In this episode, Diana Winston speaks with Julie Paquette-Moore of the Engaged Mindfulness Institute about the importance of establishing standards and professionalism in the mindfulness sector, considering the livelihoods of mindfulness educators, ongoing training and development for teachers, and the evolving landscape of mindfulness instruction.
The need for standardization and professionalization in the field.
The realities of livelihood for mindfulness teachers.
Mindfulness teacher training and continuing education.
The evolution of mindfulness teaching and the need for reassessment.
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Diana Winston is the Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC). She is the author of The Little Book of Being and co-author of Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness. She has taught mindfulness for health and well-being since 1999 in various settings, including healthcare, universities, businesses, non-profits, and schools in the US and internationally. Her work has been mentioned in the New York Times, O Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Allure, and Women’s Health, among others. She created the evidence-based Mindful Awareness Practices Program (MAPs), UCLA’s Training in Mindfulness Facilitation, which she has taught since 2011. She is a founding board member of the International Mindfulness Teachers Association. The LA Times calls her one of the nation’s best-known mindfulness teachers.” A former Buddhist nun, you can find her on the UCLA Mindful, Waking Up, and Ten Percent Happier apps. https://dianawinston.com/
Podcast Transcript
Julie Paquette-Moore 0:03
Hello, and welcome to another session of the Teaching Mindfulness Summit. I'm here today with Diana Winston. It's a pleasure to be here with her. And I'd love to start reading her bio so our audience can understand where Diana comes from. She is the director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center. She's the author of The Little Book of Being and co-author of Fully Present, the Science, Art and Practice of Mindfulness. She has taught Mindfulness for health and well-being since 1999 in various settings, including in healthcare, universities, businesses, nonprofits, and schools in the US and internationally. Her work has been mentioned in the New York Times, O magazine, Los Angeles Times, Allure, and Women's Health, among others. She created the Evidence-Based Mindful Awareness Practices program, UCLA training, and Mindfulness facilitation, which she has taught since 2011, and is a founding board member of the International Mindfulness Teachers Association. The LA Times calls her one of the nation's best-known teachers of Mindfulness, a former Buddhist nun; you can find her on the UCLA, Mindful, Waking up, and 10% Happier apps. So, it's a pleasure to be here today with you, Diana; how are you doing?
Diana Winston
I'm doing well. Thanks for inviting me.
Julie Paquette-Moore 1:36
Good to have you. I'm curious if you'd like to share a little bit about your path, coming into Mindfulness for yourself, this path of a teacher, and then coming into this role of actually creating programs to teach others.
Diana Winston 1:59
I started meditating pretty young, right after college. I ended up traveling around India. I found myself in Dharamsala and got exposed to Tibetan teachings for the first time. Soon after, I went to Thailand and made my first Vipassana retreat in a monastery. Primarily because it was free at the time or by donation. I'm not quite sure I completely understood that at the time.
Then I just fell for it. It's unusual at that age to get so committed. But that's what happened to me for whatever reason, and I jumped in and spent the next decade in long retreats, going in and out of three-month retreats and practicing in Asia and the US for many years. And then a culmination was a year living in a monastery as a Buddhist nun in Myanmar, Burma. So, that was my first decade of practice.
I will tell you something that I like to tell my students: back then, nobody was meditating to be a mindfulness teacher or have a career. I was meditating because I was so interested in exploring my mind and learning about what was happening in this body, heart, and mind. It was just phenomenally interesting to me. I was very driven by the vision of a heart that could be free.
That was why I was meditating back then. When I returned from Burma, Jack Kornfield asked me to be trained as a teacher. This was just a tiny group of us. So we went through four years of an apprenticing program and trained with him. At the end of that, I turned around and helped the next cohort of teachers teach.
After I was trained, I became a Buddhist teacher. I taught primarily through Spirit Rock, and I taught Vipassana retreats around the country, mostly in Northern California, and then helped train the next cohort. So, I was learning how to train. He taught me how to train, and when I was younger, I started a program at the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, where we trained activists in meditation and social change work.
I've had a training background. I was a Buddhist teacher for several years. Then I realized I was interested in what it would mean to bring these practices out in a secular way to the general public, and that's when a whole series of events occurred. I worked for UCLA, where we started the Mindful Awareness Research Center. And then my teaching, primarily since then, has been bringing these practices out in an accessible way into the many domains and things you mentioned when you're talking about the places and people I've been teaching.
In 2011, I wanted to train teachers in Mindfulness. So, I built upon the learning that I had done through these other training programs and started one of the very early mindfulness training programs. At that time, there was MBSR. I think there was our program; maybe Fleet was starting up; I can't remember. Mark Coleman was starting up, but that was it in the US. That was it. And so I have been training teachers since then.
When we started the program at UCLA, it was intended to expose people to mindfulness because it was almost 20 years ago. Although mindfulness has grown bigger and bigger, and people have more exposure, and many people do it, and you know, it was before the apps, so much of how we see the mindfulness movement. So we were exposing people, here's how to meditate. Here's a six-week course where you can learn Mindfulness. We began researching that course and had many students throughout the UCLA campus. It was primarily to the general public of Los Angeles and beyond.
After doing that for about five years, I realized that some people were starting to have experience when they came to MARC. MARC is the Center of Mindful Awareness Research Center. It was my passion, so I was interested in following my passion. So I started that program, and the first year, we had around 15 people. Ultimately, it became a 50- or 60-person program over the years. It was a delightful opportunity to think about the core goal of training teachers in mindfulness.
That led to me running the program for 13 years or something like that. It also helped me get a big picture and look at what was happening in the field. And we've trained hundreds and hundreds of students who are now out in the world teaching Mindfulness worldwide. But what is the necessity? What's important about the field itself? And how do we think about ensuring the professionalization and standardization of this field that was suddenly burgeoning? Because when I started, there were three programs, and now there are hundreds. And now, thousands of people are mindfulness facilitators. So those kinds of questions, somewhere around eight or nine years ago, started being very interesting to me.
Julie Paquette-Moore 7:52
I think you mentioned something very interesting when you first started. In some ways, perhaps you were setting the standard for what was to come outside of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, as it was one of the first programs. As you mentioned, many programs exist, and what's offered differs from program to program. I know for myself that there are year-long trainings, and some training promises certifications in a couple of days. And so you can see that the difference in what's being asked of students, the expectations, the standardization, and professionalism differs from program to program.
I know you're a founding board member of the International Mindfulness Teacher Association (IMTA). I wonder if you can speak briefly about what you see as standards within training to become a mindfulness facilitator. Also, could you speak a little on the intent of that organization and what the IMTA hopes to do in terms of standardizing what might be best for people in mindfulness teacher training and continuing ED as well?
Diana Winston 9:23
Absolutely. So, going back to what you're saying, before we started the IMTA, I like to think of it as the wild, wild west of mindfulness teaching. We had a situation where MBSR was pretty rooted and had all its standards, and people could go through that track. But this entirely unregulated space was also starting to emerge, where anyone could be a mindfulness teacher, where there wasn't a standard.
You could have a week-long training and be a mindfulness teacher; you could put out a shingle after doing a weekend workshop. Often, the best marketers are not the deepest practitioners; the deepest practitioners are not the best marketers. The best teachers were not the best marketers.
I was very concerned. Not just me, but lots of us were concerned. So, the idea grew to include some professional organizations that would help standardize the mindfulness field. Just like in the therapy world, there's a licensure board, or for any profession, we need something like that in the mindfulness world. Over the years, that ultimately grew into the International Mindfulness Teachers Association, a global membership organization. I think there are about seven or 800 members from all over the world.
You can get a certificate, which is called a Certified Mindfulness Teacher Professional level. It accredits 200-hour training programs that meet certain standards. It's a loose guideline in that you don't have to be specific and tell them what they must teach. But we need a section on ethics; students need to be taught about diversity, equity, and inclusion. They need to be taught about the practical applications of Mindfulness and its scientific and historical roots.
For a program to be accredited, it has to meet the 200-hour standards. People have to meditate on a long retreat, five or seven days, or something like that. But some programs were out there where you didn't even have to have ever done a retreat. As an educator and meditator, the value and importance of that for building my ability to teach is crucial.
We were figuring out what those standards might be. I will say that we did it ten years ago, and they probably need to be updated now. They're a bit out of date. Now, there are 30 or 40 training programs from all over the world, from really interesting places like Turkey, all over Latin America, and of course, Asia. However, there are many different programs, most of which reside in North America and Canada.
All of these programs meet the 200-hour standards, and once a student has gone through those accredited programs, they can receive a Certified Mindfulness Teacher Professional level. So that gives them this credential. Now, that was the initial accreditation; I don't want to get too into the weeds here because it will probably get a little boring. But basically, there are other credentials for 50-hour programs, which are education-based. And that's all being developed as the IMTA continues to grow. And it's been a volunteer organization for about six years, and they only hired an executive director last year. So it's small and growing and trying to figure its way out. But I think it has gone a long way to helping with this issue of professionalization and standardization. So that's kind of it. You asked about continuing education, but I could go into that separately.
Julie Paquette-Moore 14:04
I was thinking of people interested in becoming a mindfulness facilitator or even people interested in bringing mindfulness facilitators into their organization. You mentioned schools. You talked about the medical field. It's interesting to hear what they should be looking for. These standardized offerings are helpful so that people hiring facilitators from the outside know what they've trained in or what the expectation is. The same applies to those interested in training; again, they know the program's expectations, the number of hours, what's being offered, as you mentioned, ethics and equity, and those sorts of things. So they know that they're getting that within those programs. Is that something important to look for people interested in training or even bringing in trainers?
Diana Winston 15:09
That was one of the intentions with the IMTA; that it would be a clearinghouse for people who are credentialed, and that an employer can look there and say, like, oh, this person's gone through a 200-hour training program, and they're legit, professional, and I will hire them. Because it's so small, I don't think every employer knows it exists. So there's that issue. It's a little problematic, but that's a part of growing it in the field.
Julie Paquette-Moore 15:44
Would you like to share what you see as these important qualities you talked about for yourself? You went through four years of training before offering the practice. Can you talk a little bit about what the UCLA program offers? Or what do you think are the most important things for facilitators to be trained in before sharing the practice?
Diana Winston 16:13
I'll start with something that's not exactly content. But what I've found is crucial. A delightful part of training facilitators is creating a community they go through with a cohort. We build a lot of relational practices and opportunities for them to get to know each other and build collegial relationships and friendships. And that has been like a core piece of it. And one of the things that's happened over the years is that these cohorts stay together, and deep friendships are formed. I know people who say, 'Oh, I met my best friend in 2012 in this program'.
So that, to me, is very significant. Because obviously, we're all isolated, that research just came out about loneliness being this terrible social health problem. So, it rests on this foundation of community. And then the second foundation it rests on is practice. I'm sure many teachers have said this during these interviews. But the most important thing as we teach, it's our practice. It comes from our practice, that we embody our practice. It's not theoretical, it's not what you read in books, but it's your practice.
We do a lot for both developing their practice over the year and personal growth-related activities. For instance, we look at the issue of money. We will look at these questions: how do you market yourself? Should you market yourself as a mindfulness facilitator? What if it feels too scary to market yourself as a mindfulness facilitator?
We will also look at the personal side: 'What's my money story? What's my history? Where are the places that live in the shadow side of my psyche? ' So that's just an example of how we're building their confidence, but we also do a deep dive into 'What's happening with my confidence level, and do I feel worthy of being a teacher?'
That's another pillar on which this rests: the quality of personal growth. The rest is the obvious stuff that you would think a mindfulness teacher needs. I mentioned some of it earlier: the science of Mindfulness, how to be a science communicator, not overhyping the science, and not downplaying it too much.
There's this interesting blend. They learn how to lead introductory sessions and what the important components are. For our training program, it's about helping them find their voice. We don't want cookie-cutter people. We want people who can speak to the populations they're working with because they come from very diverse populations and find the best way to express it. So we give them guidelines. They all have to write a curriculum. We want it to be them, not mini versions of one of us.
Then, other components involve applications of Mindfulness; how do you bring it into healthcare, schools, and businesses? Two areas have grown and changed since I started in 2011. One is the area of diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging. So when I first started, it was a half day as part of my training. And now it's woven through the fabric of it; I now have a Director of Diversity and Inclusion. It just becomes central; there are many obvious reasons why we do this, but it has helped build a diverse cohort that feels supported and cared for. They can, in turn, go off and meet the populations they work with.
