Learning Objectives — The Complete Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness Teacher Training
The Complete Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness Teacher Training is a 26.5-hour, self-paced professional education program presented by David Treleaven, PhD. Upon completing the training, participants will be able to demonstrate the following learning objectives.
1. Identify signs of traumatic stress and dysregulation that may arise during mindfulness practice, including hyperarousal, hypoarousal, traumatic flashbacks, and dissociation.
2. Apply the Window of Tolerance framework to assess regulation and dysregulation during mindfulness practice and select appropriate trauma-sensitive responses.
3. Analyze ways in which sustained mindful attention may either support regulation or intensify trauma-related distress.
4. Select and utilize trauma-sensitive modifications to attention, including internal and external anchors, orienting, pacing, and choice.
5. Distinguish between interoceptive and exteroceptive awareness and select appropriate modifications to body-based mindfulness practices for individuals experiencing traumatic stress.
6. Apply relational principles of safety, choice, agency, and belonging when teaching mindfulness in trauma-sensitive contexts.
7. Use Mindful Gauges to assess present-moment responses to mindfulness practices and select strategies intended to support regulation.
8. Select and apply mindfulness and embodiment practices intended to support a greater sense of safety and self-regulation.
9. Identify internal, interpersonal, and environmental resources associated with resilience and integrate resource-based practices into mindfulness teaching.
10. Adapt body-scan practices using trauma-sensitive principles of pacing, choice, attention, and agency.
11. Apply principles of mindful self-compassion when working with trauma-related shame, distress, and self-criticism.
12. Assess how social context, identity, and experiences of belonging or othering may influence an individual’s experience of mindfulness practice.
13. Apply mindfulness practices that cultivate presence while recognizing when dysregulated arousal or dissociation may interfere with present-moment awareness.
14. Select and adapt trauma-sensitive mindfulness strategies for professional contexts involving trauma-related dissociation and chronic pain.
15. Describe and apply trauma-sensitive modifications to yoga and other embodied contemplative practices while recognizing the appropriate scope and limitations of mindfulness-based approaches.
16. Compare regulation-oriented and presence-oriented mindfulness strategies and select an approach based on a participant’s current arousal, capacity, and position within the Window of Tolerance.
17. Design trauma-sensitive mindfulness learning environments that incorporate informed choice, clear expectations, accessible modifications, culturally responsive attention to social context, and procedures for participant support.
18. Assess when a participant’s response to mindfulness practice indicates that the practice should be modified or discontinued, or that referral to a qualified trauma or mental health professional is warranted.