This month I attended the Search Inside Yourself (SIY) 2-day program in Tokyo.
It was wonderful!
If you are interested in “Mindful Leadership”, developing your mindfulness skills and applying these skills to your life and workplace, I highly recommend to join this fantastic workshop.
3 Key Points
The seminars and workshops were a combination of the following 3 Key Points:
- Improving your knowledge of mindfulness (particularly the science behind the concept) through presentations and materials
- Experiencing “mindfulness” yourself through activities such as meditation, journaling, mindful eating and mindful walking.
- Interaction with the class, through class sharing in pairs or with 3-4 people. This was helpful to hear everyone’s personal perspective and to broaden your learnings during the program.
Language
The class in Tokyo is mostly facilitated in Japanese, so it is helpful if you can understand some Japanese. However, they do offer translation into English and the presentations by Rich Fernandez (CEO of SIY) were in English, so it is possible to follow even for non-Japanese speakers. If you don’t speak Japanese at all, make sure you inform the organizers in advance so that they can arrange translation.
Key Takeaways
What did I found most useful about the 2 Day SIY workshops?
I felt immense reassurance that the concepts that I had learned already about the benefits of meditation and mindfulness were reinforced during the SIY program.
Particularly, the concepts of self-compassion and SBNRR (Stop, Breathe, Notice, Reflect, and Respond) were very powerful.
If you are new to mindfulness, I am sure you will gain even more from the program because you will experience the activities for the first time.
I highly recommend joining!