The other area that I think has grown is trauma-informed teaching. When I first started, we had a half-day or something, and now trauma-informed teaching is woven through the whole program, as well as very specific teachings on that.
So that gives you a flavor of what goes on in that year-long program. But we're not teaching it this year, just in case someone thinks, 'I want to join.' We were putting this on pause for a little while because we're going through some restructuring.
Julie Paquette-Moore 20:52
I often hear some threads you've blended into the Engaged Mindfulness Teacher Training program. You talked about developing in your practice. When you are practicing and solid with your practice, you talked about finding your voice and those aspects. I think that can only happen when you're connecting with your practice.
Also, a common theme is relationships and the hope that people are building these peer relationships in mindfulness teaching and mentor relationships. I think that's an important thing. This field was so small, and it was building, so people must have those relationships in the industry itself. And then, as you said, there's always this balance of science, having the knowledge of that and being able to get that across without exaggerating what it is.
You also mentioned something that I haven't heard being addressed directly. You talked about the livelihood of teachers and facilitators. And I'm wondering if you might speak a little bit more to that in terms of what you're seeing, where this field has gone, and where it's going—that path and trajectory for Mindfulness or people aspiring to be mindfulness facilitators.
Diana Winston 22:39
It's a tough one. And I'll tell you why. Because although we can say there's been enormous growth in the field in the last decade, 15 years or so, it's still not a completely accepted profession. You know, 'I'm gonna go to graduate school and become a mindfulness facilitator or somebody,' it doesn't work that way. Compared to when I started in 1989, everybody thought I was completely weird and had never heard of it. My friends, of course, had heard of it significantly, and all the Asian countries I practiced in.
We have gone from this fringe place to Mindfulness in all Apps and Mindfulness in the news constantly; there is so much research that it's grown significantly. But it's still an urban phenomenon in the US, like on the East and West Coast. There are some statistics; I'm unsure how many people meditate. I don't have it off the top of my head, but it's a pretty small percentage. I always tell my students, and I've always hoped that by 2023, I would stop saying it, but I haven’t. I tell my students, 'Don't quit your day job.'
Because most people are not making a living teaching mindfulness, I had great hopes and dreams for it as I've watched the field grow. It hasn't happened. It has a little bit, and there are some wonderful things; apps have played a role in people's livelihoods. There's much more opportunity, but it's still not a guarantee. So that has to be addressed within the training programs. We bring in graduates to discuss how they are making a living.
Many people in the program are already teaching Mindfulness within organizations, and they're coming to get the training. So those are the lucky people who already have mindfulness jobs, but it's hard. I've also seen a little small industry grow of people who teach mindfulness teachers how to build businesses and how to market. So there are a few people out there who are offering that for mindfulness teachers, which is a real gift because so many of us feel like, 'Oh, my God, this is something I love so much, I care about so much, how can I make money off of it? How can I market it?’ As I said earlier, those may not be the person's skill set, but maybe just the opposite of their skill set. It's very hard for a lot of people. Having these different organizations walk people through it is helpful. And I'm aware of only a couple of them at the moment.
Julie Paquette-Moore 25:57
It sounds like there's something there regarding that entrepreneurial spirit and how having other organizations specializing in marketing skills or other things may be helpful. It's helpful to have that combination for those wanting to take this on as a profession. Beyond the specificities of mindfulness teacher training, there are things that are helpful in building a career or a job, as it's still small and a little hard to crack into.
Diana Winston 26:45
Every few years, our graduates return for continuing education, and I always ask them, 'Who is making a living fully 100% as a mindfulness teacher'? Let's say are 60 people in the room or 70 people; we get 10 hands. Then I'll ask, 'Who's doing it partially'? And then there are maybe 20 hands. Then I'll ask, 'Who's doing it as a volunteer'? There are a lot of hands! It's very incremental, but I always ask, 'Who loves what they're doing'?
100% It's a path of our passion. That has always been a question for me. I've always thought, 'Why do people want to be mindfulness teachers'? It is a silly, obvious question that I sometimes ask myself, but it is interesting to consider the growth and explosion of the mindfulness teaching field. Like, why? My answer is that most people who come to teach love it; they've seen a transformation in themselves and want to share it with others. And I think that's a very pure-hearted motivation. I love that.
