Ms Carmen Teo

Please share your belief(s) in the subject matter(s) you are facilitating in a few sentences.

I believe that every human being already possess their innate wisdom and resilience. I am simply sharing with the participants what has been under-emphasized in today’s education and training landscape, and what has been tried and tested in the scientific field. The intention is to help them reconnect with their inner strengths, so that they can navigate the challenges they face in today’s demanding workplace with greater ease.

What inspires you to do what you do now?

At some point in my high-flying corporate and consulting career, my perfectionism turned against me and I had a burnout! That put me through quite a long period of ill physical and mental health. I was lucky in a way that I was already practising meditation for a few years. That prompted me to take a sabbatical. During that break, I explored different things which helped me come to the realisation of the impacts of societal conditioning and personality traits on my way of life and wellbeing. Most importantly, observing how my own mindfulness practice has helped me gain that awareness and transformed my personality. Subsequently, I made the shift to do what I am doing now, which is using mindfulness and contemplative approaches to help people flourish and live truer to their life purposes be it in their personal or work lives.

Please share a memorable experience/ takeaways you have had from our workshops

Amongst the other multi-week mindfulness-based training programs I had taught, I remember a very committed participant told me one day that she found out that she had multiple cancers. Holding on to her shock, she courageously flew back to Japan on her own the next day to seek treatment, leaving behind her husband to take care of their two young kids. When she came back to Singapore a few months later, I invited her to retake the same course. I saw that she had transformed to a different person with much awareness, inner calm, and being in touch with her values, including rejoining the corporate life to fulfil her dreams after years of being a homemaker. She often described the role of mindfulness in her journey with other participants in the class, which was really inspiring.

If you are not a facilitator, you will be…..

Still a facilitator in other ways. What defines facilitation? Learning is facilitated in the way we speak, the words we choose to use, the way we carry ourselves in our lives with the people we interact. I see that everyone is imparting learning to everyone else in every possible moment. Maybe just that simple appreciation you gave to the service staff, that warmed the heart of that person, and inspired others to do the same. Learning and facilitation never ceases.