Arunas Antanaitis SMART & Mindfulness Teacher/Facilitator
As a retired teacher with 30 years experience in the classroom, I have an understanding of the issues and challenges that educators and students have. I am committed to bringing mindfulness-based programs to school communities providing a foundation for school success initiatives.
Arunas Antanaitis is the co-founder of Mindful Solutions for Change, introducing mindfulness-based skills and tools for optimal living for educators, organizations and individuals. Arunas is also an Associate Teacher/Facilitator with Mindfulness Everyday, a registered charitable organization experienced in implementing mindfulness programs for both students and educators. He is a Mindfulness Meditation Specialist trained at the University of Toronto Factor-Inwentash School Of Social Work. Arunas is a trained facilitator of the Mindful Ambassador Council program with Mindfulness Without Borders, which delivers social emotional learning to high school students. He trained with Dekyi Lee Oldershaw at the Centre for Compassion and Wisdom, and received certification as a facilitator in the 16 Guidelines, Transformative Mindfulness Methods and the 5 Tibetan Yogas.
Laurie Arron
MBSR Facilitator
Laurie Arron has been practicing mindfulness and meditation since 2001. In 2002 he spent three days at Plum Village, the home of Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. He returned there many times, spending well over a year in total, learning how to touch life deeply simply by opening to present moment experience and to the wonders of life. He is a member of Plum Village's Order of Interbeing. In addition to teachers at Plum Village, Laurie has trained with several of North America's best meditation teachers, including Joseph Goldstein, Ken McLeod, and Shinzen Young, as well as training in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction with Susan Woods.
Laurie is the Director of Finance and Development at The Centre for Mindfulness Studies, which brings mindfulness-based mental health therapy and training to people, with a particular focus on making it available to marginalized and disadvantaged people.
Laurie has had many careers, from real estate developer to lawyer to gay rights advocate to Executive Director of the Green Party of Canada. There he saw that underlying our collective inability to stop climate change are our minds that are driven by fear, craving and misperception, and that an evolution in consciousness is the answer.
Markus Bohlmann
Mindful Self-Compassion Teacher
"I don’t believe that we need to be fixed. I believe that we have everything that we need inside us. We just forgot."
Mindful Self-Compassion, for me, is a pathway into our completion, that is, into giving ourselves permission to accept and love ourselves wholeheartedly, the parts we like about ourselves and the parts that we struggle with. Mindful Self-Compassion means to befriend oneself, to become one’s best friend, in spite of difficulty. It means tapping into our resources of self-care, strength, courage, and wisdom to begin to live and to love fully. Markus is a trained teacher of MSC through the Centre for Mindful Self-Compassion, School of Medicine, University of San Diego. He is also certified in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) through the University of Toronto and the Centre for Mindfulness Studies in Toronto, where he is also a faculty member. He teaches mindfulness for Mindfulness Everyday, the519 Community Centre Toronto and at Seneca College. He has also completed the certificate programs in Foundations of Applied Mindfulness Meditation and Applied Specialization in Mindfulness Meditation at the University of Toronto. He also practices Fogo Sagrado, an energy-alignment technique from the indigenous tribes in Brazil. For more info, please go to www.markuspjbohlmann.wordpress.com
Karen Davis
SMART Teacher/Facilitator
Karen Davis is a dedicated educator with 30 years of experience working with children, teachers and parents. Karen recently retired to country living in her home in Muskoka. She is an instructor of smartEducation™ (Stress Management and Resiliency Techniques). Karen has been working to bring mindfulness into education by leading mindfulness workshops and retreats with educators, parents and community members. Karen believes that teacher wellness and self care need to be consciously nurtured in the education system in order to equip teachers with the awareness, inner strength and resilience to provide high quality social, emotional and instructional supports to their students. As a mindfulness educator, she is dedicated to building a compassionate and caring school system for educators, students and their families.
Sara Escott MEd, BFA, MBSR, SMART
Mindfulness Teacher
Sara has been facilitator and educator for over 15 years. She is the co-director of In Forma Theatre, a community-based arts and education company in Toronto. Her work is grounded in the theory and practice of community-based transformation and peace-building. She facilitates mindfulness programs to adults, youth and children. Sara has a Masters in Adult Education and Community Development (OISE/UT), and an Honours BFA in Theatre Directing (York University). Sara is a qualified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Instructor (Centre for Mindfulness Studies & Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto) and SMART Education Instructor.
Gwen Morgan. MSW
Social Worker,
Lead – MBSR Facilitator
Gwen Morgan is a Certified MBSR and MBCT teacher and Approved Mentor in both MBSR and MBCT with The Centre for Mindfulness Studies and the University of San Diego Mindfulness-Based Professional Training Institute. She has extensive experience offering groups in medical and community settings. Her own training began with the 7-day Intensive with Jon Kabat Zinn and Saki Santorelli and she has trained with many senior teachers over the years. She has been a teaching assistant in the 6-day MBSR intensive for professionals and is involved in training professionals and community peer leaders at The Centre. She facilitates both MBSR and MBCT programs and works with staff in the Community Program to offer mindfulness to marginalized peoples. She designed Finding Balance, MBSR for diabetes and is certified in Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training (MB-EAT). Gwen is a Social Worker and Registered Psychotherapist focusing on promoting wellness when living with chronic illness.
Sue Hutton
Social Worker, Mindful Parenting Teacher
The beautiful thing about mindfulness meditation is that there are so many layers to the practice – that blend into all the parts of our selves. It’s such a privilege and gift to share it with others. I love having conversations with everyone I work with; adults, youth, professionals- all of us on the journey - of how mindfulness helps change the way we live our lives, with a spirit of acceptance and compassion for ourselves exactly as we are.
Sue Hutton has been practicing formal Mindfulness meditation since 1985, and is a mindfulness teacher, a social worker, musician and a mom. She has studied meditation with teachers in India, Canada, and the US. Sue has over 25 years experience as a social worker, focused her post-graduate MSW research on mindfulness, and received her professional training in the US in delivery of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) with Jon Kabat-Zinn. Sue leads mindfulness groups with a diversity of communities, and with her extensive experience, adapts mindfulness for the uniqueness of each group. Sue has created accessible mindfulness practices for autism and parents of autistic children with a CAMH research team and has created “Autism-Informed Mindfulness” recordings for autistic adults and their parents. Sue has also taught mindfulness in schools, in the cancer community, in the prison system, and additionally delivers one on one online mindfulness sessions. Sue deeply enjoys the experience of helping to bring accessible mindfulness to the everyday applications of real life in our homes, relationships, and community.
Lois Lorimer Nunn
SMART Facilitator & Mindfulness Facilitator
Lois Lorimer Nunn is a teacher-librarian who taught for over 25 years with the Toronto District School Board at R. H. King Academy where she promoted and supported the Mindful Minute and Mindfulness curriculum for students. She received a SmartEducation certificate from the U.B.C. program developed to introduce stress management and resilience for teachers. As part of her Master of Education degree at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Lois studied with John P. Miller, learning the importance of mindfulness and meditation practice in the classroom and for teacher self-care. Her MBSR training was with Dianna Last. In 2015, she was awarded a TDSB Award of Excellence for her work in mental health literacy, and mindful library initiatives. Lois is an experienced educator who has delivered workshops to teachers, parents and students and has observed the benefits of mindfulness for the school community.