In this era of easy stress and high tensions, it’s easy to get behind concepts of mindfulness in the workplace.

It’s a growing trend, and one that has led some groups, for example, to offer resources to their members on how to use mindfulness to boost productivity.

Now, one new group is hoping to use the growing attention around the subject to help support educators focused on such topics—as well as to help build industry credentials and qualifications for teachers.

The International Mindfulness Teachers Association, which announced its launch just this week, says that it hopes to help organizations looking to hire mindfulness pros know what to look for.

“The IMTA was founded to ensure that these organizations can find qualified, credentialed mindfulness teaching professionals so they can reap the many health, performance and well-being benefits of these evidence-based practices,” IMTA Executive Director Dawa Tarchin Phillips said in a news release. “The availability of credentialing is a significant milestone for the mindfulness field, and the IMTA is proud to be the first organization to be able to offer a path toward certification and accreditation.”

The group, which will offer both individual and organizational memberships, will launch out the gate with two types of certifications: an individual track to become an IMTA Certified Mindfulness Teacher (CMT), and an organizational track for becoming an IMTA Accredited Mindfulness Teacher Training Program (AMTTP).

In comments to the website Tricycle, Phillips emphasized that the newness of the field means that there are a lot of new practitioners out there, and that the association wants to continue to encourage that, adding that the group is “interested in creating pathways to onboard those teachers without the program requirements.”

Ultimately, he says that the goal of the association is to give the public some peace of mind.

“It is an intimate relationship when you let someone into your mind,” Phillips told the website. “For that reason, a student needs to know that the person leading them in this has gone through a qualifying training.”

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