As many of you know, I have been training groups of police officers, firefighters, 911 dispatchers and paramedics over the past 5 years. I was delighted to be invited to the Bend Fire Department in mid-July to offer a full week of 2-hour mindfulness-based trainings to everyone in the agency; chiefs to new recruits, administrative staff to maintenance, family.
I had never trained an entire agency before! Rather than the more intensive 8-week, 20-some hour MBRT/MBSR training this was more like ‘planting seeds’ so everyone in the agency had a better idea about the practicality and the direct experience if mindfulness practice.
They wanted to have long-term followup using the app Headspace which I introduced during the sessions.
Feedback so far has been very good! I sent a post-training survey with lots of questions about the value folks found. I’ll get those results in early September and will let you know what they said. — Brant
