Meeting Your Mindfulness Students Where They Are

⁠In this insightful episode of Mindfulness Exercises Podcast, Sean explores the art of understanding your mindfulness students’ unique journeys. With years of experience as a mindfulness teacher and former Buddhist monk, Sean shares practical tools and frameworks to assess and support students’ growth with compassion and curiosity.

Whether you’re guiding individuals or groups, this episode offers a roadmap for meeting your students where they are and helping them deepen their practice.

What You’ll Discover:

• The importance of honoring your students’ experiences and perceptions.
• How to use frameworks like body-heart-head and safety-contentment-connection to assess growth.
• The role of trauma sensitivity in mindfulness teaching and practice.
• Tips for using language, patterns, and curiosity to explore students’ inner landscapes.

Sean emphasizes the value of approaching your students with openness, avoiding assumptions, and collaborating to uncover what’s present in their experiences.

Timestamps:

[00:01:00] The Importance of Practice: How meditation deepens self-awareness and understanding.

[00:03:00] Honoring Students’ Experiences: Avoiding assumptions and meeting students with openness.

[00:10:00] Trauma Sensitivity in Practice: Tailoring mindfulness techniques for those with trauma.

[00:20:00] Frameworks for Growth: Using body-heart-head and safety-contentment-connection models.

[00:30:00] Language and Patterns: Listening to students’ words and exploring their emotional landscapes.

Support the show

Add your 5‑star review — this really helps others find us.

Free Mindfulness Exercises: MindfulnessExercises.com

200 Guided Meditation Scripts: Scripts.MindfulnessExercises.com

Certify To Teach Mindfulness: Certify.MindfulnessExercises.com

Work with Sean Fargo: Sean.MindfulnessExercises.com/

Reduce Chronic Pain: Pain.MindfulnessExercises.com

Email: [e-mail]

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:08):
Welcome to the Mindfulness Exercises Podcast.
Your space to deepen yourpresence, elevate your
mindfulness teaching, and embodymindfulness with confidence,
authenticity, and integrity.
Join us as we explore insightsand tools to transform lives,

(00:30):
including your own.
I'm Sean Fargo, and today we'llbe diving into an unusual topic
for mindfulness teachers.
Understanding your students'levels and growth.
As mindfulness teachers, it'sessential to honor each person's
unique journey, recognizingtheir individual needs and

(00:53):
experiences, traumas andsensitivities, and growth
potential.
In this discussion, we'llexplore practical frameworks and
approaches to guide yourstudents with care, curiosity,
and compassion.
Each individual comes tomindfulness with a unique

(01:17):
background, set of experiences,and different goals.
Recognizing this diversity isboth a skill and an ongoing
practice for us as guides.
Today I'd like to share somereflections and strategies for
understanding people's levels ofgrowth, where they're at in

(01:39):
their mindfulness practice, andwhere an appropriate next step
might be for them.
Whether you're leading a groupsession, facilitating one-on-one
practice, or simply supporting aloved one on their mindfulness
journey, these approaches canhelp you honor and nurture the

(01:59):
unfolding process for eachperson you work with.
To begin, let's consider thevalue of personal practice for
ourselves as guides.
Our own ability to guide othersstems from our own mindfulness

(02:19):
and meditation practice.
The more we practice, especiallyon retreats, on our longer
sessions, if we can meditate ahalf hour, hour, two hours, if
we can continue pushing theamount of practice that we have,
then the more we're going toexperience ourselves.

(02:41):
And the more we experienceourselves, the more we
understand these layers ofemotion, the levels of opening,
deepening that we experience inmeditation, just awareness.
We're able to recognize that inothers.
I don't know that I wouldnecessarily say that someone

(03:04):
else has only experienced 10% ofwhat they were claiming.
I would honor whatever practicepeople are doing and honor
whatever people think they'reexperiencing and offer a
perspective that may be helpfulfor complementing their journey.

(03:42):
I think diagnose is the wrongword here, but I think it's
really helpful, first of all, assay a guide or a facilitator or
a teacher to notice whenever weassume something, or even if
we're 99% sure something'shappening, to keep that 1% open
of the same.

(04:08):
A lot of teachers get in troubleby assuming too much or thinking
they know.
I've gotten in trouble myselfwith that working as a coach.
When we're working with someone,it's really helpful to remember
that we don't know.
Even if they're saying theyknow, I try to try to assume
that maybe they don't fullyknow.

