Workshop: Teaching Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness

ABOUT

This workshop will guide you in how you can adapt your mindfulness teaching to be trauma sensitive so that you can teach with safe practice and confidence to meet the accessibility needs of your classroom.

As teachers, we aim to make our teaching as accessible to as many people as possible. Methods that work well with the majority, may not land with others. In fact, ways that we teach may cause strong reactions or overwhelm in some, in particular those with a history of trauma who may become triggered or even disengage.

Tim Duerden is an experienced mindfulness teacher trainer and therapist, who has been teaching mindfulness in clinical, educational, corporate, and community settings for over 30 years. His sound educational approach incorporates guidance, theory and practice, with practical trauma-sensitive frameworks that can be drawn on in future teaching. Tim offers an accessible way of helping you conceptually frame the impact of trauma and how individuals can best learn in a non-stigmatising way.

In this workshop, you will learn practical applications including how to adapt breath and movement-based practices for greater accessibility. You will also learn about important sensitivities to verbal framing and how to identify when an individual may not be right for a course.

The workshop will be supported with a set of course materials to help you structure existing mindfulness sessions or courses and will offer powerful methods for helping participants to steady themselves when needed.

Breathworks’ Mindfulness for Health course will be used as the example material, however the workshop will be useful and relevant to all schools of mindfulness teachers.

Please note that we will be recording this event.

SCHEDULE

Saturday 8th October, 9:45 - 4:30

Time	Activity
9.45	Settling practice
10.00	Introductions, housekeeping and aims for the day
10.30	Window of tolerance model and the importance of ‘choice’, ‘scaffolding’ and ‘chunking’.
11.00 -11.15	Break
11.15	Choice, scaffolding and chunking in practice; breakout groups
11.45	Key capacity framework for trauma-responsive curriculum delivery
12.15	Application of key capacity framework to trauma-sensitive body focused practice
12.45 – 2.00	Lunch
2.00	Mindfulness Practice and Q&A
2.20	Exploring breath and movement-based practices within a trauma-sensitive framework
3.00 – 3.15	Break
3.15	Boundaries of safe practice
3.45	Exploring imagery and Loving Kindness practices within a trauma-sensitive framework
4.15	Ending activities and questions/comments

Who is this event for?

Mindfulness teacher-trainees or teachers from Breathworks or other schools of teaching.

What will I learn from attending?

• Gain confidence in teaching individuals with a background of trauma
• An opportunity to learn and practice with a skilled teacher and therapist experienced in trauma-sensitive approaches
• Learn boundaries of safe practice and how to adapt to the needs of the classroom
• Grasp practical frameworks that can be used to guide you in offering trauma-sensitive mindfulness practices one-on-one and in groups
• Become a more attuned teacher with a greater ability to recognise accessibly needs within your groups

About Your Trainer

Tim Duerden MBBS, MSc, PGDip, PGCE has been teaching mindfulness in clinical, educational, corporate, and community settings for over 30 years and has been a teacher-trainer for Integrated Mindfulness for over 14 years. A senior lecturer in the University of Salford Counselling and Psychotherapy training team, he leads mindfulness-based modules for therapist well-being and the use of trauma-sensitive approaches with clients. He has been an accredited Breathworks teacher since 2008 and has also trained in MBCT, MBSR, Mindfulness in Schools, Mindful Self-Compassion as
well as undertaking training in ACT and Compassion Focused Therapy.

As a counsellor, CBT therapist and hypnotherapist he integrates mindfulness and self-compassion based approaches into his work. He has a particular interest in adapting mindfulness to meet the needs of groups often marginalised from mainstream services – a recent example is working with men in the Orthodox Jewish community in North Manchester.