- [Narrator] Some people wanna know, like, you know,
why should I teach mindfulness?
Or why would people teach mindfulness?
There's so many people around the world
who are suffering from stress,
trauma,
anxiety, depression,
feeling of disconnect in the digital age.
But there's also a market demand too.
People are wanting to find a teacher to learn from.
More and more people are feeling more anxious.
And so people are just looking for teachers.
But if you've been practicing mindfulness for awhile,
this is a wonderful way to align with your values,
to teach something that you're passionate about.
You can also advance your own practice as a teacher
by just articulating mindfulness techniques and concepts.
It kind of forces you to enhance your understanding,
to connect the dots a little bit deeper,
to integrate your understanding in a whole new way.
And it's something that you can be proud of doing.
You're helping others. You're contributing to the world.
You're creating the change that you wish
to see in the world.
So, you know, whether you do this as a hobby
or as a profession and something,
I think that you could be proud of doing.
Some people think that if you teach mindfulness
that you have to be poor,
you can't make money from it.
Or some people feel like they might not be worthy enough
to teach mindfulness, or competent enough.
Some people think that mindfulness teachers
are kind of boring, or dry, that they can't have fun.
Maybe people put mindfulness teachers up on a pedestal,
they're high above everyone else.
Some people feel like mindfulness teachers
might not be able to relate to the real world or real life.
Some people think that mindfulness teachers
are part of an in-crowd of these
sort of elite celebrity style,
people or crew that you can only get in
if you're part of the club.
And some people think that mindfulness teachers have spent
years as a monk or decades in silence.
But I can tell you firsthand
that all of these are myths or misconceptions.
There are plenty of mindfulness teachers out there
who make considerable amounts of money,
and then turn around and donate a lot of the money
to good causes.
You don't need to have been born wise
to share these simple techniques and tools and concepts.
You can totally have large joy and fun in your life.
And that's what this training is all about
to kind of shed some light on the truths
of what it is to teach mindfulness
that almost anyone can do it in any walk of life.
You just need to have the compassion
of really wanting to help people.
So that's really the only requisite
for being a mindfulness teacher.
So you know, many people on this webinar
from wide variety of backgrounds and professions
from all over the world, and who want to share mindfulness
with different kinds of goals.
Maybe you wanna write an e-book
or start a course, incorporated into your therapy.
Or maybe you just wanna learn
how to guide mindfulness meditations.
Maybe you wanna share it with your family.
So wide variety of people are here on this webinar,
but it's really meant for the real world.
You know, this is not something meant for sages
on the top of a mountain.
This is really for anyone living in the real world.
So what I'm sharing today is not Buddhist.
It's really just meant to be practical.
This is not woo woo.
This is really meant for real people in real life.
So my goal is to kind of give you an insider's scoop
on how to teach mindfulness professionally
with meaningful impact on people's lives.
So here's a classic definition of mindfulness
from Jon Kabat Zinn, the founder
of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction.
"Mindfulness is paying attention on purpose
in the present moment non-judgmentally,
or knowing what you're doing while you're doing it."
So it's pretty simple. It's not always easy,
but it can really be boiled down
to this nonjudgmental awareness of your experience,
moment to moment.
So you can and see there's nothing woo woo,
nothing religious around this.
Everyone is born with this capacity
just to simply notice what's happening without judging it.
Now and now,
and now.
Can bring this awareness to internal sensations,
five senses,
emotions manifested in the body to thoughts,
any part of your experience.
So this is me, I was burned out in Beijing
quite a while ago, but I was living in China and Thailand
exporting furniture and jewelry, and home decor.
This is me holding a big bottle of beer
in Tiananmen Square shoeless.
I think I was getting blisters,
but I was getting burned out.
I was actually doing the thing
that I had been wanting to do my whole life,
which is kind of be like this Indiana Jones character
of traveling the world and finding cool things
to buy and then send across back to America.
But I realized I didn't really have much fulfillment
from this job.
I was burned out, working seven days a week.
I was making good money,
but realizing that that not bringing me fulfillment.
But it was in Beijing where I stumbled upon a Taoist master.
His name is Wei,
and he taught me a wide variety of meditation techniques,
including some concentration exercises
and wide variety of mindfulness techniques.
I am greatly indebted to him
for introducing me to this path.
And I thought, you know, when I was sitting
with Wei thinking, you know what?
He embodied this way of being in this serenity
and strength and compassion,
these ways of being that inspired me.
And I thought you know, before I die,
I want to have cultivated these same qualities in myself.
And I thought you know, how can I do that?
How can I cultivate these qualities more and more
to where I really embody them?
Where I treat others with kindness and love and compassion.
Where I'm able to sense into my experience
without reacting against it.
Where I can feel confident
that I can handle just about anything,
and be present for it and have that courage
to face what's happening without getting caught up or
in the sense of overwhelm.
And I really just wanted to help others as well.
I felt like the job I was in,
I wasn't doing any good for anybody.
And that had bothered me.
So just thinking how can I cultivate these values full time?
So I became a monk.
I decided, you know, I'm not really religious,
but the only thing I can think of to allow me
to practice mindfulness full time is as a monastic.
And so, you know, one day I was actually living
in Jerusalem listening to the Dalai Lama
teach these advanced meditation techniques
that went way over my head,
but I was thinking you know,
maybe I could do something like the Dalai Lama
and just kind of practice these techniques all day.
