Teaching Mindfulness to Youth: A Diverse Exploration

Join Bay Area luminaries for a one day workshop to deepen the wisdom and skills necessary for teaching mindfulness and compassion to diverse populations of youth. We will explore what it means to create an inclusive culture and what it will take to get us there. This program is designed for teachers, trainers, and other people currently teaching, or interested in teaching, mindfulness and compassion programs to youth.


  • Venue: Main Shrine Room
    San Francisco Shambhala Meditation Center
  • Date: October 18, 2014
  • Price: $125

How can the practices of mindfulness and compassion become more relevant, accessible, and applicable to the entire population? Shambhala North California hopes to cultivate greater societal and individual awareness so that we can create a more inclusive culture for the children in our community.

The program will include meditation, contemplation, discussion, and training in particular skills. The morning session will focus on our personal relationships to issues of diversity and looking at how our perceptions affect our work. The afternoon session will involve training in how to teach mindfulness to diverse populations.

Presenters and Facilitators

Sam Himelstein, PhD is the Program Director of the Mind Body Awareness Project. He is passionate about working with young people involved in the juvenile justice system and speaks nationally and internationally on topics related to working clinically with youth. Sam also wrote the ground breaking book on the subject: A Mindfulness-Based Approach to Working with High-Risk Adolescents.

Amani Carey-Simms (i.Ameni WeOne) is a pioneer in bringing meditation, emotional intelligence, and creative arts programming to at-risk, gang-involved, and incarcerated youth. Amani has facilitated with the Mind Body Awareness Project for the past 6 years in the maximum security units of the Alameda and San Mateo County Juvenile Justice Centers (ACJJC & SMCJJC), while running a small mentor-based aftercare program for youth transitioning from incarceration back to the community, and he is currently developing a year long rites of passage program at Oakland’s Community Day Continuation School in partnership with Challenge Day and his organization, WeOne Consulting.

Gale Young, PhD is Professor Emerita and Chair of the Communications Department at Cal State East Bay. She is a long-time student and teacher of intercultural relations and truth and reconciliation processes. Her focus is on supporting the development of perspective-taking using mindfulness based inquiry and engaged pedagogies. She is the Northern California representative of Shambhala’s Diversity Working Group.

Meena Srinivasan, MA is part of the Social Emotional Learning & Leadership Team for the Oakland Unified School District. She is a National Board Certified Teacher and a thought leader in the mindfulness in education movement. She has taught mindfulness to 6th through 12th graders in Brazil, India, and California. She’s also a dedicated student of Venerable Thich Naht Hanh. Her book Teach, Breathe, Learn will be released in September (2014).