DaRa Williams is a trainer, meditation teacher and psychotherapist. DaRa has been a meditator for the past 25 years and is a practitioner of both Vipassana and Ascension meditation. She is a graduate of the Spirit Rock/Insight Meditation Society Teacher Training Program and is a Guiding Teacher at IMS. She is the Program Manager and a core teacher in the current IMS Teacher Training. DaRa has been a clinician and administrator in the field of Mental Health for over 25 years and currently maintains a private practice in Manhattan. She is a certified trainer and practitioner of Indigenous Focusing-Oriented Therapy and Complex Trauma. DaRa integrates these skills, understandings, wisdom traditions and worldviews in her intention for contributing to the ending of suffering for all beings.
"It is my belief that vipassana meditation and the dharma are ideal for transforming suffering, particularly the trauma of oppression and its many vicissitudes-where the chains around our minds and hearts can be broken and dissolved. Awareness and wisdom become the vehicle for freedom and transforming lives."
David R. Loy is especially interested in the conversation between Buddhism and modernity. His books include A New Buddhist Path, Ecodharma: Buddhist teachings for the Ecological Crisis, Nonduality, Lack and Transcendance, A Buddhist History of the West, The Great Awakening, Money Sex War Karma and The World Is Made of Stories. A Zen practitioner for many years, he is qualified as a teacher in the Sanbo Zen tradition.
Dawn has been practicing and studying Insight Meditation since 2005, and has graduated from the first teacher development group of True North Insight, and Spirit Rock's Mindfulness Yoga and Meditation Training, Dedicated Practitioners' Program, and 4-year Retreat Teacher Training. She teaches with a playful, dynamic, and heartfelt approach, and leads daylongs, retreats, yearlong programs, and mindfulness workshops in Canada and the US for Spirit Rock, True North Insight, and for teens with Inward Bound Mindfulness Education. Dawn is also the author of “Mindfulness Meditation for Beginners”. For more information, visit dawnmauricio.com.
Dawn Scott has been practicing insight meditation since 2008, is a Diamond Heart practitioner, and currently serves as the Family Program Coordinator at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She teaches teen retreats at Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (iBme) and is a participant in the 2017-2021 IMS Teacher Training Program.
Deborah Ratner Helzer has practiced with Western and Asian teachers in the Theravada tradition since 1995, including a year as a nun in Burma. She has been teaching in the Washington, DC area and assisting with retreats around the country since 2001.
Debra Chamberlin-Taylor is a teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She has been meditating since 1973 and has led retreats that combine spiritual and psychological growth since 1978. In addition to practicing Vipassana, she has been influenced by Dzogchen, Diamond Heart, and devotional practices. More recently she has become a certified teacher of Wisdom Healing Qigong, finding Qigong and mindfulness used together to be the most healing and transformative practice in her long spiritual journey. A psychotherapist, she also leads workshops on embodiment of awareness and love in relationships and in our diverse world.
Devin (he/him) has been practicing Insight meditation since 1999. He regularly teaches at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS). Devin has undertaken many periods of silent long-term retreat practice. He was a community teacher at East Bay Meditation center in Oakland, CA where he co-founded both the teen and men of color sangha. Devin recently relocated to Western Massachusetts from the San Francisco Bay area. He is deeply committed to the personal and collective liberation of marginalized communities knowing that through the integration of reflection and insight, clarity and wisdom give rise to wise action.
