Shamash’s Story

Shamash was born and raised in North London to Indian parents.

“As a kid I was really into science. I loved making robots and fiddling with chemistry sets. It was no surprise that I went to university to study chemical engineering – to the delight of my parents. It was almost as if my life was already mapped out for me."

Searching for meaning

One evening in his first year of university, Shamash found himself talking to a friend who was into spirituality.

“We were out looking at the stars and my friend started talking about how much order there was in the universe. Something in me clicked - I suddenly knew there was more to life than just randomness and science.”

After that, his well-mapped out career path began to unravel.

“In the summer I got a job placement, helping to make an oil rig. It didn’t sit well with me at all. Apart from the painfully destructive environmental side, the job was also really dull, with everyone sat in the same desks and no sense of joy.”

The wrong path

It’s safe to say Shamash didn’t exactly give the job his all.

“At the end of the month when I was expecting to get paid, it turned out I actually owed them money due to the three-hour lunch breaks I’d been taking every day. I knew I was following the wrong path, but didn’t have a clue what I should be doing instead.”

Scientist by day, philosopher by night

Back at university for another term, Shamash saw a poster on the underground advertising the School of Practical Philosophy with the Socrates quote: ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’.

“I signed up for an evening course and the very first session was a life-changing moment for me. Finally I felt that people were talking about all the stuff I’d been thinking about.”

Shamash threw himself into mindfulness and meditation with a passion. He even started running his own workshops at the philosophy school, all while (half-heartedly) working on his degree during the day.

A crazy change of career?

It was then Shamash decided to become a teacher.

“There was a careers’ fair at my university and they asked who wanted to be a teacher. I was the only one who put my hand up out of a massive cohort of 100 people, as everyone was going into banking or engineering.”

To friends and family, it seemed like a crazy move. But to Shamash it made perfect sense.

“I only wanted to be a teacher so I could work in this particular school - the secondary school connected to the School of Philosophy. Called the St James School, the children do mindfulness meditation every day and have a philosophy class once a week. Luckily, after a stressful year teacher training, they offered me a job.”

Something missing

Shamash loved teaching at the school, but still felt he hadn't really found his true calling.

"It really was the perfect job as it combined all of my passions. I taught the children science, and as a form teacher I also ran their daily meditation and weekly philosophy classes. But what I really enjoyed was coaching to the students one-to one, as I could see what a difference it made. to them."

In fact, he enjoyed life coaching so much, Shamash set up his own life coaching group for adults, which was part of a wider organisation called ‘Life Clubs’.  And it was here something interesting happened.

“While I was at another Life Club group, we did a little visualisation. You had to imagine yourself going up into space and landing in your ideal life. I did the exercise and in my dream life, people were coming to my home and I was teaching them mindfulness. Before that, I’d never realised how important mindfulness was to me. This was what I should be doing.”

Amazingly within six months, that visualisation had come true when Shamash started the London Mindfulness and Meditation meet-up group from his own home.

Mindfulness For Dummies 

“Flicking through my brother's CBT For Dummies book one day, we saw there wasn’t a Mindfulness For Dummies on their list. So I dashed off an email to the publishers asking why, never really expecting a reply. Before I knew it they’d asked me to write it for them.”

With a background in science and teaching rather than writing, being an author for the first time was scary.

"I started to wonder whether I'd bitten off more than I can chew. I was having negative thoughts such as ‘maybe I’m not good enough’. Luckily, my mindfulness training stepped in. I took a step back, noticed my thoughts and stopped judging myself. Eventually the writing flowed out of me.”

Making mindfulness a full-time job

When Mindfulness for Dummies was released, Shamash had been a secondary school teacher for ten years.

“I didn’t have a clue if the book would be a success or not, but I knew I had to quit and be a mindfulness teacher full-time. It felt like it would be too painful not to do what I really wanted.”

Luckily for him, Mindfulness for Dummies did very well. More books followed, people from all over the world started asking him to train them in how to teach mindfulness, and his great passion finally became his job.

“I couldn't imagine myself doing anything else now. Once you discover this incredible way of transforming your own inner state of mind, you just want to share it with others so that they can do it, too."

Training Mindfulness Teachers

Shamash began training mindfulness teachers, starting in 2013. And now he spends a fair chunk of his time offering Mindfulness Teacher Training. He began with one request from a maximum security prison in Manchester. Then another by a local therapist. He’s now trained over 500 Mindfulness teachers all over the world, in his flagship Teach Mindfulness program.

Forget Mindfulness. We need Kindfulness.

After a period of intense work, Shamash found that mindfulness alone didn't recharge him. He came across a teaching by Buddhist teacher Ajahn Brahm, and the concept of Kindfulness was born. Shamash integrates kindness and compassion deeply into his mindfulness classes.

"If mindfulness is practiced without lots of kindness, it's missing something vital. If you're just more aware of your stress, or anxiety or depression, that alone won't help. You need to be kind to your emotions. You need to forgiving of your mistakes. Mindfulness tells you want's going on. Kindfulness heals."

 Acceptance and Commitment Training: A more helpful approach

As Shamash continues to explore and research mindfulness, he came across an approach called ACT - Acceptance and Commitment Training. The approach is extremely research driven, and has discovered there are in fact four core processes that cultivate mindfulness. Shamash trained with Dr. Steven C. Hayes, the key founder of ACT, and Dr. Russ Harris, one of the leading trainers in ACT in the world.

“The approach is highly flexible and goes beyond the usual mindful approaches by helping people discover their values and find more meaning in their lives.

Baby steps changes lives - take Tiny Action!

One particularly tough winter, when motivation was low, Shamash came across the research of Dr. BJ Fogg. He tried his Tiny Habits methodology and it worked tremendously well. Shamash went onto to integrating insights from BJ Fogg’s work on Behaviour Design to help people get into the habit of being mindful everyday. He is now doing training with BJ Fogg and his team to be able to coach others in the Tiny Habits(R) Method.

“A lack of behaviour change skills is causing huge suffering globally. Everyone needs to learn the power of behaviour design to help themselves transform. It’s simple, easy and fun!”

Something Positive Born from the Pandemic - Two Mindful Communities

In 2020, and the years that followed, the pandemic wreaked havoc across the world. One of the positive things that grew out of this challenging time for our community, was the idea of a live, interactive Daily Mindfulness Club.

What started off as just a 30-day daily meditation challenge has now become a flourishing community.

Following the success of this, Shamash launched Teach Mindfulness Academy to help Mindfulness Teachers do two things - learn and implement authentic marketing, and build new skills in mindfulness, self-compassion and/or ACT.

Mindful Book Publishing

One other positive project born from the pandemic was helping people to publish their first mindful book. We are in the process of helping 20 people write, edit and globally publish their book, including mindfulness teachers, yoga teachers and university professors that integrate mindfulness in their work. Get in touch if interested in our annual program.

Want to find out more?

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