Tracks for teacher training
Please note: Qualification in any training track does not depend solely on a teacher trainee having had certain meditative experiences, rather, it depends more on the trainee’s capabilities and skill in teaching others the material in that track – i.e., being able to responsively, wisely, and sensitively guide students in detail through the range of relevant practices, experiences, and understandings, and to teach them too how to navigate for themselves in and between the relevant practices etc.
Insight Meditation
Qualified to teach residential and non-residential retreats, classes, etc. at GH, IMS and FR, Beatenberg, Spirit Rock, and related IM centres and sanghas.
Note: Completion of this training track can be approved by any senior Insight Meditation teacher who has sufficient knowledge of the trainee’s training and experience etc. (A ‘senior Insight Meditation teacher’ is someone who has been qualified and teaching IM for a minimum of 10 years in centres such as the those listed above. So, after 10 years of teaching, a graduate might be in a position to train another teacher, if they were well placed to do so.)
Note from HAF: Susy Keely was unable to complete residential retreat teacher training before Rob’s death. Accordingly, he authorized her to teach Insight Meditation in all forms (including courses, online retreats and 1:1 teaching) except for residential retreats.
Ways of Looking (Insight Meditation)
(Together with its related practices of samatha, the Brahma Viharas, mindfulness, generosity, etc., and including working with psychological and emotional difficulties and trauma) – actually, the whole of the Buddhadharma – in the way that it is comprehensively framed and conceived by Rob, i.e., in terms of ways of looking’ and ‘fabrication’, and also with a common emphasis on awareness and skill with the energy-emotional body.
Prerequisite training tracks: Insight Meditation teacher
Emptiness and Dependent Origination
As practised and explained in Seeing That Frees and in Rob’s talks and online seminars. This would require a thorough and intimate knowledge of all the practices in STF, as well as a deep understanding of emptiness and the Middle Way, and an ability to skilfully guide ready students in these practices and progressively unfolding understandings.
Prerequisite training tracks: Insight Meditation teacher, Ways of Looking (Insight Meditation).
Jhāna practice
Prerequisite training tracks: Insight Meditation teacher, Ways of Looking (Insight Meditation), Emptiness and Dependent Origination (?)
Teaching practice
(Usually one-to-one but also perhaps in groups) that includes and supports wider, deeper, and more subtle heart- and psychological-work. A more developed level of psychological, emotional, and energy-emotional body sensitivity, awareness, skills, intuition, and understanding, both personally and in relationship, i.e., with respect both to self and to other. (The understandings here will need to include some or other theories of psychology etc. but will need to surpass the only theoretical.)
Note: Qualification in this training track does not so much involve a body of material that one could teach students (e.g., the meditations from ‘Working with the Emotional Body’ series, etc.); rather, it indicates the development in the trainee of a range of intuitive capacities, sensitivities, and understandings regarding the emotions, energy body, and psychology of the student, which can inform the interactions with and guidance given to the student.
Note also: Psychotherapeutic trainings, or even full qualification as a psychotherapist, do not necessarily guarantee that this teacher training track is completed or approved.
Prerequisite training tracks: Insight Meditation teacher, Ways of Looking (Insight Meditation)
Soulmaking Dharma
Prerequisite training tracks: Insight Meditation teacher, Ways of Looking (Insight Meditation), Teaching practice.