devon hase loves long retreats. Cumulatively, she’s spent four years in silent practice in the Insight and Vajrayana traditions. Since discovering meditation in 2000, she has put dharma and community at the center of her life: she spent a decade bringing mindfulness to high school and college classrooms and now teaches at the Insight Meditation Society, Spirit Rock, and other centers around the world. She enjoys supporting practitioners with personal mentoring, and her friendly, conversational approach centers relational practice and the natural world. Along with her life partner nico, devon co-authored How Not to Be a Hot Mess: A Buddhist Survival Guide for Modern Life. She continues to spend a good part of the time in wilderness retreat in Oregon, Massachusetts, and elsewhere. For more, visit devonandnicohase.com
My work since 2006 through UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (uclahealth.org/marc) emphasizes making mindfulness teachings accessible to all, regardless of background, yet without losing depth practice. In recent years I have been teaching on Natural Awareness— the effortless, objectless, and spacious side of awareness practices. Socially engaged Buddhism is a thread woven through many of my talks-- how can we end suffering both internally and externally? Having worked with teens and young adults for many years, some of the talks are geared to young people. Finally as a mom of a tween, I'm deeply inspired by the transformative power of daily life and family practice.
1. Choose one meditation practice and stick with it. If you want to progress in meditation stay with one technique.
2. Meditate every day. Practice now. Don't think you will do more later.
3. Any situation is workable. Each of us has enormous power. It can be used to help ourselves and help others.
4. Practice patience. Patience is one of the most important virtues for developing mindfulness and concentration.
5. Free your mind. Your mind is all stories.
6. Cool the fire of emotions. Anger is a fire.
7. Have fun along the way. I am quite happy. If you come to meditate you will also be happy.
8. Simplify. Live simply. A very simple life is good for every thing. Too much luxury is a hindrance to practice.
9. Cultivate the spirit of blessing. If you bless those around you this will inspire you to be attentive in every moment.
10. It's a circular journey. Meditation integrates the whole person
Donald Rothberg, PhD, has practiced Insight Meditation since 1976, and has also received training in Tibetan Dzogchen and Mahamudra practice and the Hakomi approach to body-based psychotherapy. Formerly on the faculties of the University of Kentucky, Kenyon College, and Saybrook Graduate School, he currently writes and teaches classes, groups and retreats on meditation, daily life practice, spirituality and psychology, and socially engaged Buddhism. An organizer, teacher, and former board member for the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Donald has helped to guide three six-month to two-year training programs in socially engaged spirituality through Buddhist Peace Fellowship (the BASE Program), Saybrook (the Socially Engaged Spirituality Program), and Spirit Rock (the Path of Engagement Program). He is the author of
The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World
and the co-editor of Ken Wilber in
Dialogue: Conversations with Leading Transpersonal Thinkers.
Doug is founder and guiding teacher of Empty Sky Vipasssa Sangha and a long time practioner of vipassana and zen. His teaching is strongly influenced by Vimala Thakar and J. Krishnamurti as he explores such questions as "After all these years of practice, why are we not free?" and "What happens that we do not immediately live the understanding we work so hard to gain, continuing to cling to the false when seeing clearly what is true?" He brings a strong committment and interest to the integration of formal practice and intimacy in relationship in the context of daily living.
Eric Kolvig, Ph.D., taught meditation for 30 years in the vipassana tradition. He led meditation retreats and gave public talks around the United States and abroad. Eric has a particular interest in “grassroots dharma,” building spiritual community in democratic, non-authoritarian ways. He co-founded wilderness retreats and also Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning and Intersex (LGBTQI) retreats in the vipassana tradition. Now retired, Eric lives in Flagstaff.
Erin Selover offers insight meditation retreats nationally. She also has a part-time psychotherapy practice and teaches leaders, activists, at-risk youth and women in prison to use mindfulness and values-based living to increase well-being and the greater good.
Erin is Guiding Teacher at Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center in northern New Mexico and Resident Teacher at the Durango Dharma Center. Her approach to sharing the dharma is influenced by her love of wild nature, her ongoing experience as a student of the Diamond Approach by A.H. Almaas and by her decades of working with somatics and as a bodyworker.
I am intrigued by how we can live the 'holy life' as lay people. How do we erase the imaginary line between formal sitting practice and the rest of our lives? How can we bring full engagement to formal and informal practice? Is it possible to embody, in our lives, the understanding and insight that comes with intensive training? And can we live our lives in a way that expresses and continues to deepen our realization? These questions fuel my practice and my teaching.
