Mindfulness Teaching Pathway
You’ve found something in your mindfulness practice that helps. And like anyone who discovers something good, you want to share it.
With your team. Your clients. The people in your life who are clearly overwhelmed.
The problem is that knowing something in your own bones is different from knowing how to teach it. Enthusiasm is not a method. And nobody wants to be the person cornering colleagues about their breathing.
This program is for people who want to share mindfulness skillfully – without being annoying about it.
Foundations of Mindfulness Teaching
Starting point for everyone | 8 weeks + opening Saturday | A complete course on its own
- Starting point for everyone
- 8 weeks + opening Saturday
- A complete course on its own
You’ll learn to guide brief practices — breath, body, sound — use language that is clear and grounded, stay close to what people are actually experiencing, and hold a welcoming and inclusive container. Some people stop here. That’s a complete outcome.
After Foundations:
You can guide short mindfulness practices in meetings, with clients, or in community spaces.
Certification Pathway
For those who want to go further | Continues beyond Foundations
- For those who want to go further
- Continues beyond Foundations
More practice, more depth. Science and stress physiology. Body-based practices. Loving-kindness and compassion practices. RAIN, an insight practice for working with difficult experience. Poetry as a teaching tool. Guidance for serving diverse populations, helping all to feel seen, valued, and welcome and a practicum where you actually teach — with feedback from real teachers, not just a checklist.
There’s also a practical session on building a teaching life: what to charge, how to talk about what you do, insurance, liability: the nuts and bolts stuff that nobody ever tells you.
After completing the pathway:
After completing the pathway, you can design and lead a structured mindfulness program. You know how to work with what comes up in a room. You’ve taught in front of real people and gotten real feedback. And you carry a credential that reflects that depth. If you eventually want to pursue MBSR Teacher Training, this is a strong on-ramp.
The Practicum
For those who want to go further | Continues beyond Foundations
- For those who want to go further
- Continues beyond Foundations
More practice, more depth. Science and stress physiology. Body-based practices. Loving-kindness and compassion practices. RAIN, an insight practice for working with difficult experience. Poetry as a teaching tool. And a practicum where you actually teach — with feedback from real teachers, not just a checklist.
There’s also a practical session on building a teaching life: what to charge, how to talk about what you do, insurance, liability: the nuts and bolts stuff that nobody ever tells you.
After completing the pathway:
After completing the pathway, you can design and lead a structured mindfulness program. You know how to work with what comes up in a room. You’ve taught in front of real people and gotten real feedback. And you carry a credential that reflects that depth. If you eventually want to pursue MBSR Teacher Training, this is a strong on-ramp.
Teaching Lab
Ongoing development | Optional
- Ongoing development
- Optional
Once you’re out there teaching, it’s easy to keep doing what you’ve always done. Most teacher training programs don’t have anything built in for what happens after you’re certified. That’s where habits calcify.
The Teaching Lab is a single optional session in April, open to current trainees and to graduates of any mindfulness-based teacher training. You bring a short video of yourself teaching. The group watches together, and faculty guides the feedback.
Newer teachers see what development looks like over time. More experienced teachers get a mirror they rarely get elsewhere. The mix is part of what makes it work.
You don’t have to submit a video to show up. Come and watch first if you want.
Worth Being Clear About
This is not MBSR Teacher Training.
(We have that, too.) It doesn’t prepare you to teach an 8-week MBSR course, and it doesn’t position itself as equivalent to that.
What it is: A serious, supported pathway for learning to share mindfulness in everyday settings — workplaces, communities, professional practice — with real teachers, real feedback, and a credential that means something. For those who eventually want to pursue MBSR Teacher Training, this is a natural first step.
Who This Is For
You might be:
- A yoga teacher, therapist, healthcare worker, or educator who wants to bring mindfulness into what you already do
- Someone in a leadership or community role who wants to be able to open a meeting or a session with something that helps people settle and connect
- An MBSR or meditation practitioner who’s ready to take a next step
- Someone who keeps getting asked, “How do I learn to do this?” and wants to be able to point people somewhere good — including yourself!
- A teacher from a previous training who wants continued development and a community to support continued growth
- Ready to deepen your practice. The best way to learn is to teach.
For organizations:
Some organizations send employees through this program to build internal capacity — someone who can lead a brief practice before a difficult meeting, or support a more present team culture. If that sounds like something worth exploring, we’re happy to talk.
Full Pathway
This program welcomes people of all backgrounds, bodies, and identities. Scholarships are available for those who need them.
FACULTY
Bryant Alexander
Teacher Bryant Alexander Jr. is a MBSR instructor trained through Brown University’s Mindfulness Center and an executive coach specializing in stress, attention, and mindful performance. He has guided hundreds of people through evidence-based practices that support nervous system regulation, emotional steadiness, and a more grounded relationship with daily life. Bryant’s teaching brings together mindfulness, evidence based approaches, and compassion in a simple, accessible way, helping participants return to presence and navigate change with greater ease.
Carolyn McCarthy
Teacher Trainer Carolyn McCarthy teaches in the hopes of moving us, individually and collectively, toward healing, wholeness, and love. With a degree in Latin American Studies and Women’s Studies, she uses mindfulness to support the work of social justice, turning toward the difficult within and without. Carolyn is a certified teacher of Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Zest, warmth, and wit enliven her teaching. Core practices: sitting meditation, time outside, solo living room dance parties. Visit her online at www.carolynmcc.com.
Karen Schwisow
Program Director & Teacher Trainer Karen Schwisow, E-RYT 500, is the director of Mindfulness Northwest and has been teaching yoga and meditation to individuals and groups since 2005, and facilitating 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction courses since 2011. She is certified to teach Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction by the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and is an MBSR Teacher Training mentor at the UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness. Karen has been building a foundation of mindfulness in her own life since the early 90s. After her discovery of yoga in 2001 she trained as a yoga teacher and co-founded Three Trees Yoga & Healing Arts Center in Federal Way where she co-developed Yoga Teacher Training programs with over 200 graduates. Through compassionate listening, authenticity, and humor she creates a welcoming container that empowers participants to experience their own innate ability to thrive.
Tim Burnett
Teacher Trainer Tim Burnett is the founder of Mindfulness Northwest. Tim has been teaching Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) since 2010, and practicing meditation since 1986. He is certified to teach MBSR by the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Tim is also certified to teach Mindful Self-Compassion and Compassion Cultivation Training. Tim also brings a background in traditional Dharma practice to his mindfulness work as an ordained Soto Zen priest and teacher having received a 30 year apprenticeship with the well known Zen teacher Zoketsu Norman Fischer. Tim is the Guiding Teacher of Red Cedar Zen Community in Bellingham. Tim is passionate about the healing power of bringing a mindful compassionate attention to our lives and learning to accept ourselves more fully just the way we are.
Tushar Bhagat, PhD
Teacher Trainer Tushar Bhagat, PhD teaches MBSR & other stress reduction programs at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine & Cancer Research Institute to cancer patients, students, medical residents, doctors, therapists, scientists & staff. As an Assistant Professor in the Department of Oncology, Dr. Bhagat conducts translational cancer research in addition to pursuing research on mindfulness-based well-being programs for professionals. Dr. Bhagat received early yoga & meditation training from his parents. He began formal training in meditation during middle school while attending and serving 10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreats near Mumbai, India during high school.