How to Teach Mindfulness and Meditation | Part 1 - Compassion

The demand for mindfulness teachers has never been higher, but many aspiring teachers face self-doubt, fear of judgment, and uncertainty about where to begin. What does it truly take to teach mindfulness with confidence and credibility?

In this first episode of a four-part series, Mindfulness Exercises founder Sean Fargo lays the foundation for effective mindfulness teaching. He shares insights from his personal journey—including his time as a Buddhist monk—and introduces the first key aspect of teaching mindfulness: embodying compassion.

Through personal stories and practical guidance, this episode explores why self-compassion is the cornerstone of effective mindfulness teaching and how embracing it can transform both your practice and the way you support others.

What You’ll Discover in This Episode:

✔ Why mindfulness teaching is about presence, not perfection

✔ How self-compassion builds confidence in guiding mindfulness practices

✔ The power of lived experience in authentic mindfulness teaching

✔ How to overcome fear, self-doubt, and the pressure to “get it right”

✔ Why compassion—for yourself and others—is the foundation of great mindfulness teaching

This episode sets the stage for understanding what it truly means to guide others in mindfulness. Whether you're new to teaching or looking to deepen your approach, this series will provide the tools to help you lead with clarity, authenticity, and care.

🌿 Stay tuned for Part 2, where we’ll dive deeper into the core principles of guiding mindfulness sessions.

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Alright, hi, welcome everyone.
My name is Sean Fargo.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Today we're going to beintroducing a new four-part
series on how to teachmindfulness and meditation with
confidence and credibility.
I'm going to be going over sometips and tricks and techniques

(00:22):
that I've been using for thelast 15 years in teaching
mindfulness to chronic painpatients, CEOs, kids,
stressed-out professionals, youname it.
I've been teaching at retreatcenters, been teaching courses,
teaching people how to teachmindfulness for a long time.

(00:44):
And so I want to share with yousome of the things that I've
learned over the years to helpincrease my impact and influence
to really help others to be moremindful, more
self-compassionate, andresilient.
So I hope that you like andenjoy this four-part series.

(01:05):
If you have any questions atall, please feel free to reach
out, leave a comment or areview.
We'd love to hear from you.
But our main intention here isto really help you to help
others, because the world isgoing through a lot these days,
and we all need help, includingourselves.

(01:26):
It takes a village.
So here to support you in anyway that I can, and hopefully
that you find these uh teachingshelpful and practical for
helping others to be moremindful.
Alright, so are you ready tobegin this training on how to
teach mindfulness and share itwith others?

(01:48):
Mindfulness is just gentleawareness of our
moment-to-moment experience,allowing us to notice our
unfolding thoughts, emotions,and sensations without judging
them to be good or bad, right orwrong.
We're not trying to get anywhereor force any outcomes.

(02:11):
We're simply being present withwhat is, whether it's pleasant
or not.
Mindfulness meditation isusually a more formal way of
cultivating this same awareness.
Practices include mindfulness ofbreathing, the body scan,
mindfulness of walking, mindfuleating.

(02:33):
There's formal self-compassionpractice, etc.
Mindfulness helps us to developa deeper connection to this very
moment and foster a sense ofinner calm and clarity.
Thousands of clinical studiesshow that mindfulness improves
mental health, emotional health,focus and concentration,

(02:55):
physical health, self-awareness,workplace wellness, and personal
relationships.
Let's start with the first keyaspect of teaching mindfulness
with confidence and credibility.
So from 2006 to 2009, I lived inThailand and China.
I was working in a job that Ithought I would like, but I was

(03:16):
feeling really burned out,working way too hard seven days
a week on the other side of theworld, doing something that
didn't fully align with myvalues, searching for ways to
find clarity, purpose.
I stumbled upon an old Taoisthermit.
He barely spoke any English.
Our first meeting, he made ustea, and we sipped in silence

(03:36):
for about an hour or so.
I stared at my tea, didn'treally talk, and then I left.
Our second meeting, we walkedslowly in figure eights through
an old forest grove again insilence.
There was not a lot of teachingthrough words, but there was
more of a teaching throughpresence.
What I learned like meditationand secrets that he's

(03:59):
accumulated over the years beinga hermit.
Um so in our third meeting, wesat on the ground uh and he
asked me to count my exhalesfrom one to ten, back from ten
to one, and then just keepcycling through.
And I thought that would besimple enough.
And if I would lose track, Ishould start back at one.