(04:28):
And I don't know either.
Maybe there's mystery to this,and we can try some things to
see what works.
So I think that's a reallyimportant foundation.
But there's a lot of clues andthere's different frameworks,
and I'll just go through a fewof them here.
Some coaching schools will gothrough a framework body, heart,

(04:49):
head.
Some people will say head ismind.
I don't do that, but it's likethoughts, heart, body.
These are very simplisticbreakdowns, but noticing if
something feels like it coulduse a little bit of attention of
body awareness, heart awareness,or um, say mental awareness.

(05:10):
Noticing trauma is really,really helpful.
So, you know, in meditation, alot of people with trauma will
bounce around, or it's hard tostay still, or it's hard to
settle in the body.
They'll much more prefer anactive kind of meditation,
whether it's you know, thinkingsomething or physically moving,

(05:33):
you know, walking meditation,yoga, etc.
You know, and some people willknow that they have trauma and
some people won't.
And not forcing someone to likebe still, but like incorporating
that awareness that they havetrauma into like how you
proceed.
Maybe you do walking meditationfor a while, maybe you talk
about trauma if it's uh it'sappropriate, asking what they've

(05:56):
tried in the past, um, what'sworked for them, what doesn't
work for them, what kinds ofmeditations they want to do,
what they're scared of.
Those can be interesting clues.
There's also like frameworks.
Do they feel safe?
Do they feel connected withothers?
Do they feel content?
Like if they had to rate thosethree, like how would they rate

(06:18):
them?
Maybe working with one of themif they're open to it.
So like safety would be like thelimbic, the magdullah area,
contentment would be the likemammalian brain, and then the
connection would be theneo-mammalian.
At different points in myjourney, like for the first
third of my coaching journey, Iused the head, heart, body

(06:41):
framework.
For a while, I did the safety,contentment, connection
framework, try to infuse traumasensitivity throughout, you
know, and sometimes that willjust take precedence, depending
on the on the client.
And then um, yeah, likelistening for words, how
emotionally intelligent arethey?
How self-aware are they?

(07:01):
Are they saying everything'sfine or good or not good?
You know, listening for everyword and letting their words
tell you, like if they use theword should a lot, then there's
probably a strong inner critic.
There's a lot of judgment, andthen listening for layers of
shame, worthiness is a big one.
And there's often a strongcorrelation with trauma here.

(07:24):
A lot of people will focus onthe good, on the positive, no
bad feelings.
I don't want to assume that somepeople that might be the case,
and there but there's manypossibilities for why people do
that.
It's not necessarily denying,some people will just be scared
to open up to what's unpleasantor a variety.

(07:45):
Yeah, yeah.
Are you holding on to like thegood, the pleasant, the what
should be here, and exploringthat can be really helpful.
So anyway, using language, likelistening to what words they're
using, noticing patterns, again,not trying to assume that we
know what they're doing or whythey're doing it, but exploring

(08:07):
it together, inviting acuriosity for what's here is um
it's easy for us to become likearmchair therapists or that we
know.
And so it's really helpful toexplore together, like, oh
interesting.
What is that?
If we think we know and if wevocalize that, oftentimes it

(08:30):
ironically creatingdisconnection between us and
them.
And oftentimes there's a subtlelayer of say, either judgment or
just assumptions.
So just being really, really,really careful with that.
Like, oh, let's let's find outtogether what this is, or you
you said that word earlier.
Can you say more about what youmean behind that?

(08:52):
What's what's on what'sunderneath that?
Or might it be related tosomething over here?
Or let's explore this to youknow, this puzzle together and
see what we can find.
It's really, really important,in my opinion.
You know, and then there's otherways, you know, of of assessing

(09:13):
or discerning.
You know, you can uh ask peopleto take an Enneagram test, or
there's all sorts of umassessments or quizzes, or yeah,
you know, you can show people amap of emotions or a a wheel of
emotions and uh, you know, askthem to sense into things in a

(09:36):
more nuanced way.
There's lots of tools out there.
Thank you for joining me intoday's discussion on
understanding your students'levels and growth.
I hope this exploration hasoffered valuable insights to
help you connect more deeplywith your students and guide
them with greater awareness andsensitivity.

(10:00):
If you're ready to deepen yourteaching practice and bring
mindfulness to others in ameaningful way, consider joining
our mindfulness meditationteacher certification at
mindfulnessexercises.com.
Until next time, stay present,stay grounded, and continue

(10:24):
showing up with authenticity andcompassion.
Thank you for listening.