Ways to mindfulness training & gaining new experience

Within the scope of Erasmus+ international project dedicated to the field of mindfulness, the project consortium brings together professionals from mental health sector making the first steps toward a future innovative training in mindfulness tools and techniques. The consortium already developed training material for prospective mindfulness training for Mental health professionals. The very core of the already developed training materials underlines not only the integrative and mind-body based approach towards focusing one owns’ awareness on the present moment but combines modern possibilities of blended learning opportunities for future participants.

At this very moment in two of the projects partnership countries (Spain and Slovenia) the BeMindful&ACT training programme has just started as a 13 week long piloting, within which each of the developed sessions is going to be tested with Mental Health Professionals (MHP). The group of MHP is going to be able to test the developed training materials, integrated on a tailor-made e-learning platform. As the future BeMindful&ACT training is currently available in terms of written materials and audio recordings, the MHP will have a unique opportunity to test the BeMindful&ACT training program available in an online learning mode with continuous supervision and support from a professional tutor expert in mindfulness. Thanks to the distance learning, each participant is free to find the most appropriate time and place to go through each week’s session’s materials and practice mindfulness.

As modern possibilities for learning and all the potential that mindfulness training will bring towards the balance of professional and personal life, the organizations have seized some opportunities to prepare for the piloting. Firstly, by the end of 2017, the basic project idea and opportunity for new knowledge was represented within the group of professional workers within our organizations. By the latter, the first features of the training have been provided to the group to check their interest, curiosity and possible technical questions of the future training. As blended learning opportunities and working within an online platform need appropriate preparation period, the experts meeting was repeated. In the first phase, we checked the questions about “how to…in what way…personal time management…” and upgraded it with concrete information about how to access the Moodle platform, a prosperous organization of material online and all the possibilities for finding space, time and inner readiness to undergo the training.

Well, it must be said, that curiosity and personal engagement and interest in mindfulness contents made it very hard to not reveal all the potential the BeMindful&ACT training brings along…however, the first insights have been done and the group is looking forward to starting their personal learning and mindfulness journey…

We are finishing our first steps into the piloting with the following thought from Eckhart Tolle: “In today’s rush, we all think too much — seek too much — want too much — and forget about the joy of just being”. With this on our minds, we are taking first steps into mindfulness journey and finding our own course in the weeks to follow.