Do You Need a Certification to Teach Meditation?
One of the biggest questions is whether we need a certification to teach meditation. Listen to this episode to hear me explore this juicy topic.
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Podcast Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Art and Business of Meditation podcast. I am your host, Lou Redman, and I share this podcast. As someone who quit a corporate job in 2015 to go full time as a meditation solopreneur, it took me years to figure out how to make my way and support myself financially. I've learned so much along the way and with this podcast I hope to help you navigate your own spiritual, entrepreneurial and creative journey. So thanks so much for being here. Today we have a topic that is important and in some ways one of the bigger topics out there. I have a lot to say about it. I have some fear in speaking about it, but overall I'm genuinely excited, excited to talk about this topic because again, it's important. And so the topic is do you need a certification to teach meditation? Dun dun dun. Do you need a certification? Okay, to begin this before I talk about do you or do you not? Or my own opinions on it, let's start by looking at what why we need certifications in the first place, why we feel we need certifications. Where do certifications come from? I'll begin this by asking you if you are a graduate of college, do you remember anything you learned in college? Now we'll talk about more niche or specific type of educations. But I know, speaking for myself, I went to college for a certain thing. I don't necessarily do that thing anymore and I couldn't tell you much of what I learned. However, I paid over $100,000 for that college education, for that degree or certificate. Now, Seth Godin talks about this concept of the education industrial complex. And it's this idea that we need to pay for someone to give us permission to do the things that we want to do. And in that process, it creates a huge business and it makes a lot of people a lot of money. Just look at colleges. You might get the same education at a state school that you'd get at Harvard, but Harvard is a brand, it's more exclusive. Thus it creates a higher value which people pay for because of the perception of the opportunities that they will get, that that will be greater when they get out of college. And employers feed the education industrial complex by only looking at resumes and making their decisions based on these very limited markers. This is also what Seth Godin would call a false proxy, meaning that what someone has on their resume is not actually an adequate representation of can they do the job that that you might be hiring them for. What it does show is that they've been able to check the boxes and get into the right places, know the right people have some sort of privilege potentially to be at this college and thus get their foot in the door. And so the issue is, we've created this industry that thrives on exclusivity. And the truth is that the degrees, the certifications, may not say nothing else about the actual person and their capacity to do the work. Now, I get it will say something. I get that. But the truth is, at this point in our life, information is everywhere. The more and more artificial intelligence comes into the picture, I think the degree, the value of a degree is going to go down. Because for most jobs, a degree just gets us in the door. It gets us in the door of the industry we want to be in. And then it's the actual job, it's the experience that really teaches us what we learn. It's by going into and showing up each day, doing the tasks, getting challenged, that we learn that really give us the education. And just another thing, looking at the value of colleges, while we're on the topic, we no longer live in the generation where someone does one thing their entire life. Especially in my generation, I'm a millennial. People are jumping from one job to the next. They're open to changing. That used to not always be the case. So, yes, you want to go to a college to get the degree and stand on that degree for another 60 years, but most people don't do that nowadays. Now, there are some exceptions with degrees and certifications, and I'm going to lay them out here. Medical doctors, lawyers, engineers. So I might argue on that last one, because I can see engineers or programmers or people computer. They can. Some can teach themselves. However, in those professions, I would want to work with people that have the proper credentials 100%. I would not want a doctor who didn't go to medical school and just taught themselves and is trying to get experience on me. That's not the case. However, if you're listening to a podcast about being a meditation teacher, you are probably not in the fields I just mentioned. Or if you are, you're maybe trying to get out of those fields. For most fields, the energy of curiosity, integrity, heart, passion, they matter more than anything, anything else. The willingness to learn, the willingness to have the courage to step forth, to try new things and to get dirty and learn by experience. These are the qualities that really, really matter. And this is highlighted beautifully in a movie that is on Netflix called the Dig. And the Dig is a story about an archaeological discovery in England during World War II, and the protagonist is a man named Mr. Brown, who's hired by this woman named Mrs. Pretty on a hunch that there's something special on her land. So Mr. Brown is an excavator that is going to figure out if there is anything special on her land. And Mr. Brown calls himself an excavator because he doesn't actually have a degree in archaeology. He dropped out of school when he was 12 and through apprenticeship his father, he learned everything about soil and the art of excavating. He has great love for his work and you can tell in the movie that his energy is infectious. After some initial missteps, Mr. Brown breaks ground on what looks to be a 900-year-old Anglo Saxon ship. This is the discovery of a lifetime. And