I place a lot of emphasis on the Buddha's teaching about mindfulness of the body. The body is a powerful dharma gate. I encourage people to deeply investigate the body and use it as a place of recollection in daily life.
Our individual and cultural habits, our confusion, all require a sincere and ongoing commitment to spiritual life and practice. In order to mature our 'layastic' practice, we need to develop a palette of practices: mindfulness, loving-kindness, inquiry, reflection, precept practice, service, sutta study, etc.
I believe passionate engagement is the foundation of the spiritual path. Spiritual life blossoms when mindfulness is woven with a heartfelt sense of loving-kindness and compassion. With warm mindfulness as the basis of practice, our attachment to identity, roles and experience begins to loosen. As our experience and understanding matures, faith develops. This nourishes a devotion to practice which further deepens our insights.
It is precious to be born in the human realm and have an opportunity to practice and awaken. May we appreciate our inheritance and bring to life the teachings of the Buddha.
In 1987 Frank co-founded the Zen Hospice Project, the first Buddhist hospice in America. In 2004, he created the Metta Institute to provide broad based education on mindful and compassionate end of life care. He is a frequent keynote speaker for many healthcare organizations such as Harvard Medical School, the Mayo Clinic, the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization and others. He teaches at dharma centers around the world including the Spirit Rock Meditation Center, the Upaya Zen Center, and Rigpa's international centers and many more.
Fred von Allmen has studied and practiced under Tibetan and Theravada teachers since 1970 in Asia, Europe and the US. He has taught retreats worldwide for 25 years. The author of several Buddhist books in German, he is a co-founder of the Meditation Center Beatenberg in the Swiss Alps.
Gavin Harrison died on October 24, 2018, in Seattle, Washington. He was 68. “The realization of our True Nature is the birthright of all of us, and an ever-present possibility. We awaken to the sacred ground of Love, Awareness and Joy that was always there, perhaps unrecognized, yet abiding and full beyond description. This Truth of our Being reveals itself as Simple Silence, Infinite Wisdom and Boundless Compassion. The teachings and poetry of Awakening are invitations into the Truth of our Being. By neither bypassing nor transcending our humanness, but embracing it fully, the Love we are flowers and extends across the immensity of time and space touching the greatest and smallest of things.”
Gavin studied in South African schools and received his degree from the University of Witwatersrand. Although trained as a CPA, Gavin early on developed a deep connection with Buddhism, traveling widely to study and practice with a variety of spiritual teachers and communities. He became a vital part of the Buddhist community at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA.
Gavin published a memoir of his spiritual journey, "In the Lap of the Buddha" (1994) and a collection of his spiritually-based poetry, "Petals and Blood" (2014). Most recently, Gavin joined a spiritual community in Mt Shasta, CA, meditated in India at the ashram of Ramana Maharshi, and continued to teach in his beloved Hawaii. Gavin nurtured a close bond with the indigenous Zulu community of South Africa and fundraised for Woza Moya, an organization that supports AIDS orphans. Donations in Gavin's memory can be made to Woza Moya at P.O. Box 847, Ixopo 3276, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. www.wozamoya.org.za.
Gavin has been practising the Dharma since 2004, and teaching at Gaia House Meditation Centre since 2015. He is particularly interested in the role Dharma teachings and practices can have in responding to our unfolding ecological situation in a transformative way, and turning towards and awakening to the interdependent nature of our collective crisis. He originally trained as an aerodynamics design engineer, studied sustainable development, and has been influenced by the holistic perspectives of Charles Eisenstein and Ajahn Sucitto.
George Mumford has taught meditation since 1986 in a range of environments, from prisons to Harvard Medical School. He is the author of The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance.
Right now I'm deeply involved with developing an urban meditation center in my community. It's important for me to sink my teaching roots into a commitment to my community, to ongoing relationships with people as they practice inside retreats and out of retreats. What are all the ways Sangha is relevant and applicable to our family life, our work, and our play?
