Pragmatic Mindfulness Skills for Therapists and Guides

Announcing a new course

Seven years ago, while I was an intern/supervised psychotherapist and still in my final year of school, I offered a Mindfulness Skills For Therapists workshop. At that time I had been working with clients as a student therapist for about a year, but had been teaching meditation for 5 years.

I had carried over a lot of my mindfulness skills into my therapeutic practice to great success. They were a perfect compliment — both in theory and in practice — to all of the other therapeutic techniques I had learned.

I wanted to share this effective compliment with other therapists and healthcare workers, and the workshop was very well received (some testimonials at the bottom).

Now, 7 years later, I am offering a course with the same intention. This time, however, I have refined my practice and approach a great deal. I have far more experience to draw from, more data points to integrate into a comprehensive approach on how to work with various types of challenges.

So again I am offering this new and improved mindfulness skills course!

Note: This course is designed for therapists, coaches, guides, facilitators, etc. It’s meant for people guiding others in some sense. But it’s not limited to that. Anyone interested in learning these things is welcome to join!

I’m tired of the AI slop so here’s a photo I took of a rose instead

Course Description

This course is intended to give participants a comprehensive framework and structured techniques that work as a stand alone approach as well as compliment other therapeutic modalities (parts work, somatic, psychodynamic, etc).

I use the basic Unified Mindfulness framework, as taught by Shinzen Young, but add a lot of complimentary practices and perspectives.

One way of explaining mindfulness practice is that it is a systematic way of transforming suffering through awareness. We are developing attentional skills that can compliment any and all aspects of life and practice.

This course will be 5 online sessions, each 2 hours long. The group will be limited to 10 participants. Every session will include:

-a theory section

-guided group practices (demonstrating universally applicable practices)

-a 1:1 guided practice demo (where I guide an individual through a practice, to demonstrate how to be flexible and tailor a practice to a clients individual needs)

-a group discussion / Q&A

My goal is to give participants the tools and understanding to confidently guide others in a tailored and flexible way, that attunes to the individual needs of each client.

Course Outline

Session 1: Building a Framework - Understanding the attentional skills of Concentration, Clarity, and Equanimity — and the concept of Purification.

Session 2: Filling In the Details - Strategies for exploring and applying Concentration, Clarity, and Equanimity through practice. Emphasis and on the mind-body relationship.

Session 3: Core Practices 1 - Guided practices for Inner Child Healing, Reparenting, and Self-Actualization.

Session 4: Core Practices 2 - Guided meditations for Pain, ADHD, Restlessness, and cultivating Compassion, Gratitude, Peace, and Tranquility.

Session 5: Integration - A final session to explore any lingering questions (how to work with x?) and dive deeper into topics that interest the participants.

If you are interested in this course, reach out by replying to this email or emailing me at jude.integrated@gmail.com and let me know what dates and times do and don’t work for you. I will take all of this into consideration when making the times, and if I get enough interest I may run 2 courses concurrently (on different days, at different times).

All sessions will be recorded and available to the participants.

Cost: I will be charging $250 USD for Americans, and $300 CAD for Canadians. Being a Canadian, I am sympathetic to the currency difference, so Canadians get a small discount. If you are from another country or cost is a barrier, please reach out and we can negotiate a rate given you financial situation.

About Me

I have been studying Buddhism and meditation for over 20 years and teaching for the last 12 years. I’ve written guided meditations for many apps including Calm, Open, Mindbloom, FieldTrip, and Hatch for Sleep. You can find more about me on my Website and also an outline of much of my work in this Substack post.

Testimonials from my previous workshops (7 years ago):

“I’m a psychologist and DBT therapist, and had been looking for ways to strengthen my ability to incorporate mindfulness strategies into my work with clients, particularly those in later stages of treatment. I’ve been doing my own mindfulness practice for a few years, and it is part of the DBT framework, however, I was finding that my ability to use mindfulness in-session with clients was limited. The workshop I attended with Jude was incredibly helpful, from both a personal and professional standpoint. He provided some very specific and clear ideas about ways to apply mindfulness strategies with my clients, particularly for clients who experience a lot of shame, or who are highly avoidant of certain emotions. I often find that I leave workshops feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information, and uncertain about how to translate it into practice. This was definitely not the case with this workshop – I left with knowledge and ideas that I was able to start incorporating into my work with clients right away, as well as some ideas about where to go next with my own practice. Jude’s passion about mindfulness, meditation, and their value in therapy was clear, and I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn from him.”

-Dr. Stacey Schell, Clinical Psychologist

“Jude has a way of making the information both approachable and interactive. I appreciate his ability to go off the cuff and roll with the flow of questions from the group. I felt like I took home some manageable skills, and lots of references for future learning. I was able to integrate methods into my own meditation practice and to relate it to the practice of therapy. Given the opportunity I would attend a workshop run by Jude again, as I am sure it would be informative and interesting.”

-Reva, Psychotherapy Student

“Jude is a compassionate guide that takes you on a journey through his wisdom and experience of meditation and mindfulness. His real and down to earth demeanour make this information very accessible and engaging. It is evident that he has passion and knowledge about working with meditation as a personal and professional practice. Whether you are interested in meditation and mindfulness for yourself or in your practice, you are sure to learn something new from Jude.”

-Jenna Street, Intern Psychotherapist

“Incredibly helpful workshop. I’m new to meditation and I want to learn how to teach my patients how to become more resilient. I’ll be applying these valuable lessons into my practice.”

-Matthew Ta, Psychiatry Resident Physician

“Jude is incredibly knowledgeable about mindfulness and meditation. As a therapist who grew up entrenched in Buddhism, he brings a unique perspective for how to use mindfulness to strengthen your therapeutic practice.”

-Michelle, Psychologist