Monthly Mindfulness Community Class  

Martha has been teaching MBSR courses, chair yoga, and guided meditation at the Homestead Community Center in Homestead, FL since 2015. Martha’s interest in meditation and yoga has been a life-long exploration. She began practicing yoga while still a student at Smith College, working towards a degree in English Literature. Shortly after graduation she became interested in various meditation techniques, which led her to move to a Buddhist Retreat center in Barnet, Vermont. There she spent a year studying and participating in group and solitary meditation practice. Martha continued these studies in Boulder Colorado, where she trained with various meditation masters, became a meditation instructor with Shambhala Training, and started a family.Martha taught high school Language Arts for Miami-Dade County Public Schools for twenty-five years, earning her MA in English Literature from FIU.

Throughout her twenty-five years of teaching, she saw the stress that both teachers and students –as well as the general public—were under on a daily basis, and wished that she had a secular, Western-oriented way of sharing the techniques she had studied for so long. When she attended her first MBSR weekend sponsored by Mindful Kids Miami, Martha realized that Jon Kabat-Zinn had developed exactly such a program. She completed the eight-week MBSR course with Valerie York-Zimmerman, and went on to assist her with Mindful Teacher-Training Courses between 2012 and 2014. She continued her training through the University of California at San Diego, obtaining a Qualified Certification through UCSD. Recently, she has participated in an MBSR Program and tutorial with Zayda Vallejo. Martha is thrilled to be working again with Mindful Kids Miami.