(04:20):
Um and to my surprise, Icouldn't even make it to ten.
My mind was so distracted.
I had a lot of energy in mybody, and I couldn't even make
it from one to ten.
And I thought, if this is sosimple, why is it so difficult
for me to do this?
That seems like the simplestthing in the world.
On our fourth meeting, he askedme to sit on a cushion for 30

(04:40):
minutes, close my eyes, andsimply sense into my body
breathing.
So I began by feeling my bellyrise and fall.
Rise and fall.
Beyond that, I was resistingfeeling anything else in my body
since I felt scared to feel thestress I had been accumulated

(05:01):
from working too much.
So after 10 minutes, my legswere on fire.
I had never sat cross-leggedbefore on a cushion.
After 15 minutes, my body wantedto burst just from all this
pressure I had in my body andkind of sensing within.
After 20 minutes, I beganjudging, and after 30 minutes,

(05:22):
Wei rang a bell, making the mostbeautiful sound I had ever heard
because it meant that themeditation was finally over and
I could move my body.
But then I looked into Wei'seyes, and they were the eyes of
a wise grandfather who knew thedifficulty of what I just went
through, especially with myfirst time.
He looked at me as if to say,I'm proud of you.

(05:45):
It takes great courage to lookwithin and be with yourself for
a little while.
Then something clicked in me.
The difficulty was part of thepractice.
It wasn't supposed to be easyall the time.
It was supposed to be revealing.
And for that meditation and allfuture meditations I did with
him, he didn't ask me to pretendeverything's okay or to get to a

(06:10):
calm place or to find bliss.
He simply asked me to sense intoeach moment's experience within
my window of tolerance, tosurrender to what's here, to
breathe with it, to be mindfulof it, to not judge it to be
good or bad, right or wrong, tonotice how it actually is, and

(06:31):
to let go of the resistance andthe fighting with what's here,
and to see that discomfort isn'twrong or bad.
It's just a part of our humanexperience.
It tends to dissolve when webring this gentle, spacious,
kind awareness to it.
So Wei knew it was so simple,yet so difficult sometimes,

(06:51):
which is why he treated me witha sense of compassion.
I'm proud of you.
It takes great courage to lookwithin.
And this compassion that hetreated me with was suddenly
teaching me how to becompassionate with myself, which
is this underlying foundation ofall good mindfulness teachers

(07:13):
and teachings, a sense ofcompassion.
This was something brand new tome that I didn't learn at home
or at school, where there's alot of judgment and a lot of
thought and behavior that triesto get to an outcome.
It's always doing something toget something or to be someone.
So practicing the sense ofself-compassion with what's
here, even in the difficulty,gave way his own sense of peace

(07:39):
and his power and his sense ofself-compassion, because he knew
that he could be with anythingas it arose with a sense of
care.
And so I thought, you know, thisis what I want from myself: this
sense of peace, this sense ofself-agency and power, this
confidence to be able to meetanything as it is, and this

(08:01):
sense of compassion.
And whenever that day comes,hopefully it's in a you know in
a hundred years from now, I willdie a happy soul.
So I started wondering how Icould do that.
You know, I don't know how longI have to live.
Every day is is a blessing.
And so I thought, you know, Iwant to do this now because I
don't know how long I have tocultivate this practice.

(08:24):
Wei said that I can practice hisfull time as a hermit or as a
monk, kind of like him.
So after several months ofsensing into this preposterous
idea, I actually thought maybe Ishould try it, become a hermit
or a monk.
And so after a while, I gaveaway all my possessions, shaved
off what little hair I had left,gave my parents a huge hug,

(08:48):
found new teachers who had thesame compassionate eyes as Wei,
and I entered a Buddhistmonastery that would take
someone like me and train me forwhat could be the rest of my
life.
I had no idea how long I wouldbe there.
And so the underlying foundationof all mindfulness teachings
that are effective is this senseof compassion.