in the career of Mr. Brown, akin to Einstein discovering E equals MC squared. Of course, like in all good stories, there is an issue that tests Mr. Brown's resolve. After his finding gets around, there are official archaeologists of England they come across and they forcedly take over the project. They discredit Mr. Brown because he has no archaeology degree. Mr. Brown is then offered a subservient position on the crew, but he's too angry and disheartened to accept. He instead leaves the job altogether. After he settles, and in a calmer mind, Mr. Brown realizes that even though he's no longer in control, he did not get into the work for status. He digs, he excavates because he loves it and because it's important for the future generations to know where they come from. So he swallows his pride and returns. And he proves to be invaluable, bringing a unique insight and intuition that others didn't possess. What do we learn from Mr. Brown's story? And it's that passion matters more than degree. When I say passion, I mean the heart, energy and intention that one does things with. In essence, it's our caring. We connect more with someone who cares than someone who knows. Mr. Brown knew as much as the snob from the British Museum, but it was his love and his caring that set him apart. And the truth is, the system and business of schooling trained us to think that we can't make an impact without a degree. And this conditioned us to always look for permission from some higher entity. And this causes so many to hesitate and outsource their worth rather than cultivating it from within. So many go into field that they're not actually curious about, they're not actually passionate about, and so they don't put the extra time in. Yes, they might get the degree, but I'D rather work with, in many cases, the person who might not have that fancy degree, but is super embodying that kind of work, that spends all of their free time following their interests. And this is what I want to start to think about for you all is that the information is out there that we can watch YouTube videos, we can take masterclasses, we can continue to follow our interests and pursue our curiosities, and we can do it without having some fancy permission slip. And so when we think about do you need a certification to pursue what you love? And in this case, what you love or what we love is meditation. And so before I start to share more of my opinions, I think you understand maybe where I'm starting to go with this. But I wanna really drive home that often what people seek in getting a certification in having that credential is the sense of self authorship or self worth that now they are quote unquote official. It's an identity shift that a piece of paper can bring about. Now does it need to bring about it? I don't think so. I think we can create that ident shift within us. And so again, do you need a certification to teach meditation? So in just an essence level for meditation specifically, there is no certification that you can get, analogous to a doctorate, like a medical doctor or a lawyer, that there is no board, national or international that creates an official certification for meditation. So there's just. It just doesn't exist. So what does that mean? It means that it's people like you and me who decide that they are going to create a program where at the end they will hand out a certification, a certification that is usually created in Canva and it's downloaded and you write your name on it, the person who does the program signs it, they send it to you, and now you have a certification to teach from whatever this body of program or business that is being received that has taught you that information. This is not anything to knock at all. If you've been studying and teaching for years and have helped thousands of people, then by all means you have the right to teach others the things that you have learned and offer a program where people can find a foundation of their own teaching. One of the more popular and prominent trainings out there are Jack Kornfield and Tara Brock's mindfulness Teacher certification. And if you do that and say you are certified by them, then that really holds weight because people know who Jack and Tara are. And I think doing these certifications are wonderful. They're going to get you into doors you're going to learn so many different things. I'm always doing different sorts of trainings to grow my skills. But you do. You don't need a certification in order to start. And I've talked a little bit about this in past episodes, that in a lineage, like a Jack and Tara. Now, I could be wrong. I could be making this up, actually. I don't actually know, but I'm almost sure it's not that Jack Kornfield got a certification to teach meditation, or Tara Brock did. It's that Jack and Tara had been practicing for so long that their teachers said, go and share this with other people. And they were embodied in their practice. And their teachers could sense that they had reached a certain level. And it might not even be the case. I know there are teachers that would will always just say, hey, share. You know, from your level of embodiment, share in whatever way that you want to share it. It's not. You don't have to go through process or certification to do it. So, again, Jack and Tara certify people, but do they have an actual certification? And it doesn't matter because it doesn't actually exist, but we know the embodiment that Tara and Jack show in the world when. Yes, that makes sense. Yes, I understand the value of doing a certification with Jack and Tara. So, again, certifications are wonderful. But coming back to the most important thing, always, always, always is your own embodiment, is your own state of being, is your own presence, is your own practice. That is what is going to be felt. I've told you before, I don't have a certification to teach meditation. And here I am doing a podcast on the art and business of meditation. Who the hell am I? I am an imposter. I am a fraud. I've been through it. And if you think that