Jenny is the co-founder and Director of Mindfulness Africa and facilitates Mindfulness, Compassion and Insight courses, retreats, talks, workshops, and presentations for various groups. Jenny has been practising meditation for over 20 years with her life-long teacher Rob Nairn, founder of Mindfulness Africa & Mindfulness Association UK. She believes that compassion based mindfulness is transformative  in that it teaches us to become more present, respond with kindness and see more deeply into our lives. In this way we benefit ourselves, our community and environment.

Jenny has been teaching mindfulness for 10 years to various groups and has additionally trained with Mindful schools, using mindfulness curriculum and specialising in teaching children from Kindergarten to Matric. Jenny has pioneered mindfulness in education by making mindfulness accessible to teachers and educators via Naptosa. Jenny also teaches mindfulness at Tertiary level through the University of Cape Town. Jenny is currently working on getting mindfulness onto the UCT staff learning  programme. Jenny is committed to making mindfulness training accessible to the youth and to people from impoverished communities and teaches mindfulness through the Salesians Life Choices NGO.

Jenny is trained as a human rights lawyer and is the mother of three children. She is inspired by Nelson Mandela who wrote about the need for daily meditation. Please see Jenny’s documentary on Nelson Mandela and Mindfulness here.

Rob is an International mindfulness teacher with over 40 years meditation experience and is one of the world pioneers in presenting meditation practice in a way that is accessible to the Western mind. In the 1960’s Rob Nairn was told by the Dalai Lama to teach meditation and started several meditation Centre’s around Southern Africa. Rob is the founder of Mindfulness Africa ( Southern Africa) and Mindfulness Association (UK), thereby establishing a world-wide network of mindfulness trainers. He developed a unique secular Mindfulness Based Living Course, Compassion based Living Course and Insight Course which takes us on a progressive journey into a deepening experience of mindfulness, compassion, and insight. The training emphasises being present, responding with compassion and seeing deeply our habitual patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours. This frees us from the conditioning that governs and limits our lives and results in an unfolding of our human potential to make choices about how we live in connection with ourselves and our world.

On the photo: Jenny, Choden, Jo Ann Crossley and Rob Nairn.

In 2008, the Mindfulness Africa network was established by Rob Nairn. The group of trainers are all long-term meditators with over 5 years of meditation experience before qualifying to train. In South Africa, the group of trainers can be found in all the various provinces, offering the Mindfulness Association’s courses on Mindfulness, Compassion and Insight.

Mindfulness Africa trainers are dedicated to making the courses available to everyone, especially people in poorer areas and to making the curriculum relevant and relatable to the African context. All courses are recognized and respected as authentic practice based and adhere to UK Good Practice Guidelines. The courses are approved by the UK Network of Teacher Training Organizations.