So I've never really considered myself Buddhist,
even though I was a monk for two years.
And but I, you know, I really got to practice all day
from 3:30 in the morning to 10 o'clock at night.
It was a profound experience for me
and obviously just learned a lot practicing so deeply.
And it was the hardest thing I've ever done,
but it was also so rewarding for me as well.
After I disrobed from monasticism,
I started working at Spirit Rock Meditation Center
with Jack Cornfield, and I worked with
some of the world's top mindfulness teachers
and supported the practice of over a 100,000 people
in person.
Worked with Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein,
and Daniel Goldman and wide variety
of mindfulness-based teachers at this meditation center
for over five years.
And really, really grateful for that experience.
Worked with Jack Kornfield.
He's a friend of mine and someone who I highly respect,
if you haven't read or listened to Jack,
I highly encourage you to check him out.
One of the top two most popular mindfulness teachers
in the United States right now.
But after actually near the end of my days at Spirit Rock,
I certified to teach mindfulness in prisons,
helping people to find freedom behind bars.
And it was a proud moment to be a part of this.
I taught at San Quintin Prison
and also Solano State Prison.
I probably learned way more than they did.
They taught me a lot about courage and forgiveness,
discipline,
generosity.
I learned so much from them.
Really I grateful for that time.
And I had a chance to be a part
of the Spirit Rock Family Program
where I taught there family retreat,
taught some tween classes
as well and joined an iBme Retreat as well,
teaching high schoolers.
And I really valued that experience.
I think teaching to people with chronic pain
who are in prison and kids.
I love teaching these three populations the most.
When I was a kid,
I wish I had these mindfulness teachings myself.
I struggled a lot as a kid
and really wish I had learned mindfulness.
And so now it brings me a lot of joy
to bring mindfulness to kids,
but also to inmates and people who are really struggling
with chronic pain as well.
I later went to go certify as an integral life coach
through New Ventures West integrating
with the integral philosophy from Ken Wilber.
I certified to teach mindfulness and emotional intelligence
with Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute,
which is the program at Google.
And so learned a lot about how to teach mindfulness,
the neuroscience of mindfulness,
and then how mindfulness relates
to the five pillars of emotional intelligence.
And so I taught this program that was born at Google
all around the world
and went out to Singapore a couple of times
to teach there a telecom company about 300 people
from their tech team.
I've taught at PG&E and DocuSign,
and hospitals,
and all sorts of places
bringing the five pillars of emotional intelligence
to the workplace.
I then went on to teach in a health care
for two years full-time
for a company called WellBrain
where I recorded hundreds of mindfulness meditations
for people struggling with chronic pain
and PTSD,
and severe depression.
And then I would go to hospitals and conferences,
speaking to doctors primarily
about how they can prescribe mindfulness
and meditation to their patients.
So here I am with the founder
and a picture of actually one of my teachers
on the slide there Lang Poor Liam from Northeast Thailand.
But we were able to help a lot of people overcome
their chronic pain and the suffering through mindfulness.
And taught at PaINWeek,
which is the National Pain Conference in Las Vegas,
talked to a few 100 doctors,
may a Top 10 Teacher for Simple Habit which is an app.
They actually just won Google's
I think it's like their app of the year for wellbeing.
So I have some meditations on there.
But I've been a speaker on different online summits
and podcasts.
Was part of the Mental Wellness Summit for,
I was their mindfulness representative for that summit.
I created mindfulness exercises,
which is a website with over 1500 free mindfulness exercises
Tara Brock,
and Franco Sasaski in a wide variety of other teachers
have a lot of their meditations on there.
There's videos and eBooks
and all sorts of free mindfulness exercises
at mindfulnessexercises.com,
And just last year alone over 634 meditations were shared
around the world.
So feel very, very happy about that.
But I've worked with celebrities and athletes
and just very, very happy to be sharing mindfulness
as my full-time profession.
And was a speaker host at Wisdom 2.0
for two or three years now.
I've helped Tesla build mindfulness program
for one of their teams.
I've taught at Reddit
and just feel very grateful for this experience.
So in teaching mindfulness though,
I've really struggled and sacrificed.
I've made every mistake in the book.
And I'm writing this equal.
I've been
yeah, learning the hard way on how to teach this,
but I've developed a lot of processes
and techniques to be able to find the right ways
of teaching a variety of different populations.
And I'm really looking forward to sharing some
of those with you today.
But some of the mistakes I made,
I tried to be like Jack Kornfield a little bit.
Tried to sort of modify my voice
or tell certain stories like some of my other teachers.
Sometimes I felt very inadequate about my experience
or my knowledge.
Sometimes I lack confidence in front of others.
I tried to act wise and profound sometimes,
you know, in the beginning,
I really didn't know how to articulate my experience.
I knew that I was profoundly impacted,
but I didn't quite know how to articulate it
and really help others to practice
or to create the habit of mindfulness.
I cozied up to certain teachers wanting approval.
Sometimes it became too salesy trying to make money
or to sell coaching packages.
And I thought,
sorry, I taught what I thought people needed
rather than actually asking them
what they were struggling with or what they're hoping for.
So needless to say,
I learned the hard way on how to teach mindfulness
and be successful at it.
So, you know, that really just prompted the question,
how can I share what I've learned
so that other people can get through some of these obstacles
so that other people don't struggle
with the same struggles that I got through?