It is important to emphasise that those completing the Integrated Mindfulness Training course can only do so when the boundaries of the safe and ethical integration of MBAs into their work have been well established through the supervision process.

If your intention is to embody your own mindfulness practice as you work and possibly imbue your professional dialogue with concepts and attitudes drawn from your mindfulness practice, then issues of safe and ethical practice are usually quite straightforward – indeed, your practice is inherently more likely to be safe and ethical given the compassionate awareness and resilience that mindfulness will bring to your work. We expect all trainees to become competent in reflecting on the safe and ethical embodiment of mindfulness into their work.

If, in addition to embodying mindfulness in your work, you intend to specifically teach MBAs to others, a more explicit and detailed understanding must emerge as to how such teaching can be safely and ethically integrated into your work and of the boundaries of such teaching. Delivery of training targeted to a particular group, especially those with high intensity issues, requires an appropriate professional background.

Having raised this issue, it is important to emphasise that the training enables you to identify these boundaries and to develop bespoke approaches corresponding to the situation within which you work. It is also important to highlight that, when delivered in an appropriate and boundaried way, mindfulness-based approaches are inherently very safe.

The MBAs the course equips you to deliver can be integrated into the management of more serious/intense conditions, but this requires the appropriate professional training to work with people with these conditions or close supervision or mentoring by someone with the appropriate training. Further training would be required for non-specialists in the management of more severe conditions to deliver targeted courses to such groups or individuals. It is your existing professional competencies that will determine whether it is appropriate to integrate mindfulness practice into your work with a particular group of people.

Finally, in keeping with this principle of working within your professional competence, if your current work does not involve working with groups then this course will not provide you with the competency to manage groups.