Ongoing is my investigation of my own understanding about the assumptions behind what we teach. The graduate work I did in Buddhist studies greases the wheel for this type of reflection. Since part of the inquiry about freedom involves not being stuck in one position, I enjoy pulling the rug out from underneath what we, as teachers, stand on. In other words, to practice the practice.
At the core, what deeply motivates me is my compassion for the suffering in our world. Vipassana teachings, especially as we adapt the forms to an American culture, offer our society a chance to truly look at the turmoil caused by such behaviors as consumerism and individualism. Vipassana creates a different set of values by fostering a high degree of self-reflection on our underlying motivations and intentions, both as individuals and as a society.
Gina Sharpe is a founding teacher of New York Insight. She discovered the Dharma over 30 years ago and has studied and practiced in Asia and the United States. She was trained as a Retreat Teacher under the mentorship of Jack Kornfield. She teaches at Retreat Centers and meditation communities around the United States, including at a maximum security prison for women. She holds two meditation classes in Westchester County, New York.
Gloria Taraniya Ambrosia has been offering instruction in Theravada Buddhist teachings and practices since 1990. She is a student of the Western forest sangha, the disciples of Ajahn Sumedho and Ajahn Chah, and is a Lay Buddhist Minister in association with Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery in California. She has served as resident teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, taught many months at IMS's Forest Refuge, and served as a Core Faculty member at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. She co-authored Older and Wiser: Classical Buddhist Teachings on Aging, Sickness, and Death and has written numerous articles for the Insight Journal of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.
Greg Scharf has practiced with Western and Asian teachers in the Theravada tradition since 1992, and has been teaching residential retreats since 2007. His teaching emphasizes the confluence of love and wisdom on the path to liberation. If you feel drawn to donate to Greg on this website, he says, "Please consider making a donation to Dharma Seed instead - Dharma Seed needs your support!"
Gregory has been teaching meditation since 1980. He developed the practice of Insight Dialogue, offering retreats worldwide and authoring books including Insight Dialogue: The Interpersonal Path to Freedom and Dharma Contemplation: Meditating Together with Wisdom Texts.
Gulwinder “Gullu” Singh is a corporate real estate attorney who regularly teaches both secular and Buddhist classes and groups at InsightLA and at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, has taught mindfulness at the University of Southern California and has been a guest lecturer on mindfulness at UCLA Law School. Although he was exposed to meditation as a child, he found his own practice when he started his legal career, working at firms where the mindsets where insane and as a result, the job was extremely stressful.
Gullu spends several weeks per year teaching silent meditation retreats and has done over 200 nights of silent retreat practice including a 2-month retreat in 2017. Gullu is deeply inspired to share meditation as an antidote to stress, a way to cope more effectively with the challenges of work and live and to inject more sanity, compassion and wisdom into this world.
I have always enjoyed working with practitioners who are continuing to deepen their practice. In the many long retreats I teach at both IMS and Spirit Rock, I feel free to pass on the deepest pointings I’ve found in the teachings of the Buddha in the Pali Canon. Those are my guiding lights in practice and understanding.
It is fun for me to take the most difficult concepts and put them into accessible language, to unwrap the mystery. So I try to find ways to explore the breadth of concepts like "emptiness" -- to see how the entire path can be explained in terms of this synonym for nibbana. One of my aims is to bring the goal of freedom into the here and now. This way practitioners get a taste of freedom, so they know what they are heading toward on their journey to liberation.
The tools of mindfulness and lovingkindness can be picked up by anyone. They are easy to understand and they bring immediate benefit to our lives. The essence of vipassana is ideally suited to western society, especially to the resonance between our psychological turn of mind and our quest for spiritual understanding.
