The Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program

The Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program is an online mindfulness meditation teacher training for people who want to teach mindfulness and compassion-based practices. It is led by Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach, and offered through Sounds True. The training is aimed at practitioners with an established meditation practice who are ready to develop real teaching skill, and it ends in dual certification.

The program runs as a two-year professional course, delivered entirely online, so students from many countries train together. It holds both psychological and spiritual depth, drawing on Buddhist-rooted mindfulness and on modern psychology. The organizers note that the first three cohorts filled to capacity.

What to Expect

The curriculum is an online course of mindfulness and compassion teachings, paired with regular meetings among fellow students. The program opens and closes with live virtual events, which include small breakout sessions, live Q&A, and chances for one-to-one connection with classmates around the world.

At the center of the training is a small mentoring group. You meet 24 times with a highly trained teacher who serves as your mentor, practicing and refining your teaching skills in a supportive circle. Many graduates describe these groups as a highlight, a source of community and guidance across the full two years.

Guest faculty bring further depth, including Eckhart Tolle, Dan Siegel, George Mumford, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, and Kristin Neff, among others. The program also includes a cultural sensitivity and racial awareness training, which invites students to apply their growing mindfulness practice to building community across divides of race, ethnicity, and other differences.

The work is personal as well as professional. Students are supported and challenged to strengthen their own practice of mindfulness and compassion while learning to share it with others.

About Jack Kornfield

Jack Kornfield grew up in a Jewish family in the United States and, after graduating from Dartmouth College, traveled to Asia in the 1960s. He studied Buddhism in Thailand, India, and Burma, and ordained as a monk in the Theravada tradition. In 1975 he co-founded the Insight Meditation Society with Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein, an organization that helped introduce Buddhist meditation practice to a Western audience. He later established Spirit Rock Meditation Center.

About Tara Brach

Tara Brach earned her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Saybrook Institute, where she began weaving together psychology and spiritual practice. She is the founder of the Insight Meditation Center in Washington, DC, where she offers teachings that combine Western psychological principles with Eastern meditation practices, with a focus on mindfulness and compassion.

Before You Go

This is a professional-level certification, best suited to intermediate and advanced practitioners who are committed to deepening their own practice as they learn to teach. If you are newer to meditation, it is worth checking with the admissions team about readiness before enrolling.

- Language: English
- Format: online, with live virtual opening and closing events
- Included: the online curriculum, 24 mentoring group sessions, guest faculty teachings, breakout sessions and live Q&A, cultural sensitivity and racial awareness training, and Continuing Education credits
- Certification: awarded by both the Awareness Training Institute and the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley