Outside of teaching Mindful Self-Compassion and Mindfulness, has a private practice based in Belgrave, Melbourne. He is also a senior mental health trainer in Victoria responsible for the professional and workforce development of a third of the States specialist mental health clinical workforce.
John is also a dedicated gardener developing a new 1-acre garden in South East Gippsland.

John is an accredited mindful self-compassion teacher, mindfulness trainer and clinical social worker registered with Medicare. He has been a mental health professional for around 40 years and has a strong personal commitment to mindfulness and compassion-focused approaches.

John has run over 80 MSC, MBSR and/ or MBCT 8 week programs, over 50 Buddhist Shamatha meditation programs and around 10 residential and ‘urban’ retreats. He was trained in MBSR in programs directed by the founders of that program, Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli. He has been trained in the clinical version, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, at Monash University as well as in Mindfulness integrated Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (MiCBT).

More recently, John became one early trainers, and then a certified teacher, in Mindful Self-Compassion teachers in Australia. John has also be in programs of this program, Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer.