Tibetan · Online
Online meditation teaching training in the Shambhala tradition with Susan Piver. Focuses on shamatha (calm abiding) as foundation for all meditation instruction. Strong community component.
Open Heart Project Teacher Training is run by Susan Piver / Open Heart Project. It trains practitioners to teach inside Tibetan Buddhism, with its four major schools (Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, Gelug) and a teacher-training process built on long study, ngondro preliminaries, and authorization from a qualified lama. The program is delivered in an online format, runs over 1 year, and covers the contact hours typical for this format. Online meditation teaching training in the Shambhala tradition with Susan Piver. Focuses on shamatha (calm abiding) as foundation for all meditation instruction. Strong community component. The teaching grounds itself in ngondro (the foundational 100,000-repetition preliminary practices), shamatha and vipashyana, lojong mind training, lamrim (the graduated path), and, depending on the lineage, deity yoga and Dzogchen or Mahamudra pointing-out instructions. Trainees do not just learn the content. They sit through it, teach it back to peers, and have their delivery reviewed against the standards the field uses to assess teachers. The program does not carry external mindfulness-field accreditation; authorization is internal to the organization or its lineage. Tuition sits at $500-$2,000, putting it inside the normal price band for programs of this scope. Programs in this lane vary on rigor, lineage, and the population they prepare you to serve. This one identifies clearly with Tibetan and trains for that lane rather than blending traditions loosely. OMP lists Open Heart Project Teacher Training because it represents a path inside Tibetan that a serious applicant can investigate. The page below pulls together what the program actually asks of you, how it teaches, who it suits, and where it sits next to its siblings. An online format places the load on the trainee's own discipline. The cohort meets live, but the daily practice, the recordings, and the written reflections are unsupervised between sessions. Programs that work in this lane build in mentor calls, peer practice pods, and a silent retreat segment to keep the work from drifting into a content-only experience. Anyone weighing this program against another in the same lane should compare them on three things: the lineage or accreditation behind the certificate, the supervised teaching hours built into the schedule, and what the program does (or does not do) in silence.
Curriculum for Open Heart Project Teacher Training centers on ngondro (the foundational 100,000-repetition preliminary practices), shamatha and vipashyana, lojong mind training, lamrim (the graduated path), and, depending on the lineage, deity yoga and Dzogchen or Mahamudra pointing-out instructions. Across 1 year, trainees move from foundational practice into supervised facilitation. Reading lists usually include the canonical texts of the tradition and the research literature where one exists. Written assignments check that trainees can articulate the practice clearly to a beginner without losing the ethical and contextual grounding the tradition assumes. By the second half of the program, the work shifts from learning the content to teaching it back, with peers and senior teachers reviewing inquiry skills, pacing, and the handling of difficult emotion in a group.
Delivery uses an online format. The structural backbone is study under a qualified lama, formal retreats (often three-year traditional retreats in some lineages), oral transmission, empowerments where appropriate, and the slow accumulation of practice and study hours. Cohort size is kept small enough that every trainee gets observed teaching feedback rather than a generic pass. Most programs in this lane build in a silent practice segment because facilitating from notes alone tends to fail under pressure in a real group.
no external academic accreditation; authorization comes from the lama and the lineage. Authorized teachers can transmit specific practices, run programs, and, in some cases, take ordination or hold lineage roles. Graduates commonly go on to run weekly groups, eight-week courses, retreats, or one-to-one mentorship, depending on the lineage's scope of practice.
Substantial Tibetan Buddhist practice, often including completed or in-progress ngondro and sustained study under a qualified lama. The teacher path inside this lineage is not open to beginners.
Tibetan teacher pathways differ sharply by school and by lineage. FPMT (Gelug), Rigpa (Nyingma), Shambhala/Open Heart Project, Sakya, and the various Kagyu shedras each have their own curriculum and authorization process. These programs are not interchangeable; a teacher trained in one lineage usually cannot teach the practices of another.
| Location | Online |
| Country | United States |
| Tradition | Tibetan |
| Format | Online |
| Duration | 1 year |
| Estimated cost | $500–$2,000 |