 8^th we will hold the 2^nd in our series of Mindfulness Exploration and Connection Mornings in University College Cork (UCC) from 10am to 1.00pm. During these mornings we have the chance to explore mindfulness practice and connect with other mindfulness teachers in person in UCC. There will be a guided mindfulness practice, theme introduction by MTAI member facilitators followed by a group discussion. These will run every 2^nd month until June. The December meeting will be led by Pat O’ Leary

Participants at October’s UCC Mindfulness Morning

All of these peer-led supportive and community building practices are offered by our members for our members free of charge. While all have their unique attributes and origins, they all offer practices that we can, as teachers and humans, show up to just as we. They are offered to MTAI members, however you do not need to be currently teaching mindfulness programmes to join these practices.

Thank you again to our members who voluntarily offer these supports.

You can find more details and register for any of these upcoming practices on our MTAI events page: https://mtai.ie/news/

Free online workshop for MTAI members on Business and Marketing Essentials for Mindfulness Teachers:

We are delighted to announce that Colleen Camenisch, co-founder of The Mindfulness Standard, will join us online on January 9^th from 7.30-9pm for a free introductory workshop for MTAI members on business and marketing essentials for mindfulness teachers. Colleen is an experienced MBSR teacher who delivers more extensive online programmes tailored to the specific needs of real-world MBI teachers.

Her courses look at marketing basics and business goal creation, creating your own website and email list, marketing goals, events and planning and using social media platforms. You can find more details and register for this introductory workshop on our MTAI events page: https://mtai.ie/news/

Spring Members Retreat

Our spring retreat in 2025 will take place from Friday 7^th February to Sunday 9^th in the beautiful Ballyvalloo Retreat Centre in Co. Wexford. We are delighted to announce that Dr. Orlaith O’Sullivan will be guiding this upcoming retreat. This immersive weekend retreat is an opportunity for teachers to come home to ourselves, to rest and let go, to connect as a group and to learn how to be good gardeners of our hearts and minds.

You can find more details and register on our MTAI events page: https://mtai.ie/news/

Upcoming external events

Mindfulness World Community

The Mindfulness World Community (MWC) is an online platform created in the summer of 2024 for the worldwide mindfulness community engaging in teaching, in researching and in making mindfulness practice available to societies in all their diversity. It is a place to connect with colleagues on a global scale, to exchange, to create and to wonder together.

MWC will commence the first of a series of Live online sessions on November 13 with Jon Kabat-Zinn and Rebecca Crane holding the space. These sessions will shine a light on innovator-colleagues creating new responses to age-old and more recent catastrophes.

If you would like to join and be part of this Mindfulness World Community, please click the invitation here. Our MTAI colleague John Peelo is featured on their trending posts from a recent interview where he discusses mindfulness in Irish prisons which you can also view here.

EAMBA Events

The MTAI is a member of EAMBA, an Association bringing together Mindfulness Teachers’ Associations from Europe and close-by for mutual support and generous exchange. As a member of EAMBA, our members can avail of their events, communities of practice and digital tools which you can find more detail on here, including their upcoming workshop on “Offering a mindful path through the ecological crisis” with Rob Brandsma on November 20th.

Help needed from members

As a members’ organisation, like any cellular structure, we all make up the living organism which is the MTAI. To sustain ourselves as a community and professional body of mindfulness practitioners and teachers, and to demonstrate the value of our work to the public, we need input and support from our members in many ways. These include the following:

1. Upload your courses to your profile on the MTAI website – Members of the board will be meeting with stakeholders from employer bodies, health insurers, healthcare providers amongst others over the coming year to increase both the visibility and recognition of our members. We will be presenting cases to some of these groups to offer incentives or sponsorship for their members / staff to take part in the mindfulness-based programmes that are offered by MTAI teachers. In preparation for this, we are updating the website to best reflect our current cohort of members and the courses they offer. So please, take a moment to log on to your MTAI profile on the MTAI members area and add any mindfulness-based courses / sessions / retreats  you are offering to the public so they can be displayed on the websites list of courses.  The more courses listed by members, both online and in-person, the more we can share via national and social media, professional networks and word-of-mouth. If you have any issues logging onto your member profile, please email us on theboard@mtai.ie for support. 

2. Consider one of our exciting volunteer opportunities - In preparation for this work in seeking external visibility and recognition of our members, there are a number of tasks we will need support with.

   These include but are not limited to:

   Summarising research, case studies and international benchmarking on the use of MBIs in various contexts, forming a CPD committee to support the formalising of our CPD requirements, building on the work of previous Special Interest Groups (SIGs) to update the website content and identify relevant research and networks to connect with, PR work and media contributions, etc.

   We will discuss these in more detail at the AGM and provide a list with more details for anyone who would like to offer some time to support this essential work. There are a variety of tasks we need help with ranging from small to larger so there’s something to fit all levels of capacity. If you are unable to attend the AGM but would like to learn more about volunteering opportunities or have something you think you can offer, please email us on theboard@mtai.ie.

3. Share your stories with us - If you have been involved in a recent mindfulness-based project or written something for media, spoken in a podcast, or anything that would be of interest to our members, we would love to hear about it and share member stories and learnings with one another through our newsletter, events, website news feed and social media channels. Just send us an email on theboard@mtai.ie to let us know.