Teaching mindfulness across cultures & territories brings both opportunity and complexity. Are you prepared for it?
Join four leading professionals as they share practical, experience-based insights into delivering mindfulness teaching across international and culturally diverse contexts.
Whether you regularly teach globally or occasionally welcome participants from different countries into your courses, this panel will help you navigate the realities with greater confidence, sensitivity, and skill.
From the technical demands of online delivery to cultural humility, ethical integrity, accessibility, and working in diverse socio-economic contexts, this session brings together grounded, real-world perspectives you can apply immediately.
What You’ll Gain
- Practical guidance for teaching across cultures and contexts
- Greater confidence working with international participants
- Insights into adapting language, practices, and delivery
- Awareness of common pitfalls, and how to avoid them
Panel Highlights
Alison Evans:
Developing cultural humility in practice: Exploring how self-awareness, supervision, and curiosity help teachers navigate cultural differences, adapt language, and remain open to learning when teaching internationally.
Karen Atkinson:
Balancing integrity and accessibility: How to adapt mindfulness and compassion teaching for modern, global audiences while preserving depth, ethical grounding, and trauma sensitivity.
Marcelo Demarzo:
Mindfulness in diverse and underserved contexts: Lessons from delivering programmes in Latin America, including working within public health systems, addressing inequality, and adapting teaching for accessibility and relevance.
Please note that Marcelo will be speaking in Portuguese. Participants will be able to access Zoom’s live translation feature during his presentation, and guidance on how to use this will be provided in advance of the session.
Ted Meissner:
Getting the tech right: How to design and deliver online teaching that actually works across global contexts from bandwidth realities and platform limitations to translation, time zones, and safeguarding participant access.
Live Q&A
The session will conclude with an opportunity to ask questions and engage directly with our panelists. Bring your reflections, challenges, and curiosity and we hope this will be a rich and thought-provoking conversation.
Whether you are already teaching internationally or simply beginning to encounter greater cultural diversity within your groups, this event offers a valuable opportunity to learn from experienced practitioners working across a wide range of contexts.
We would be delighted for you to join us.
Event details
🗓️ Date: Thrusday 14th July 2026
⏰ Time: 12:30–13:30 (UK time)
💻 Location: Online via Zoom
🎟️ Tickets: £5-£20 or a donation
About the panel
Dr Alison Evans is a freelance mindfulness-based supervisor, teacher, trainer and retreat lead. Her previous mindfulness-based roles have been at the University of Exeter (UK), and she co-founded and directed the Mindfulness Network. Mindfulness-based supervision has been a core part of her work – supervising, training others to supervise, reflecting, researching and writing about it. She co-authored the publication Mindfulness-Based Supervision and Mentoring: Using an embodied dialogue to support learning and reflection. Since 2020 a substantial part of her work has an international focus.
Karen Atkinson is the CEO and founder of MindfulnessUK, specialising in accredited mindfulness and compassion training. Karen has over three decades of experience across health, social care, yoga, and mindfulness-based training. She is a recognised specialist in mindfulness and compassion, known for her safe and trauma-informed approach to supporting individuals, professionals, and organisations. Karen is the author of Compassionate Mindful Inquiry in Therapeutic Practice (2020), with a second book due later this year. She is also an Honorary Lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast and the creator of the internationally recognised Compassionate Mindful Resilience (CMR) programme.
Marcelo Demarzo, GP, PhD, is a mindfulness teacher and trainer, and an Associate Professor at the Escola Paulista de Medicina, Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP), Brazil. He is Executive Director of CABSIN (Brazilian Academic Consortium for Integrative Health), Research Affiliate at the Contemplative Studies Centre, University of Melbourne, and Visiting Professor at the University of Technology Sydney. Marcelo is founder and director of Mente Aberta – Brazilian Center for Mindfulness and Health Promotion, and an international researcher and teacher in mindfulness, mental health, self-care, lifestyle medicine, and health promotion.
Ted Meissner has been a meditator since the early 90’s, is a UMass Center for Mindfulness Certified MBSR Teacher, and is the host of the video podcast Mindfulness Voyage. He has presented about mindfulness to various corporations, organizations, and universities including Apple, UnitedHealth, Optum, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, the National Black Nurses Association, and others. Ted has been published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, Mindful, and The International Journal of Whole Person Care, and is a peer reviewer of articles for the science journal Mindfulness. He supervises mindfulness teachers internationally with the Institute for Mindfulness-Based Approaches based in Germany, serves as Chair of the board of trustees for The Mindfulness Network in the U.K., has held master classes for the Oxford Mindfulness Foundation, and teaches various mindfulness and burnout prevention courses live online.