Welcome to IMBR Academy

Many meditators focus on techniques. The IMBR Academy teaches you how and why meditation works and introduces you to core universal practices and perspectives.

By combining contemplative wisdom with modern neuroscience, IMBR helps you understand why different meditation styles create different experiences and how to choose the practices that best support your growth.

The IMBR Fundamentals of Meditation Science course has four modules:

You’ll learn how to:

Distinguish between four major universal meditation styles and understand their unique effects
Recognize the stages and markers of progress in your own practice
Track your meditation experience with greater precision and self-awareness
Understand what brainwaves tell us about ourselves, in and out of meditation
Connect subjective experience with the findings of neuroscience
Describe what science does and doesn’t know about the benefits of meditation

Instead of guessing whether your practice is “working,” you’ll gain a roadmap for understanding your experience with confidence.

Introduction to Meditation Science

This free introductory module draws from existing lessons in the course, so you can try our teaching style before you buy.

Learn a core framework that applies to most meditation practices: why different practices produce different outcomes, and how to measure progress in each style.

You'll learn:

The four basic styles of meditation and what each style does for you
Four levels of meditation and how you know that you are making progress
How to map your meditation experience so you can access deeper states
The key characteristics of brainwaves and how they relate to meditation styles and levels

Module 1

Universal Maps of Meditation

We map the broad range of meditation practices into four styles and four levels to enable systematic inquiry into the wide variety of meditation states. This will help you understand which style best fits your goals and how to measure progress in each style.

You'll learn:

The four foundational styles that explain nearly all meditation practices
The four levels of depth, and how progress unfolds differently in each style
What progress actually feels like in each style  (so you know if you're on track)
The common mistakes that slow or block progress
How all styles converge at advanced stages of practice

You’ll gain a framework to understand different types of meditation and how they fit together.

Module 2

Mapping Your Meditation Experience

Systematically mapping your experience helps you go deeper faster. We teach you how to describe your meditation experiences in a way that helps your practice deepen. We describe the specific characteristics of common paths to success for each style and, as important, common detours and how to get back on track more quickly

You'll learn:

A structured approach to reflecting on your meditation experience for greater clarity and easier tracking of progress
The three core dimensions of meditation experience — attention and thinking, feeling and sensation, and self and connection
How to use the PESM structured self-report to track your personal progress.
The common detours that slow or block progress
How to get the most out of the GoDeeper Coach

We believe being able to articulate what progress feels like in your style of meditation is essential to shortening your journey toward achieving your goals.

Module 3

Mapping Meditation Experience onto Brainwaves

We teach you brainwave features as a language to describe meditation states. Just as cancer science made great strides when it started describing cancers by genetic features, not just by where they show up in the body, we believe that meditation science will make great strides when we ground our descriptions in physiological measures, not just descriptions of the practice that creates the effect.

You’ll learn:

How the five core brainwave bands shift through the activities of our lives, including during meditation
How science interprets brainwaves differently depending on where in the brain they arise
How EEG metrics—power, connectivity, and complexity—tell the story of depth and distraction across meditation styles
How brainwaves reflect meditation experience of depth, distraction, and awareness.

This is where our personal experience meets scientific insight.

Module 4

The Science of Meditation Benefits

Going deeper in meditation is only part of the journey. What happens afterward—in your work, relationships, and response to life’s challenges—matters a lot. We explore the science of how meditation practice translates into everyday benefits, and why a deep session and lasting personal growth are different things to measure.

You’ll learn:

How to track meaningful changes in daily life, alongside progress in meditation
What science suggests about the way benefits develop with practice
Why depth, practice time, and daily-life benefits don’t always move together
From States to Traits: How to recognize practical signs of enduring change beyond the meditation cushion
How to interpret scientific findings—and recognize what remains uncertain

You’ll learn to connect your meditation goals with everyday outcomes, guided by evidence and your own experience.

Who Should Take This Course?

