With growing excitement about mindfulness has come recent concerns about making sure we are trauma-informed when we teach. While there's no perfect way to teach mindfulness, I've come up with a few guidelines that can help. I call it the CHOICE method, based on the acronym below.

Like all of us, these guides are a work in progress, but can hopefully be a guide for many of us as we deepen our teaching skills.

C: Consent. Don’t push people (including yourself) beyond your safety limits. Contemplative practice is not the solution to everything nor is it for everyone, and we don’t want to encourage a “spiritual bypass.” We all have a comfort zone, a growth zone outside of that, and a danger zone beyond that. Keep things in the comfort and growth zones.

H: Honesty. Present yourself and the practices honestly. Kids and teens, often as a matter of safety, can smell inauthenticity if you overpromise the practices, or if you have a hidden agenda. Be honest also about the origins of the practices, and whether you are sharing what you learned and adapted from another person or another culture.

H: Help. Have backup help if you need it, with a mental health professional or close support person, a co-facilitator, and a plan for helping struggling students ground themselves.

H: Humility. Don’t teach outside of your expertise, and practice cultural humility about the origins of the practices you are sharing. Remember also that while you may be an “expert” in mindfulness on one level, the folks you are teaching are the experts on their own experience. Can you each learn from each other and respect your systems of knowledge?

O: Orient. Orient your students before and after. Explain what you’ll be doing beforehand so the practice feels safe and predictable, and finish the practice with a grounding orientation to time and place and a debrief and inquiry

I: Inquiry. Inquiry after practice should welcome all experiences — positive, negative, and otherwise — and be supportive of the choice to share in different ways or not at all. Inquiry also means continued self-inquiry as a teacher about your moment-to-moment window of tolerance.

C: Choice and Comfort. Students should always feel empowered to choose to stop whenever they need, or choose a practice or no practice that suits them better in that time and place. Eyes can be open or closed, body postures should be comfortable and sustainable.

E: Embody the practice and Empower with Equity. Embody mindful awareness and compassion in your teaching. Remember: No one ever appreciates being yelled at to be more mindful. Empower your students to speak up if they need to. Teach also with an equity mindset and approach, mindful of present and historical power dynamics.

While we can never be perfectly trauma-informed at each moment, these CHOICE guidelines can help us maintain as much safety as possible in our teaching.