Your instructor
Stéphane Offort
Senior MBSR teacher and supervisor, and a long-standing partner of neuroscience research on meditation. More than twenty-five years of teaching, rooted in fifteen years of retreat.
Stéphane has taught meditation in many settings for more than twenty-five years. His teaching is above all experiential: he accompanies each meditator as closely as possible on their own path, with the rigour of a scientific background and the depth of long contemplative practice.
He teaches mindfulness programs to a wide audience, in person and online, and presents the theory and practice of mindfulness in medical and neuroscience settings as well as on retreat. Through Mindfulness Live he offers these programs in English to participants across Europe and beyond.
“My teaching always starts from your experience, not from theory. I am less interested in what you know about mindfulness than in what you discover when you practise: how your body, your thoughts and your emotions actually behave, moment by moment. My role is to accompany you as closely as possible on that path, with care and without judgement, so that the practice becomes truly yours.”
— Stéphane Offort
25+
years teaching meditation
60+
MBSR online programs
10,000+
hours of guiding meditation
10+
countries where he has taught
From physics to the mind
Until 1992
Theoretical physics and astrophysics
Studies at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. A lasting curiosity for how phenomena work led him from the universe to the mind, consciousness and our relationship with the world. Martial arts were his first doorway into meditation.
1993–2014
Fifteen years of retreat
A traditional three-year retreat under the guidance of Gendune Rinpoche, followed by twelve years of sustained retreat in the Karma Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, with up to thirteen hours of meditation and yoga a day. During these years he began guiding other practitioners.
From 2010
Secular mindfulness and MBSR
With his long-time friend Stéphane Faure he discovered MBSR and began leading mindfulness retreats in a secular setting. He certified as an MBSR instructor with the Institute for Mindfulness-Based Approaches (IMA) in 2017.
2018
MBSR online
He created an online MBSR program following exactly the same rules as the in-person course, for people living far from a city, travelling for work, or unable to move easily.
Today
Teaching, training teachers, research
Senior teacher and MBSR supervisor, co-creator of the OPALE teacher-training program, and a regular contributor to neuroscience research on meditation. He continues to teach in both traditional and secular settings.
Research
Bridging meditation and neuroscience
Alongside his teaching, Stéphane works with neuroscience research teams who study what meditation does to the brain and the mind. His long experience of retreat makes him a rare kind of collaborator: a practitioner able to describe subtle meditative states precisely, and a teacher able to guide others into them in a way that can be studied.
This dialogue between first-person experience and scientific measurement shapes the way he teaches: grounded in practice, clear about what research shows, and careful not to promise more than it does.
Inserm · Lyon
Research with Dr Antoine Lutz
Since 2017, collaboration with Antoine Lutz’s team on the neurophysiological effects of meditation, as an experienced meditator and practice guide.
LONGIMED study
Three ten-day silent retreats
Between 2020 and 2021, design and guidance of three ten-day silent retreats for the LONGIMED study. Co-author of the resulting Lyon Assessment of Meditation Phenomenology (LAMP) questionnaire: Shedding light on changes in subjective experience during an intensive contemplative retreat (Abdoun, Poublan-Couzardot, Offort, Pagnoni & Lutz, 2024).
Imperial College London
Contemplative neuroscience
2023–2024: expert consultant to Christopher Timmermann’s team, and the expert meditation practitioner studied in their research comparing advanced nondual meditative states with psychedelic states. Preprint: Neural effects and phenomenology of nondual meditation and 5-MeO-DMT in an expert meditation practitioner (PsyArXiv, 2025).
Teaching
Mindfulness in science and medicine
He presents the theory and practice of mindfulness in medical and neuroscience settings, and teaches on the university diploma Meditation, Mindfulness & Compassion: an integrative approach in health at the Faculty of Medicine of Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1.
Inside the lab
EEG, MEG and MRI: meditation under the microscope
Certifications
Teacher and supervisor
MBSR instructor certification, IMA (2017). MBSR supervisor certification, Bangor University, UK (2021). Senior teacher on MBSR teacher training with the IMA, and guest lecturer for a university diploma in mindfulness and meditation.
Clinical and training work
MBSR in care and in training
Co-facilitated MBSR programs for patients at the Institut Bergonié with Dr Marion Barrault. Co-created the OPALE teacher-training program (2023) and a mindfulness facilitation training (2026) with Stéphane Faure at Euthymia.
Universities, hospitals, teacher training
Where Stéphane teaches
University · medicine
Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1
Teacher on the university diploma Meditation, Mindfulness & Compassion: an integrative approach in health, at the Faculty of Medicine.
Hospital · oncology
Institut Bergonié, Bordeaux
Co-led MBSR programs and other mindfulness programs for patients of this comprehensive cancer centre, with Dr Marion Barrault.
Teacher training
Institute for Mindfulness-Based Approaches (IMA)
Senior teacher and supervisor, training and supervising future MBSR instructors.
Teacher training
Euthymia · OPALE
Co-creator of the OPALE training for mindfulness teachers, which places personal experience of meditation at its heart.
An international teacher
Stéphane has taught programs and led retreats in France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Hong Kong, and initiated retreats in Nepal in support of local NGOs. He teaches in French, his native language, and in fluent English, and is used to guiding international groups where participants come from many countries and cultures. He works as a French–English interpreter for international meditation teachers and translates Buddhist and scientific texts, which gives him a feel for teaching across languages and cultures.
Teaches in English and French · Online and in person, worldwide.
Practise with Stéphane
Online programs in English, workshops and silent retreats. Write to ask which one fits you, or to arrange a short call before registering.