Elaine Smookler

Elaine Smookler is a mindfulness teacher, writer and performer who began exploring mindfulness after a successful show she was in led to an episode of depression. Since training in Mindfulness, Elaine has learned how to anchor her attention, stay engaged, open and calm. She feels she is much kinder to herself and better able to notice habits that she feels disrupt her life. In her twenty-plus years of Mindfulness practice, Elaine has trained in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) with its co-creator Zindel Segal, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and is now a Registered Psychotherapist in private practice in Toronto, Canada. Elaine is on the faculty at the Centre for Mindfulness Studies, is a facilitator of "The Mindfulness Project” at SickKids hospital in Toronto and is the developer of The Mindful Way Through the Creative Process workshops. Elaine is also the Inner Wisdom columnist, and feature writer for Mindful Magazine and the singing host of Mindful Martinis -a mindfulness class/cabaret which invites people to be mindful about everything they enjoy. Elaine was once on the set of a commercial and discovered she was to play a woman who loved dogs more than people, but Elaine was terrified of dogs. When they piled 6 dogs on Elaine, she used her Mindfulness practice to help be totally present with the dogs, and not her fear. Afterwards the producer told Elaine it was so obvious that she really loved dogs!