Meditation mentoring

The Aro Mentorship programme provides personal instruction from an expert meditation mentor.

The rôle of a mentor is rather like that of a piano teacher or ski instructor. You can learn to play the piano, to ski, or to meditate working alone from books and recordings. However, you will make more rapid progress with a tutor who:

answers your questions about meditation as they arise
helps diagnose problems and suggest solutions
helps you decide when you have enough experience with a particular meditation technique to move forward, and can suggest possible next steps
provides encouragement when you feel stuck
may occasionally suggest that you go just slightly deeper into practice than you had been expecting.

Your mentor can answer meditation questions like these:

My left foot keeps falling asleep. Should I just let it? Or should I switch position when it does? I don’t want to be twisting around every three minutes to get comfortable.
I was half way through my meditation session and then suddenly found myself in the kitchen writing a shopping list. I didn’t mean to stop – I think I must have been on autopilot! What happened? Is this normal?
It seems lately that whenever I try to meditate I feel really guilty about minor bad things I did long ago and had mostly forgotten. Why does this keep coming up now?
Some days I’d rather just practice yogic song instead of shi-nè. Is that all right?

These questions don’t have generic answers. It depends on the individual. Your mentor can work with you to find answers based on your specific experience, body, mind, and energy. (However, Aro mentoring is not similar to—or useful as a substitute for—counselling or psychotherapy.)

Mentoring is usually mainly by email, but may use other communications media—or be conducted in person—depending on circumstances.

Aro Mentorship is on a month-to-month basis. You may try it out to see if it is useful to you, and end it at any time.

The Aro mentors

All the Aro mentors have undergone rigorous training in meditation over many years – see our ordination page for details. They have made a life-long commitment to make the tradition available to those who ask for guidance.

Since all the Aro mentors are thoroughly qualified, the best mentor for you is one with whom you feel a connection. It is also best to have a mentor who lives near you if possible. That makes communication easier. If you are able to meet in person at Aro events, you can arrange for a private interview.

We will do our best to match you with the mentor of your choice, if you have one. (This may not always be possible, depending on the teacher's availability.) You can request as a mentor one whom you have met at an Aro event and liked. Or, you can read the biographies of the mentors and choose one on that basis. We can assign a mentor to you if you don’t want to pick one.

If you feel that the relationship with your mentor is not working for you, you can switch to a different one at any time.

If you are interested in becoming a student of Aro Lamas, consider the our apprenticeship programme as an alternative to Mentorship. Mentorship can be good preparation for apprenticeship, but is not a prerequisite.

Mechanics

Mentorship costs $20, £20, or €20 per month, but you can try it out for the first month for free. Aro is a non-profit charitable organisation, and mentors are not paid for their role. Your fees go to supporting the development of new courses, websites, publication of books and making the tradition available to those who are interested.

To enrol, please follow one of these links:

If you are already a Member and wish to renew, please log in to your subscriptions page and renew there, rather than following one of the three links above.

If you have any questions about the Mentorship programme, please contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .