My Story

In the month that followed I did some considerable research, into MBSR, into the mindfulness teaching credentials of my teachers, mentors and trainers, and was considerably shocked. Almost everyone teaching in the organisation was Buddhist. My deep dive into MBSR meant I came across the term 'stealth Buddhism' for the first time. I found out that Jon Kabbat Zinn, the revered founder of the MBSR curriculum, had openly stated on more than one occasion that he considered MBSR to be 'skilful means'. In Buddhist circles this refers to ways of transmitting the Dharma (Buddhist teachings and practices) without naming them as Buddhist. Zinn deliberately removed all reference to the Buddhism he based MBSR on because he knew he would 'never get it past the noses' of the approvals board at U-Mass unless he did. Zinn adapted Soto Zen, Vipassana, Hatha Yoga and Advaita Vedanta teachings and developed the Stress Reduction and Relaxation Program. He subsequently renamed the structured eight-week course Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). He removed the soteriological goals of the religious and spiritual systems that influenced MBSR and any connection between mindfulness and Buddhism, instead putting MBSR in a scientific context.

Discovering all of this I felt justified at my next meeting with my training mentor to point to this and again state that I had been offered (and paid for) a course in secular mindfulness teacher training and in fact this was not on offer. My mentor again stated that all mindfulness was based on Buddhism and that I would have to accept this as there was no alternative. He was in fact saying that the only mindfulness is Buddhist mindfulness. I countered by pointing out the many other forms of contemplative practice which included meditation and which had nothing to do with Buddhism. I told him my personal practice had for years, since I left the convent, consisted of meditations which had no basis in any 'ism', Catholic, Buddhist or anything else.

The session ended with my being very upset as he continuing to be dogmatic about there being no mindfulness except that based on Buddhism. When I suggested I had been sold a course of training that did not exist, nor could it be provided to me and that this was fraudulent, he got annoyed and said I was being pedantic and pathetic.

Sadly this situation continued into the next few months. I began to dread every training session since I knew it would contain Buddhist practices and principals which I did not wish to engage with. I was questioned and cross questioned by the trainers and facilitators, these questions mainly ending up as some sort of invalidation of me. One of them challenged me saying 'well if secular mindfulness exists as you say it does, show me the courses based on it'. Another told me 'you are anti-religion and biased against Buddhism, you need to heal!' Yet another engaged me in an hour long conversation in which he argued that Buddhism was secular and not a religion. At that time I did not have enough information to refute this. On almost all occasions I felt attacked, not listened too, dismissed and put down. Yet I stood my ground, I knew that what I was being trained in was Buddhist and I did not want to teach people Buddhism by stealth! By this time, 4 months in, I was seriously considering leaving the course. On investigation into this I found if I did so that I would forfeit the (not inconsiderable) fee I had paid. In addition, at least one of the trainers was right, I could find no mindfulness teacher training that was not based on the principles of MBSR, and MBSR is, IMO out and out hidden Buddhism. I was at an impasse.

After my first training retreat a bunch of us trainees decided to get together away from the formal course monthly training to practice guiding meditation and discuss what we were learning. I discovered through this I was not the only person having some misgivings. After a month or two of these meetings others began to ask to join the group, I also had about 5 emails from people all talking about their various difficulties with meditation and with the organisation. One person I met with was having what I now recognise as Meditation Related Adverse Effects - this happened every time she focused on her breath. I advised her to stop doing so or to divide her attention between how it felt inside and add some kind of little movement to the practice. Though this helped, she was told by her teacher 'not to be so silly' and that what she was experiencing was normal. Evidence was growing that things were not ok, not for me, not for others. At the next meeting with my training mentor I was asked about this group and advised to dissolve it on the grounds that 'other students are getting confused as a result'. I asked what this confusion consisted of and it became clear that information I was passing on from my training with Treleaven concerning a Trauma Sensitive approach was contrary to what they were being told to do in the training, causing conflict. I said it was up to each person to decide if what they wanted to offer was in line with recent research, was Trauma Aware and compassionate, and that I had no intention of stopping the meetings. No one was being forced to attend! Furthermore this attempt to silence me could be seen as interfering with my right to freedom of expression.

The next thing was that I found that someone who started attending was reporting back to the organisation and that members of the group were identified to the organisation by name and approached with varying degrees of threat based incentive to not attend. Some were told it was not in their best interest to continue to attend, others were told that the information I was giving was erroneous. This continued until I wrote an email to the head of training pointing the ways in which all of this infringed various rights in the UK. However, it was not without its effect on my in considerable stress and anxiety. I once more considered leaving the training. 

