What is the online program?

The SkillfuMeans Program is a 12 week, 20+ Hour hybrid live and pre-recorded course focused on helping you learn a method for thoroughly integrating mindfulness into daily life. 

You will have access to hours of videos, exercises, a community forum of resources, and live group meetings.  

Included in the program:

Educational Teachings
Weekly videos covering topics such as the physiology and psychology of meditation, Zen stories and applying meditation to your daily life.

Weekly Live Calls
Get answers to burning questions about your practice and share success and struggles with fellow meditators on weekly calls.

Insight Journal 
These are personal exercises to help you recognize insights and plan ways to bring this practice into your real life.

Partner Exercises
Start creating your supportive community. Get paired with a partner to meet on a weekly basis to practice applying and teaching mindfulness skills and get personal feedback.

* If you are a mindfulness teacher, coach or therapist you will be paired with another person taking the course to share mindfulness with others. 

Daily Meditation Recording Prompts
Guided meditation recordings that build in a systematic program to get you steady clear results.

Community Platform
Continue the conversation from our live meetings, access free challenges and resources from world-class meditation teachers and share your personal meditation expereince and questions on our integrated platform.

Course Structure

Each week will cover a different topic, with short videos, writing exercises and meditation practices adding up to about 30 min- 1 hour of work each week, plus daily meditations.  We will explore weekly reflection questions and practice on our own and with accountability partners during the week. 

Each week we will discuss themes of the week and explore questions to deepen our practice,  teaching skills and in the live group call.

Weekly Themes

 

Part 1. Foundations of Mindfulness

 

Week 1 - Orientation: The State of Things/Personal Definition of Well-being

• Structure of the course and platform
• The Four Noble Truths
• What does the science say about how much to sit and for how long?
• Your personal Anatomy of Wellbeing

Week 2 - Mind and Body are One:

• The Integrated Nervous System
• The wisdom vs science perspective of reality
• Dealing with distractions
• Applying meditation to personal priorities

Week 3 - Evolutionary Psychology as Context for Practice

• Where we came from and where we are going
• The expereince of the default mode network vs a mindful brain
• Anatomy of well-being our innate ability

Week 4 - Nerds: Ancient Technique & Research Models

• Tradition and Religious Roots of Practice
• The 8 Fold Noble Path
• The 10 Perfections

Week 5 - Mindfulness in Daily Life

• Who are you creating?
• Stages of Integrating Mindfulness in your daily life

Part 2. Learning to love

 

Week 6 - Love

• Metta and the network effect of positive emotion
• Stages of the practice of Loving Kindness
   

Week 7 - Loving

• Unconditional love
  The Four Brahma Viharas (Divine Abodes)
• Creating Loving Conversation
   

Week 8 - Personalizing Loving Kindness

• Like the a mother and her only child
• Loving Kindness in action: Motivational Interviewing & Beginning Anew
• Commincating with loved ones
    

Part 3. Looking Deeply, Seeing Clearly

 

Week 9 - Looking Deeply and Seeing Clearly: Body
 

• Introduction to Vipassana
• Kayanupassana: Mindfulness of The Body and Ultimate Materiality
• Anatomy of Well-being: Body
   

Week 10 - Looking Deeply and Seeing Clearly: Feeling

• Vedanupassana: Mindfulness of Feeling & responding vs reacting
• Compactedness of Feeling
• Anatomy of Well-being: Feeling
  

Week 11 - Looking Deeply and Seeing Clearly: Mind

• Cittanupassana - Mindfulness of The Mind
• Recognizing States of Mind
• Reflections of the mind in enviornment and relationships
  
  

Week 12 - Looking Deeply and Seeing Clearly: Personal Truth

• Relationships, values, habits and goals
• Integrating Insights
• Personal Dharma
• Community Support
  
  

*Extra: Nowhere to go, Nothing to do/Retreat package and resources

Meet Your Guide

William Jackson, PsyD has spent the last 20 years studying and teaching mindfulness-based meditation. Dr. Jackson is a trained clinical health psychologist, founder of SkillfulMeans, and has researched and created mindfulness-based interventions with the National Institute of Health, The Benson Henry Institute of Mind-Body Medicine at MGH, Tufts University, The Center of Mindfulness and Compassion, and Harvard Medical School. 

His teaching style incorporates core methods from Vietnamese Zen, Burmese Theravada, and contemporary evidence-based mindfulness practices. William began practicing Pa Auk Theravada tradition while on intensive forest retreats with 7,000+ hours of total time in retreat during his six years as a fully ordained Buddhist monk.

Learn a method to thoroughly integrate mindfulness

In the SkillfulMeans Training you will learn how to…..

• Be an agent of change: The opportunity to go deeper in your own practice so you can become an agent of change in your family, community, and profession.

• Have the confidence and tools to share mindfulness: The confidence and skills to apply mindfulness in your life and find fulfillment in the most important areas of your life and how to help others to do the same. 

• Be comfortable working and one-on-one coaching and mentorship directly from William Jackson for 75 minutes each week with community support in between sessions

• Use the latest science: A comprehensive curriculum, to gain a solid understanding of the scientific research showing meditation improves our resilience, our emotional-intelligence, our creativity, our mental health and even our leadership skills.

• Use most effective meditation practices and techniques from the world’s top meditation teachers and scientific research including: Thich Nhat Hanh’s and his Sangha, Ven. Pa Auk Sayadaw, H.H. the Dalai Lama, Ven. Matthieu Ricard, Ajahn Brahm and other well-known Buddhist teachers in addition to the latest research on mindfulness as integrative mental health therapy. You will learn the most effective, powerful combination of these practices, and how they can be applied to find fulfillment in the most important areas of your life.

• Utilize free templates:  If you are a wellness professional and would like to share these mindfulness techniques with your clients, colleagues, patients or students, you’ll get the scripts, handouts and materials to do so. By the end of this program you will have the confidence and practice to lead your clients in a personalized guided meditation without needing a script.  

• Personalize mindfulness for the person sitting across from you. Most other meditation training programs prepare you to lead group meditation classes. We are the only meditation program that teaches you a clear method on how to work one-on-one with a client helping them to integrate mindfulness into their life.