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The Institute Story

The Australian Institute of Applied Mindfulness offers seminars, courses and retreats which teach traditional mindfulness and applied mindfulness in contemporary life. These trainings focus on the importance of cultivating a mindful practice,  compassion and wisdom. Mindfulness is relevant to all aspects of daily life, and we believe these things are not only suitable, but important, for everyone, and no more so than people in positions of influence, particularly health professionals, educators, and people in leadership. By developing a mindful practice, whatever your job role, you will achieve new levels of self-awareness, flexibility and stability of mind, and non-reactivness to clarify and achieve your goals, and help others to do the same. Our training courses teach you to be present and achieve a state of flow where your best creativity and clearest decision making can occur.

The International Trainer of Applied Mindfulness Certification is our core program, devoted to comprehensive mindfulness training, and professional certification in Applied Mindfulness, and we offer a range of other programs to meet all levels of training needs.

Check out the Institutes full list of courses and retreats here.

 

Australian Institute of Applied Mindfulness - Our History

The Australian Institute of Applied Mindfulness was launched in 2014 in response to discussions with leading mindfulness teachers and researchers across the globe about how to meet the needs of people in positions of influence, who want to be mindful and inspired in their life and work. The culmination of years of training, and teaching at meditation centres and the Mindfulness Centre led to the range of mindfulness courses and retreats, and the International Trainer of Applied Mindfulness Certification.

Over the last decade Liana and colleagues have developed and delivered mindfulness training for clinicians, people in education and leaders, with modules in MBCT, Leadership, Relationships, Parenting, Education and Buddhism, plus the more advanced retreats. Our team continues to expand, and we are teaching applied mindfulness in schools, really valuing the opportunity to make a difference early in our young people's lives. We believe that feeling depressed, overwhelmed or panicked does not co-exist with feeling inspired - they are mutually exclusive. We aim to nurture a sense of inspiration in young people's lives so that they recognise and focus on what matters most to them, and develop the tools they needs to navigate the challenges along the path.

 

1990

Our founder Liana Taylor began private practice in counselling in 1991. Later that decade she lived in semi retreat for 16 months and saw first hand the profoundly healing effects of mindfulness for managing quite significant physical and psychological challenges.

2000

Adage Psychology practice was established with a view to bringing together a range of highly skilled and qualified practitioners with different areas of expertise, who all value the heart in human connection. Liana taught meditation at a meditation centre, started 3 community meditation groups, and introduced mindfulness practices and philosophies to her own clients - one to one and in classes.

2006

Liana founded the Mindfulness Centre as a specialist training hub for Health and Mental Health Professionals to learn Mindfulness and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT).

We saw in the research, and in practice, the way that mindfulness can transform lives, one moment at a time, and envisioned a world where everyone could experience the clarifying, rejuvenating and replenishing effects of these skills for themselves, and for those they work with

As the therapeutic value of mindfulness became more apparent in the psychology research, Liana was increasingly called upon to teach meditation, including applied mindfulness, and relationship with positive psychology, neuroscience and Buddhism at conferences, schools, community groups, in organisational contexts and to her therapeutic colleagues.

2013

While teaching across Australia and internationally, Liana continually saw that professionals who are using and teaching mindfulness, one to one or in groups, needed three things:

1. Rigorous formal training in traditional mindfulness
2. Ability to apply mindfulness in own life, relationships, work and leadership
3. A cross-disciplinary community of like minded peers

Mindfulness is simple, just not easy. You can learn some of the skills and philosophy in a 3 day course, and you really can work with some of those elements immediately with clients, just as you could learn to play all the notes of a violin in 3 days, and teach what you learnt ... but that doesn't mean you can play Mozart!... If professionals continue to attend 20 hour courses and consider themselves experts, the profound value of mindfulness will be significantly diluted, and quite possibly lost over the next decade

While Liana was in Rome speaking about leadership wisdom at the first International conference on therapeutic mindfulness, she committed to developing an inspiring and innovative, yet rigorous applied mindfulness certification path. And the Australian Institute of Applied Mindfulness was formed to assist all those professionals, leaders and managers who truly value Mindfulness as a means of accessing deep and honest, self-awareness and insight, and ultimately, our innate wisdom and leadership qualities.

2014

The Australian Institute of Applied Mindfulness was launched, dedicated to all those people who want to live and lead in a way that is both mindful and inspired.

The Mindfulness Centre continues to focus on clinical psychology services, and Liana maintains a passion for one to one work and teaching.

We are all so much more than our current challenges make us feel