Then a woman who had a PhD in neuroscience attended one of our meetings and informed me and everyone else there of the ways in which the neuroscience aspects of the course were entirely erroneous, Buddhist based, and out of date. There was a general outrage at this which I was then blamed for by my training mentor. He said I was deliberately 'churning up antipathy toward the organisation' and putting people off their training. As it happened I had a copy of an email the neuroscientist had sent to the head of training pointing various errors and asking for an urgent meeting to discuss this. She was granted the meeting, given a total refund on the cost of the training and told she was no longer a trainee. She later instigated some legal action, at which point I lost contact with her, and was feeling extremely stressed out.

The remainder of the year passed with my developing severe anxiety around all of the rest of the training, though I continued to get full marks in all the coursework. In fact on occasion I was told by trainers that my understanding and teaching were well above average. This created a sense of split reality, one where I was approved of for my knowledge and understanding and disapproved of for everything else. In addition, it was crunch time. I had to find a way of reducing my stress around this and an independent counsellor who I saw at the time advised me to make a decision one way or the other, then come to terms with that decision. I needed to have Professional Indemnity and Persona Liability Insurance in order to teach mindfulness and to get that I had to produce documentation that I was a trained teacher. I also realised I was never going to change the way the course content and practices were offered, so I stopped objecting. There was a big difficulty in this for me in that I knew that many of the meditation practices were not TSM. I didnt want to be the cause of someone coming to mindfulness class and having an adverse effect, so in the training I used the scripts as given, and privately developed my own that were in line with TSM. Again, a split. Offering non-adapted meditation guidance stuck in my craw and had the effect of me feeling like I had sold my principles for the sake of getting the certification. It was only about 2 years later that I recognised this as something called Moral Injury.

'Moral injury is the deep psychological, emotional, and often spiritual distress that arises when a person either commits, witnesses, or is subjected to actions that violate their own core moral beliefs. It is not a diagnosis but a trauma-related syndrome rooted in moral conflict rather than fear.'

In all cases of Moral Injury there is an over arching authority that imposes an action 'that violates their own core moral beliefs' on the person. Teaching a Buddhist based curriculum and being coerced into offering non TSM adapted scripts were the features of my MI.

I completed the course training and passed with distinction, but was caught up in a trauma I didnt know I was carrying.

At the time I received my certification in 2017 I was already leading a Practice based group for a Sheltered Housing Scheme (Assisted Living) facility in my local area and as a result met with someone who had dementia. She seemed to get a lot from the practice, even though she would occasionally announce it was time for tea and get up to go and make it mid way through our meditation! Discovering  my local CMHT was offering MBSR for free I recommended she apply. She wasnt even assessed, because 'no one with dementia can meditate'! After meeting with her carers and other members of  a local Memory Cafe, I wrote a meditation course and we got funding to run it. For 6 weeks, carers and their relative/friend with dementia attended and we not only had a wonderful time together, but everyone reported positive results. This inspired me with confidence enough to write another course as Introduction to Mindfulness, a purely secular and TSM based course which I also ran. Success with these offerings meant I have never taught the standard MBSR type course and authored adapted (for TSM) courses for other teachers too.

In addition a group of teachers and I formed a support group for mutual learning where we took it in turns to bring a Practice, Article or issue for discussion or to gain confidence with each other. It was a supportive, non-judgemental space where we could goof up, be nervous and wobbly about our mindfulness teaching and get help from each other. The group grew rapidly from 6 to 46 members and met weekly (YES WEEKLY!!) for 4 years. I occasionally mentioned that my own training had been a less than positive experience but moved on rapidly into teaching other meditation teachers as a result of our support group. It was there that people expressed completing training with little confidence, unsure about Inquiry, having no experience or understanding of the psychology of group process as well as other issues. Soon I had written courses in TSM, Inquiry, and other related subjects for mindfulness teachers all of which were well attended. I was a mindfulness teacher! Occasionally I noticed when the subject of meditation related adverse effects came up, especially if there was pushback, I would become reactive. On some memorable occasions I had a few blazing rows with people. I continued to argue for a secular mindfulness and to tell people why I would have nothing to do with MBSR. By 2000 the terms Stealth Buddhism, McMindfulness and cultural imperialism had started to appear in mindfulness academic literature. The earliest published usage I can trace in indexed academic sources comes from discussions like Jessie Sun’s Mindfulness in Context: A Historical Discourse Analysis. I bean to feel vindicated, at last I could point to academic researchers who were saying what I was saying.

The publication of the results of the 'Varieties of Contemplative Experience' Study had a huge influence for me and I began to teach other teachers about Adverse Effects using information drawn from it. The Varieties of Contemplative Experience | The Clinical and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory

Yes, I was enjoying teaching, was a contributing member of the mindfulness world and was having a positive effect on teachers attending my courses. All seemed well. I had put behind me the severe anxiety of that year of training, found a way of engaging with secular mindfulness and was well on the way to developing my ultimate aim - a totally secular, TSM informed Mindfulness Teacher Training that had validation from an external source.