ABOUT ELINE SNEL
Eline Snel was born in 1954. As the founder of the Academy for Mindful Teaching (AMT), she developed its courses and training manuals, provides training in Mindfulness and compassion, and is the author of the international bestseller Sitting Still Like a Frog and other books.
About Eline Snel
As a ten-year-old child, I already had a deep interest in the world of thoughts and feelings and their effect on our behaviour. Numerous questions continued to occupy me as I grew up: what exactly is loneliness? How can you deal with pain, fear, sadness, anger, or frustration? What about people who hurt or bully others? Is kindness in everyone? How do you know what’s really important in life and what you’re meant for? And… does everyone have a choice?
ELINE SNEL
In 1980, when I was 26, I started developing and delivering Mindfulness based 8 week trainings as well as meditation weekends to adults alongside my practice as a family therapist.
The origin of the Eline Snel Method
24 years later, during a Mindfulness training session in 2004, someone said: “If only we’d learned this as children, we’d have made different choices.” In the same session, several school principals asked if I could develop a Mindfulness method for children.
There was no mindfulness method for children yet, no point of reference to start from too but it turned out to be so necessary. The question of the school leaders resulted in a period of profound personal transformation for me. One thing I knew for sure: when I want to develop A mindfulness training for kids I need to do it with them and learn from them what they really needed and could benefit from daily mindfulness lessons . In the class, in the hospitals, during a private practice and at home. During four years of intense working with children, their teachers, parents and school inspection I developed and finetuned the Eline Snel Method for young people aged 4 to 19.
Trainers education programme becoming a certified Mindfulness trainer for children and adolescents
In response to demand, I also created a Mindfulness Education programme for professionals working with children. To become a certified Mindfulness Child trainer. The program does not only work on a cognitive level but is very much based on personal experiences. It is rooted in ancient wisdom and compassion, and my long experience and deep interest in the workings of the mind and the influence of thoughts and feelings on out behaviour. It focuses on your own experience with meditation and compassion , it helps you to bring out the best in yourself and in the children you are going to train. In 2008 the course at the Academy of Mindful Teaching was born. We started with 4 teachers in Amersfoort.
We’ve now trained more than 3000 professionals worldwide!
The Academy of Mindful Teaching grows into a world-leading , evidence-based and teacher proof Mindfulness training institute for professionals working with children.
Further developments
In addition to the four training handbooks used in the courses, I developed two multilingual meditation apps for children in multiple languages, an Attention Work(s) book for children, The Flying Frog (Air France uses this app and my book Sitting Still Like a Frog for the 150,000 children who travel alone by plane on long-haul flights each year), the trainers course Mindfulness in Education, and an accompanying workbook for teachers and parents. Also for teachers and parents, I wrote the books Sitting Still Like a Frog (2010) and Breath Through This (2014). These are published in 42 countries and 30 languages. After that I have also written the book for parents from toddlers called The Little Frog Awakes (2021).
- I am regularly invited to international conferences as a keynote speaker.
- As a guest lecturer on the Mindfulness Education Centre at Radboud University in Nijmegen, I have enjoyed giving workshops to upcoming mindfulness MBSR trainers for more than ten years now.
Our international training team, together with our back office, combines excellent content and depth with warm, personal involvement. We are what we do, and perhaps that is what makes the difference.
“Inside every human beats a heart in a heart,
that’s searching for love, connection,
and acceptance of who we essentially are.”
– Eline Snel