Sometimes, people get into it because they want to be special or be seen. Sometimes, our motivations can be quite mixed, of course. It's something that's transformed the lives of countless people. And then it's like, 'Okay, my next step is I want everybody to know about it.' I love that intention. And even though it's hard to make a living in the field, it's not a zero-sum game, right? There are always more people to teach and expand and grow. They're new fields to grow into, new populations. Just because you're doing well as a mindfulness teacher doesn't mean I won't have people to work with. It's a matter of getting the word out, learning how to promote it, and getting people to the right people.
Julie Paquette-Moore 29:00
I often see some people who just want to volunteer. They don't want to turn it into a career; they come into teacher training because they're retiring or because it's just something they want to share with family and friends. So it is that interesting balance, where people might be looking to do it for a career, or they're so touched that they want to share it in any way they can, as you said.
You talked about reevaluating, asking graduates what they're doing, and getting information from people who have gone through the programming. And then, before that, you said that you're taking this year off to reassess the programming that you're doing. I'm just curious if you'd like to talk a little bit more about the need to pause and if there's something that you're seeing in terms of change or where the field is going. I'm curious as to why this break and reassessment.
Diana Winston 30:20
I started at UCLA in 2006, almost twenty years later, in a different mindfulness field. Back then, it was new and exciting; people hadn't taken mindfulness classes there, at least in the general population that I was teaching in Los Angeles. We started online classes, and there wasn't a lot of opportunity. We had hundreds of people coming to these online classes.
What I've seen beautifully is that Mindfulness has gotten integrated. The research has helped significantly; people are getting the ‘buy-in.’ I keep mentioning the explosion, especially recently with apps, but it is significant in the field. Also, there is general growth in the mindfulness teacher industry. Suddenly, there are a lot of mindfulness teachers. Back then, there were only a few. There were a lot of Buddhist teachers, but this is a different thing. People who didn't want to be within a religious context were drawn to secular Mindfulness.
So the field is growing, growing, growing. And then the next thing you know, we have the pandemic. And then, with the pandemic, as we all know, everything goes online. So, in our center, for instance, where we had been one of the few people offering online learning with mindfulness, the competition is enormous. People don't have the kind of finances they once did because of the economic head and the toll it took.
Paradoxically, there was more interest than ever in Mindfulness because people were so deeply disturbed and horrified by what was going on. This growth of interest coincided with an economic effect and then the mental health decline that's been happening since the pandemic. So here we are in this quote, unquote, post-pandemic, which we know is not post, but whatever we are, whatever you want to call it.
I know our center experienced some economic stress, and because of all these different pieces that I'm putting together, it's like we have been a victim of our success. We had trained hundreds and hundreds of mindfulness teachers, and now they're all competing with each other—including us.
Then there are these programs; I don't know if you had anybody in this summit doing these 1000-people and 2000-people programs. It's a very different field. And in some ways, there's the beauty of people going, 'Yeah, yeah, mindfulness,' but there are issues, too. They're all these people teaching Mindfulness, but are they all trauma-informed? You know, we don't know. How do you work with neurodiverse populations with different abilities, people of different races, classes, and social economics? Not everybody keeps these questions in mind as they teach mindfulness.
Another thing that happened in the field is that people learned the basics of mindfulness. They either did MBSR, or they did the equivalent. Our program is called MAPS, and it's a six-week program on mindfulness. Then, they wanted more. So go to MAPS 2 and MAPS 3, and we will deepen, deepen, deepen. And then suddenly, we have these advanced practitioners ten years later, who mostly go into Buddhist settings because there are very few secular retreats, although that's changing. There are more places where you can do that.
But people want depth, and the field hasn't necessarily arisen to meet that. I've been super interested in this. I wrote a book called 'Little Book of Being,' which looked at the nondual end of Mindfulness, the open-awareness practices, and the awareness of awareness. I thought, 'How could you secularize that? How do we work with that? '
I've gone off on a riff. I don't even remember the initial question. I'm just talking about how the field has grown. And now there's this clamoring for 'We want more.' Here's a really funny thing. Two years ago, my students asked me, 'I want to learn about Buddhism.' So, I'm now going back to the roots.
