Good Practice Guidance for teachers

These guiding principles have been developed to promote good practice in teaching mindfulness-based courses.
Mindfulness courses are intended to teach people mindfulness in ways that can help with physical and psychological health problems and ongoing life challenges, as well as supporting the quality of their life.

A teacher of mindfulness-based approaches should have the following:

These guiding principles apply to teachers offering secular mindfulness-based programs taught in mainstream settings, often -yet not always – taught over eight weeks.
These programmes are identified by the following criteria:

  • informed by a clear rationale
  • teacher-led
  • have been developed to be scalable
  • have a set curriculum, typically at least eight sessions with 30 – 45 mins daily home practice, incremental development and experiential learning
  • have a clear commitment to be evidence-based.

Hence the courses covered by this Good Practice Guidance for Teachers include but are not limited to the courses listed below:

  1. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
  2. Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)
  3. Breathworks
  4. Mindfulness Based Living Course (MBLC)
  5. Mindfulness Based Childbirth and Parenting (MBCP)
  6. Mindfulness Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP)
  7. Mindfulness Based Addiction Recovery (MBAR)
  8. Mindfulness for Life
  9. Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy for Life (MBCT-L)
  10. Finding Peace in a Frantic World
  11. Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living (MBCL)
  12. Mindfulness-Based Organisational Education (MBOE)
  13. Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting_Fear (MBCP-Fear)

IPA continues to add recognized evidence-based programs to this list.