How I came into teaching mindfulness

In 2009 I was living in Alice Springs, working in Indigenous education and health, when I first came across MBSR. Already having a Buddhist practice, I was keen to experiment with offering a program that claimed to reduce stress through neuro-science, serious play and meditation. 

Over the next years in my scruffy backyard studio, small groups came together and we shared the ups and downs of race, power and personal relations as well as the pressures of outback life. Surprisingly, once we established trustworthy confidentiality, people engaged wholeheartedly with the intimacy of being a community of learners. They found which practices could suit their lifestyle and circumstances. They persevered...were steadfast or sat with ambivalence. They shared both hard and hilarious stories. Even the cynics grudgingly admitted to looking forward to the sessions.

I found the course offered reliable methods for helping people challenge unskillful behaviours and feel supported enough to get curious about alternatives. It also asked lot of me as facilitator: staying with discomfort, more compassion, less shame - not promising anything, learning to accept people's mysteriousness and deeply trust our combined wild and wobbling efforts. 

Background

Nique joined the Openground MBSR team in Melbourne in 2016, and later facilitated the first veterans program as well as the All Parts Welcome course. She tutors and runs retreats with the Mindfulness Training Institute of Australia. 

• BA Adult Education, Dip Physical Theatre
• Feldenkrais movement practitioner
• Facilitator: MBSR, Mindfulness Based Pain Management
• Internal Family Systems therapist
• 25 years of meditation practice including month-long retreats
• Experienced retreat facilitator having led many seven-day insight retreats in the past 10 years.

Specialisation

Living with chronic pain herself, Nique is sensitive to how ongoing stress shows up in bodies, affecting people's sense of aliveness and confidence. Learning about trauma-informed pain management taught her the importance of pacing oneself, intentionally bringing balance to each day. Doing micro-practices. Experiencing what changes when the mental to-do list is put aside. Inviting in the possibility of resting more deeply. Like one might, walking slowly along a deserted beach, breathing easy, sensing the more than human world. 

It seems that at this time in human history, re-learning the art of pausing and resting has itself become urgent. In an increasingly polarized world, how to consciously engage in the strangely exacting skill of unwinding... without addictions or distractions? 

Teaching Philosophy

• How to learn together and co-elaborate this puzzling responsibility of being human?
• How to offer people ways to become aware of their multi-layered experience?
• How to stay relatively good-humoured amidst the pressures?
• How can mindfulness help us get creative?
• How to stay alert to wonder?
• Where is mind?