We've been teaching secular, secular secular, and now they're like, 'What about Buddhism'? And I'm like, 'Okay, let's learn about that from a mindfulness perspective.' The field has changed dramatically. And we have to be responsive. Now, remember your question; we have to be responsive to that. So at our center, after having a little bit of an economic hit, we needed to step back and go, like, 'What is most important? What is key? How do we respond to the nature of the field as it is right now? And that's what I'm looking at and thinking: where can we best serve?
Julie Paquette-Moore 35:43
That's wise and important. Sometimes, programs can just keep going, going, going, as the same old thing. But when you see that things are changing, you need to change with it and take that time to reassess; it is so valuable and important. I congratulate you for doing that.
Diana Winston 36:05
Thank you.
Julie Paquette-Moore 36:11
That said, do you have any insight or foresight into where the field is going? We mentioned continuing education a couple of times and continuing on that path so facilitators can do different training iterations. But once you complete a year-long or four-year-long program, what happens after that? How do we keep up the skills and continue to learn and grow? Where do you see that going?
Diana Winston 36:48
I think it's crucial. In any field, you must have continuing education, or you will grow stagnant. And I think it's just slowly starting in the mindfulness field. Some offerings are being marketed as Advanced Teacher Training or second-level teacher training. The IMTA's intention, which has not yet been realized, is to have continuing education requirements, so you must do a certain number of hours every three years. Also, every year, you have to do a retreat. So I think there's an enormous opportunity for teacher training trainers to develop creative, interesting, and useful trainings, such as deepening into these issues of trauma-informed teaching. Or, how do we teach people with disabilities? Or training on refining language, learning more about the science, or learning new protocols.
There are so many opportunities. I see people doing continuing education as they do multiple programs. So they go through my program, and then they take the self-compassion program, and then they might do Fleets program, and then at that point, they're trained. However, I think a pretty standardized route to continuing education needs to be developed, and hopefully, that will happen at the IMTA. And maybe there will be things like advanced mindfulness training institutes that arise, and I'm looking forward to seeing things like that and teaching some things like that as well.
Julie Paquette-Moore 38:43
It sounds like more is potentially coming soon.
Diana Winston 38:46
People want to learn. People love to learn. The best teachers are the ones who are continual learners. Those are the ones I respect the most. You never give up. You always improve your skill set, understanding, learning, and growth. That's how we become not only great teachers but great human beings.
Julie Paquette-Moore 39:12
Do you have any advice you would like to lend to either? Could we make this broad because we've been talking about people interested in becoming teacher trainers? But then we've also been talking about people continuing this process. Do you have any advice you'd like to lend for this process? Maybe something you've seen with yourself or your students that has touched you and would be helpful in this path?
Diana Winston 39:42
I go back to the first thing I said: When I started teaching Mindfulness, I taught it because I loved it. The basis of being a good mindfulness teacher is our commitment to practice: we practice, try to live it, and try to embody it. You cannot be a history teacher without historical training, and you cannot be a mindfulness teacher without having your practice.
So that's the bottom line: if you're interested in being a mindfulness teacher, start now. Meditate, do retreats, and get as much immersion as possible. And then when you have gone to a place where you're like, 'Yeah, I'd feel like I have a good solid understanding of the practice, and I'm very committed to it, and I have a vision of how I might want to share.' I would look for an accredited 200-hour program. You can go to the IMTA website and find it out, and then let yourself be trained and wholly immerse yourself.
Over the years, I've had many people go through the teacher training program half-heartedly. I think the most successful people are people who dive in and commit to the growth that will happen and practice teaching. So there's a pretty laid-out path for doing it. For example, look at the requirements of the teacher training programs. If you meet those requirements and feel that you're ready to, or at least want to, move towards doing it, you can.
Julie Paquette-Moore 41:37
That's great. Thank you so much for being here today. It's been a real pleasure to spend this time with you, and I wish you all the best with your reevaluation and future. I'm excited to see where it goes.
Diana Winston 41:55
Thanks, Julie. You ask great questions. I love the dialogue, and it's really fun to think about the field.
Julie Paquette-Moore 42:03
Thank you so much.
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