This course is for serious meditators and meditation coaches who want to understand how and why meditation works. You don't need a neuroscience background. If you're curious about the "why" behind your experience but don't want to wade through dense academic papers, this self-paced course is for you.

This course is $500. Scholarships are available. No one will be left behind due to financial barriers.

If you join the IMBR study, Module 1: Universal Maps of Meditation is free after your first donated brainwave session. If you love the Introductory course and Module 1, you can finish the course for $450.

Pass the test at the end of each module with 85% or higher to earn a Badge of Completion for that module. You can take each test up to three times. If you still don't pass, you can try again after a month.

IMBR Teacher Certification Program

IMBR Teacher Certification gives meditation teachers a working knowledge of what science has learned about meditation across many styles and levels of practice. It is open to teachers currently certified by other schools whose practice and teaching requirements meet our standards. This is continuing education that can help you build your teaching practice. Many students want a teacher with both spiritual wisdom and a grounding in science.

To earn certification, you must:

Complete the online self-paced lessons in each module before the corresponding online or in-person classes
Complete all modules live online with our teachers, who will guide you through exercises and discussions to build a solid experiential understanding of the material
Attend the bonus module, How to Teach the Science of Meditation. It's taught live online like the others and is available only to meditation teachers
Score 85% or higher on each module’s final exam
Submit a recorded teaching sample, because book learning is not enough.

You can take the course in one of two formats:

Tuition is $1200 for either format. If you take the self-paced course first, you can apply the money already paid toward teacher certification tuition. Serious meditators who are not teachers may take the live online course with special permission from the instructors, but they will not be certified to teach IMBR science without a certificate to teach meditation.

This certification sets apart teachers who understand the science behind different types and levels of practice and can teach it clearly.

Our Teachers

Brandon Mehrgut

Brandon spent ten years in China training in meditation, half in the Himalayan mountains, half in Shanghai,. He founded what has become China's largest mindfulness community (8,500+ members). After returning to the United States to teach what he learned, he started Austin's fastest-growing secular meditation community through his nonproﬁt, MeditationCommunity.org.

A certified corporate mindfulness trainer through Potential Project and dually certified executive coach (ICF & IAC), he delivers practical programs that drive measurable gains in focus, resilience, and leadership clarity.

Certifications
1. Certiﬁed CBMT (Corporate Based Mindfulness Trainer)
2. IAC Executive Mindfulness Coach
3. Toastmasters International Speaker Award
4. ICF Executive Mindfulness Coach
5. Certiﬁed by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn on ethics in mindfulness instruction
6. BA in Marketing & Entrepreneurship

Kell Julliard, MA, MFA

Kell has taught meditation for over 15 years. He served as director of clinical research for Lutheran Medical Center and the Sunset Park Family Health Centers for 25 years, where his primary role was teaching physicians evidence-based medicine and research methods. For the last 8 years there, he trained members of many departments in mindfulness and meditation and published 4 peer-reviewed research articles on that topic.

In 2011, he was the first facilitator certified to lead the Tergar Meditation Community’s Joy of Living program. He is currently a senior guide in that community where he helps develop its meditation curriculum, leads local groups, teaches all three Joy of Living levels in multiple formats (in person and online), leads retreats, and mentors meditation communities.

He has taught meditation and mindfulness through the wellness programs of Point32 Health, Harvard Pilgrim HealthCare, and Tufts Health Plan, and he currently trains ISO New England.

Kell trained in EEG biofeedback and helped develop an EEG-based personalized meditation program for psychiatric patients.

For students who want to go deeper into science, IMBR provides free white papers that synthesize findings from hundreds of meditation studies into clear, accessible insights.

Each paper includes:

Plain-language explanations
Scientific context
Citations to original research enabling you to explore the full results, charts, and methodologies

You get the essential conclusions without sorting through dense academic literature yourself.

See all White papers →

The Institute for Meditation Brainwave Research brings scientific rigor and contemplative depth together — for those who seek to understand the mind from the inside out.

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