Frequently Asked
Questions

Retreat is required to give teachers an opportunity to deepen their practice and to experience the kinds of processes that might arise for their participants doing more intensive practice such as day retreats.

Online retreats are an acceptable alternative to face to face retreats. This will be reviewed in due course.

Five days per year with periods of silence lasting for at least 50% of the waking time should be spent in retreat. This requirement could be met in the following ways:

• Five consecutive, residential days, guided by a teacher
• For experienced practitioners who have already undertaken numerous guided, silent residential retreats, five days of un-guided solitary retreat would be acceptable periodically. This should be agreed in discussion with the teacher’s supervisor as meeting the practice needs of the teacher at their particular stage of development.
• Where personal situations do not permit a single five-day residential retreat, this may be separated into shorter periods such as two weekend retreats or a series of day retreats adding up to 5 days.
• Where even these options are not feasible due to personal circumstances such as major life events, other alternatives may be proposed to BAMBA and will be considered exceptionally on a case by case basis.

Teachers are advised to engage in a minimum of 30 hours of mindfulness CPD per year to keep abreast of the evolution of mindfulness teaching and to uphold agreed standards.

The 30 hours should comprise at least 1 day of face to face or live online training such as a master class. Other hours could be made up through reading, listening to podcasts or online material, writing material for mindfulness journals, newsletters or internal documents, preparing and delivering new material for teaching or training, presentations or conferences, attending regional mindfulness gatherings or special mindfulness-related interest groups, or accessing mindfulness-informed mentoring (separate from supervision).

Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) training is likely to be an important part of CPD for all teachers and is acceptable, including when it is undertaken as part of another role. The chosen CPD should meet an identified learning need. Mindfulness teachers should keep a record of CPD they do and be able to account for it.

Teachers should be familiar with BAMBA’s Ethical Standards as well as any codes of conduct produced by their relevant professional bodies. They should be engaging through personal reflection and an open discussion with their mindfulness supervisor about the ethical and professional issues raised in these documents. Teachers should always ensure they are teaching with integrity and within their level of competence.

New applications to join the BAMBA Teachers Register are £90. The cost to renew your membership is £60 per year. As these costs cover the administration to process your application, unfortunately refunds cannot be issued should your application be unsuccessful.

Yes, you can.

We know that many of our registered teachers diversify their work based on experience and that teachers can find themselves teaching in a one-to-one setting, delivering workshops in various settings, or delivering shorter programmes.

When it comes to renewing your membership, it is not mandatory for an existing register member to have taught any number of eight-week programmes to qualify for renewal.

When you apply for renewal through the website application process via this website, simply tell us what you have done by way of teaching in any capacity.

If you have undertaken training in an additional BAMBA-recognised Mindfulness-Based Programme (MBP) and would like to add it to your existing profile, there is an application process you can follow to do this.

Please view more information about the process here.

Please note, the cost is £25 per additional MBP.