In March, we celebrate our amazing register member Olga Gomez-Cash. Olga lives in Chorley, Lancashire, and from here she is growing her business, ‘Meditating with Olga’.
We asked Olga to share some information about her business, her teachings and her own meditation experience, so that you can get to know her better.
Here is what Olga told us about her own meditation experience…
“In my early 20s, meditation was recommended to me by a Buddhist friend. Over the next few years, alongside my academic career, and forays into environmental activism, I occasionally went along to Buddhist groups, retreats and meditated on my own and participated in personal development workshops, such as training in co-counselling. It was through these workshops, that I started to develop a mindfulness of breath meditation practice through commitments to meditate for a week, a month, three months… and one day, after 25 years of this every now and then practice, I knew I must meditate every day. And so, in 2013, with the help of learning lots of varied (for example mantra, visualisation, chanting) techniques from Deepak Chopra and Gabby Bernstein podcasts and challenges, and with the support of accountability buddies, I developed a daily practice. I even had a meditation space in my university office that was an anchor as I took on senior leadership roles. And it was in space one day in late 2018, that I realised that I had experienced such shifts that I must share and teach meditation, which led me to find BSoM and train with them over the autumn of 2019”.
Olga trained with BSoM to become an externally accredited meditation teacher because…
“I trained because meditation has saved my life: it been a constant companion in a lifelong search for practices of wellbeing that would support my mental health and create a better world.
I chose BSoM because I liked its openness to all types of meditation and that the purpose of the training was to support setting up as a business, which excited me…
In 2017-2018 I trained as a coach and started to support other members of staff in my university. The qualification I did was rigorous and validated by Ofqual. Coaching was a step in the right direction of bringing together personal development and my job in education, but it wasn’t enough. In time I saw that learning to calm the mind and lift the heart through meditation had really worked for me and I wanted to learn how to share its magic with others. I wanted an inclusive and eclectic approach to meditation and BSoM offered an approach to meditation that was not tied to one tradition, .which was perfect for me. As an academic, I liked that it was an Ofqual validated diploma”.
What she loved about the training was…
“The day that we spent practicing different styles of meditation was fantastic. I had been waiting all my life for that day. I also enjoyed thinking how I might apply the science of meditation to my work- I researched anxiety and explored how I might support students. I never looked back from this- three years later I was doing meditation and mental health sessions for students at my university”.
About her business ‘Meditating with Olga’…
“The business plan that we finished the training with was the most difficult part, and once I had written it, I did exactly what I said I would do in that, with an online twist. I did a few sessions in person with friends and family to practice, ad by the time my certificate came in March 2020, Covid was with us and so I set up a Facebook page, a website, and a Meetup page and got going online. I started to do free online short, guided evening winddown meditation sessions and paid introduction to meditation classes to help people unwind at the end of the confusing days of lockdown. To this day, four years later, I am still doing those evening sessions!
My motivation is to share meditation as a tool for cultivating resilience amongst the stresses of life and for cultivating a powerful inner life.
My sessions support people to ‘wind down’, get into the flow of wellbeing, engage in personal growth, and empower them to transform their world. The space of community, connection, and collaboration that the social platform Meetup creates has proved to work well with me and my meditation style (I am not an Instagram person!).
Environmentalism and connection to nature are close to my heart. I am an advocate for wellbeing and transformation: my intention is that as we learn to slow down, we nurture ourselves and can start to transform our lives, our relationships and our world.
Lots of different people come to my sessions, but mainly people who are stretched by demanding situations in their lives and their health.
I also started work very closely with people who are learning to live with chronic pain and with environmentalists looking to slow down and respond creatively to social and environmental crises.
Olga’s favourite aspect of teaching is…
“…learning more about meditation and mystical practices from all the beautiful global traditions, turning them into accessible guided meditations that fit into modern lives. This is very much a skill that the British School of Meditation helped me develop. I am also grateful to be creating a community of people that support each other to breathe deeply, slow down and feel good”.
How you can work with, or find out more about Olga and her meditation sessions:
Upcoming classes:
My Sunday meditation mornings, are I think, my most powerful contribution: https://meditatingwitholga.com/events/
Social media and website links:
https://meditatingwitholga.com
https://www.meetup.com/meditating_with_olga/
https://www.facebook.com/meditatingwitholga