(09:08):
Here's how you can use it today.
You can highlight and model thethree ingredients of compassion

and self-compassion (09:14):
kindness versus judgment, common humanity
versus isolation, and a sense ofpresence with the unfolding
experience versusover-identifying with anyone.
You can also debunk the sevenmyths of compassion.

(09:36):
Um, a lot of people have thesemyths of what self-compassion is
and what compassion is,including compassion will
undermine my motivation.
It means letting myself off thehook.
It's just feeling sorry formyself and self-indulgent.
It's the same as self-esteem,it's selfish, or it will make me
look weak or soft.

(09:56):
You can also help peopleincrease their compassion
through a guided practice oflisting memories that bring up
feelings of frustration,sadness, fear, stress.
Rate each memory on a scale ofone to ten in terms of
intensity, sort them into themild, intermediate, and intense
uh reactions, recall one of themild memories as vividly as you

(10:20):
possibly can, uh, segue intofeeling the felt bodily,
physical experience of thatemotion in this moment.
Discern between the physicalsensations of the emotion and
the stories and thoughts andjudgments about it, noticing the
judgments of good or bad, rightor wrong, softening the
judgments with curiosity,breathe and try to be with the

(10:43):
felt experience more and more.
And then after that, continuewith the other mild memories
after having some traumasensitivity training, which
we'll review soon.
But this helps to increase yourability to be with intense
situations with more care andcuriosity, presence, and being
able to sense into how itactually feels without getting

(11:06):
lost in the story.
And this supports your ownpractice and your ability to
teach others how to be with moreand more intense situations.
You can also invite people toconsider how mindfulness and
compassion overlap.
So mindfulness is this gentlemoment-to-moment awareness,
while compassion is mindfulnessplus common humanity and

(11:28):
kindness.
So, in some ways, we can talkabout mindfulness and compassion
as two separate things.
But really, at the heart of it,there's a lot of parallels, a
lot of similarities.
So when we bring mindfulness toour stress or discomfort,
there's inherently a sense ofgentleness, uh, which is a part

(11:52):
of self-compassion.
So, as mindfulnesspractitioners, we're practicing
self-compassion, which is asimple sense of care for
ourselves during the unpleasantmoments of our life, whether
it's in meditation or not.
And as mindfulness teachers, abig part of our role is
encouraging courage to meetwhat's here.

(12:13):
A heartfelt effort for people tobe with whatever they're
actually feeling without tryingto force it to be a certain way,
reminding them it's okay to feelwhat we feel.
And that's why I think thehallmark of all good mindfulness
teachers is this sense ofcompassion for others.
Because we know how scary it canbe, how difficult it can be to

(12:35):
open to this raw experience oflife.
So curious, what were some ofyour takeaways from this first
episode on these key aspects ofteaching mindfulness?
I hope that you found someuseful tools and techniques that
will help you to help others bemore present,
self-compassionate, andresilient.

(12:56):
But we're just getting started.
We have a few more of theseepisodes.
The next episode is gonna be onimposter syndrome, fear of
judgment, feeling unworthy to bea mindfulness teacher.
So we're gonna talk about thatvery common and understandable
feeling that we all have whenwe're trying to help others be

(13:19):
present.
And we're gonna be going throughsome practical and useful tips
on how to overcome thosefeelings and also how we can
prepare ourselves to teachmindfulness with integrity.
So uh please be on the lookoutfor the next episode.
In the meantime, please let usknow what you think of this
episode.
Leave a review, leave a comment,drop us a line, and let us know.

(13:44):
How are you applying some ofthese techniques and tools?
What questions do you have?
Do you want further support inapplying these mindfulness
teaching tools to your ownpersonal situation?
Let us know.
We're here to support you.
So, as always, we wish you well.
Please continue to deepen yourown mindfulness practice as you

(14:06):
also prepare to help others.
As always, if you're wanting tocertify to teach mindfulness,
you can come to our website,mindfulness exercises.com slash
certify, where you can learn howto become a certified
mindfulness meditation teacherin about 80 hours of personal

(14:27):
meditation practice, study, andteaching.
So thanks again for listening.
My name is Sean Fargo, and Ihope to see you again soon.
Thank you very much.