These sessions provide current and future teachers and educators with the opportunity to strengthen their practice and explore various ways of integrating mindfulness-based strategies in education settings. You will have the opportunity to learn about the latest research and the benefits of mindfulness in educational settings.
Upcoming Sessions
The Mindful Teacher/ Educator Series sessions have concluded for this year.
Please check back in September for our new sessions for the 2025/26 academic year.
Past Recordings
Shelley Murphy: Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness for Classrooms
January 15, 2025 | View the Recording | View the Transcript
Interest in mindfulness practice within school settings has grown rapidly in the last decade. This is likely because there is a growing depth and breadth of research showing the powerful benefits of mindfulness for both teachers and students. However, it is often assumed that everyone has the capacity to engage in any mindfulness practice and benefit from it. A trauma-sensitive approach recognizes that aspects of mindfulness practice can be activating for someone who has experienced traumatic stress, especially if not practiced or guided in trauma sensitive ways. In this session, you will learn about the fundamentals of trauma-sensitive, mindfulness-based approaches for supporting safety and stability in practice for both you and your students.
About the Facilitator
Shelley Murphy, PhD, is a former classroom teacher and a Senior Lecturer and Researcher at OISE, University of Toronto. She is an Internationally Certified Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness Teacher (CMT-P) and has been a mindfulness educator for over 20 years. Shelley developed and teaches the Mindfulness in Education course at OISE and is the recipient of A Mindful Society’s 2019 Michele Chaban Spirit of Leadership Award for her work and research in the field. She facilitates a monthly Mindfulness Community of Practice For Educators and offers Guided Meditations on the Insight Timer App. Her writing is featured in many publications including Thich Nhat Hanh’s Happy Teachers Change the World and The Mindfulness Bell. She is the author of Fostering Mindfulness published by Pembroke Publishers.
Past Sessions
We are grateful to have hosted the following sessions.
Jennifer Baradi: The Mindful Teacher
October 25, 2023 | Watch the session | Read the Transcript | View Jen's Shared Resources
During this session, participants will have opportunities to practice mindfulness, meditation, and movement, and have some time for discussion and sharing. Jen will share her experiences and knowledge as a Yoga and iRest® Yoga Nidra Meditation practitioner as well as a teacher and educator working with the TDSB and TCDSB. (*Participants are asked to dress comfortably for this session.)
About the Facilitator
Jen first developed an interest in combining education and Yoga while completing a research project on the effects of Yoga on academic achievement. Decades later, after being introduced to the healing benefits of iRest® Yoga Nidra Meditation and completing an additional qualification in physical education, she is inspired to integrate learning, teaching, and well-being. Through ongoing training as well as being a Professional Assistant and Production Specialist with the iRest® Institute, she continues to deepen her practice, especially around trauma and culturally sensitive Yoga and meditation.
Jen Baradi, is a 400 RYT Yoga Teacher, Certified iRest® Teacher, and Ontario Certified Teacher with Masters’ degrees in Educational Technology and Curriculum Instruction. She can be found teaching Yoga and meditation in schools, for non-profit organizations (such as Canadian Alopecia Areata Foundation), private clients, and public settings (including Jabumind teachers’ app, Vivaya online wellness, and Puppysphere puppy yoga). Jen aspires to promote greater well-being and be of service in schools and communities.
Elli Weisbaum: Building & Broadening Resiliency: Integrating Mindfulness into Education – An Introduction
February 7, 2024 | Watch Recording | Read Transcript
In this session, we will explore the scientific evidence driving mindfulness practice's current interest and popularity within the education sector, and beyond, as a means to support individuals to flourish and thrive. Our session aims to introduce participants to mindfulness practices and concepts that can easily integrate into their busy lives to help them succeed in academic, work and personal settings. This exploration will be grounded in a mixture of 1) didactic presentation (focused on the research & evidence base for mindfulness) and 2) practical hands-on mindfulness based activities that can be applied immediately to daily life.
Learning goals for this session:
- Experience foundational Applied Mindfulness practices that can be integrated into personal and professional settings (including before exams, presentations, job interviews and with students/colleagues)
- Explore the connection between neuroscience and mindfulness
- Build a toolkit of mindfulness practices to enhance resiliency which you can apply right away in the classroom and workplace.
Elli Weisbaum
Elli has worked internationally, facilitating mindfulness workshops and retreats within the sectors of education, healthcare and business. She is currently based at the University of Toronto as The Acting Director & Assistant Professor (teaching stream) in the Buddhism, Psychology and Mental Health program (BPMH), with a joint appointment to the Department of Psychiatry in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, and a cross-appointment to the Dalla Lana School of Public Health in their Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME). She received her PhD through UofT's Faculty of Medicine. Her thesis research focused on applying mindfulness to physician wellbeing. She is currently part of a team of facilitators who are offering the Mindful Awareness and Resilience Skills for Adolescents (MARS-A) program for adolescents with chronic illness at the Hospital for Sick Children. She has collaborated with UofT’s Faculty of Law, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Faculty of Engineering, Rotman School of Management, the Ontario Hospital Association and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to integrate mindfulness into ongoing programming for faculty, staff and students. Since 2020, she has been teaching and developing a mindfulness curriculum for the MScPT program at the University of Toronto. She is a certified teacher in the Search Inside Yourself (SIY) program, which was developed at Google Headquarters and brings together mindfulness, emotional intelligence and neuroscience. She attended her first retreat with Zen Master and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Thich Nhat Hanh at the age of ten and has continued training with his international Plum Village community. Elli’s novel background in both academic research and traditional mindfulness practice provides a distinct approach to her ongoing work teaching and researching in the field.
Read more about how Elli integrates mindfulness into her experience as a graduate student by visiting her blog: Mindfulness for Life.