I send you so much love, I do. I get it. I've been there. However, I hope that you can sense by my passion, by my love for this topic, by my love for this work, beyond the piece of paper, that I can show you that there's a felt sense, that something inside of you resonates and says, yeah, you know what? I don't care that Lou doesn't have this piece of paper, because I feel aliveness. I feel something resonating within me that allows me to live this work, that allows me to see things that I didn't see before. So I hope that's an experience you might have of me. And there's also judgments and projections, and I welcome all of it and I think it's a healthy conversation to have. And I say all this and I also recognize the opposite of it. I also recognize the arrogance potentially. And we're going to do an episode on spiritual arrogance. I recognize the arrogance of not humbling oneself to continue learning. And so this is the balance that I know I'm always trying to find, of giving myself permission to do the things that feel like are calling to me, then also knowing the boundaries, knowing where I need to go ask for help, knowing where I need to actually not work with this person because it's beyond my lane and really continuing to learn my own trainings and continue to grow in different capacities. And so that's definitely important to do. And so the question to ask yourself is, do I need a meditation certification? Ask yourself this question. If there is a training that is calling to you and you are so excited about who's teaching it and or the topics that you're going to learn, and you're just really excited to be a student and learn and go through that process. And I say 100%, go do that training. But if there's a training that you see and you're doing that training because you kind of feel that you don't feel so worthy to teach meditation and you're doing it and you're not really that excited about what you're going to learn, but you are excited about having that piece of paper that's going to say that you are a certified whatever, whatever meditation teacher. If that's the reason, if you're doing it for the end goal, I would say to pause and realize that what you think that certification is going to give you is going to be fleeting. That if you are doing that for the piece of paper because it's going to fill some sense of unworthiness in you, something else is going to create that unworthiness in you. So first step is to recognize your own self worth and then act from there. Take the training that calls from there. Take the training, do the certification where you really put all of yourself in the process, where by the end of it you get the certification and it doesn't even matter because you've learned so much, you've embodied so much. It's not about the piece of paper. I'm going to drive this home all the time. And so I hope that helps you think about if a meditation teacher certification is right for you and how to choose trainings. Choose it based on the actual content, based on what comes alive inside of you, not based on how it will look to others that you have this piece of paper. And I can hear some of you saying, but. But, Lou, you know, if I have a certification from Jack and Tara, you know, and that's fine. If you do it for that reason, it's okay. People go to Harvard to get the Harvard degree, and they do the thing and then da, da, na, that's fine. But I want to really encourage you to bring all of yourself to every moment, and that's what embodying this work really is. So doing something to get somewhere is not what a true meditation is. It's about fully being. So doing the things that allow you fully be and give your heart to, give your passion to is what matters. And I always say that the way that I started was just sharing it with a friend and getting that experience and being really clear about the experience I have. I know how this has impacted my life, and I just want to share it with you. Hey, I don't have a certification to teach meditation, but I want to share this with you. Here's what helps me and feel that into it. And that's how I started. That's how you're listening to me right now. You can tell I get. I can go riff and rant on this for a while. And the irony is that this podcast, the idea for it, the inspiration for it, came because I am a supporting teacher in meditation schools meditation teacher training, led by a friend and mentor, David Gandelman. So as much as you hear me, like, maybe sound like I'm bashing the certifications, I hope it doesn't sound that way. But what's funny is the idea for this podcast is because I was asked to be a teacher in this teacher certification. And mind you, again, I'm asked to be a teacher supporting teacher in the certification based on what I've embodied in my experience, not based on the pieces of paper that I had. So in becoming a teacher for this program and working with people who wanted to be teachers, I just felt so in alignment, so in connection to my heart and my work and my purpose that I'm like, man, I want to spend more time with people that want to be meditation teachers and coaches and guides. And that's why I started this podcast. That's why I'm speaking to you now. So I hope you can get the irony in that. I was doing this training. And so I'm all for trainings, whether it's meditation schools, whether it's Jack and tires, whether it's another one that you find. Just find the one that calls to you. Find something that costs you. Keep learning, keep growing, keep doing your work. And that is really the fun and the joy and the gift of getting to do this work that we do. So I send you so much love. Thank you for listening to me rant on certifications. I hope some of this is helpful. Send me a message, let me know what you're navigating, how this landed for you. I love hearing from you. Leave a review, leave a comment. I love getting a chance to learn from you as well. And that's all I have for today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. We will chat again next week. Until then, sending lots of love. Take care.