Heather Martin has been meditating since 1972, and practicing Vipassana since 1981. Beginning with S.N. Goenka, she has since been influenced by both Burmese and Thai streams of the Theravada tradition, and by Tibetan Dzogchen with Tsoknyi Rinpoche. Most recently she has been studying with Burmese Sayadaw U Tejaniya.
Her practical and wholehearted approach embodies ease and joy, while grounded in realism.
She has been leading retreats in Canada and the US since 2001. She worked for 20 years as a midwife, and lives on Salt Spring Island, off the south coast of B.C. For more information and Heather's teaching schedule, please visit: ssivipassana.org.
Heather Sundberg has taught insight meditation since 1999 and completed the Spirit Rock/IMS Teacher Training. Beginning her own meditation practice in her late teens, for the last 25 years, Heather has studied with senior teachers in the Insight Meditation (Vipassana) and Tibetan (Vajrayana) traditions and has sat 1-3 months of retreat a year for almost 20 years. She was the Spirit Rock Family & Teen Program Teacher & Manager for a decade. Between 2010- 2015 she spent a cumulative one-year in study, practice, and pilgrimage in Asia. Since 2011, she has been a Teacher at Mountain Stream Meditation Center and sister communities in the Sierra Foothills, and also teaches nationally, especially at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Her teaching emphasizes embodiment, compassion and practical wisdom.
Helen Stephenson has practised Hatha Yoga and Insight Meditation since 1979. Initially she was taught by the late Robert van Heeckeren and in 1981 she began to study classical yoga with the Indian Yogateacher Sri. S. Rajagopalan. Her movement work is influenced by the work of the late Moshe Feldenkrais "awareness through movement" and her training in body centred therapy with the late Ron Kurtz. Having lived most of her life in a communal setting she and her husband are now part time wardens at a busy Quaker centre in Milton Keynes.
The more I rest in present awareness, and don't separate myself out from life, the more I appreciate the impact that I have on others. Only when I am present am I sensitive to my connection to the world, am I able to feel how important it is to be non-harming in my words and actions. When I am lost in thought, I lose that simplicity and sensitivity.
I continually point toward this secret of the present moment, for if I am really present, I don't suffer as much, I don't cause as much suffering, and I am less afraid. I may experience intense pain or pleasure, but the degree of mental suffering lessens. Practicing mindfulness de-conditions the habits that prevent me from being centered in the present. This in turn gives me a more stable awareness, which allows me to recognize my inherent peace and freedom.
It is this taste of nowness--introducing people to the living quality of the present moment and its sense of freedom--that most engages me in my teaching practice. I find no evidence of suffering, in my mind, unless I remind myself of some event that is not in the present. Suffering arises when I am lost in my imagination, reviewing the past or fearfully anticipating the future.
I feel tremendous gratitude and love for the dharma, and the practice of awareness. Knowing my mind a little better, and being less preoccupied with my internal drama, makes me more available to the suffering of others. Consequently, I am moved to give to others rather than focusing on what I can get. In spite of being more attuned to suffering, staying present allows each day to become more joyful, compelling and intereesting. My desire to run from this moment, by running after an imagined, better future, or away from a past fear, has diminished. It is present wakefulness that helps me recover my capacity to live with balance and ease in the world.
Hugh Byrne, Ph. D. is a senior teacher with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington. He completed a four-year teacher training at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and the Insight Meditation Society led by Jack Kornfield. Hugh is also trained in and teaches Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and has completed training in Somatic Experiencing, a mind-body approach to healing trauma. He is a co-founder of the Washington Buddhist Peace Fellowship.
Hugh is the author of The Here-and-Now Habit: How Mindfulness Can Help You Break Unhealthy Habits Once and For All (New Harbinger Publications, March 2016).
Hugh has been on IMCW’s Board of Directors and a member of the Teachers Council since 2003. He teaches three weekly classes in Washington, DC, leads retreats and workshops nationally and abroad, and is available for teacher interviews. He is also one of four teachers for the Meditation Teacher Training Institute (MTTI).
Over the years of teaching, I've found a growing need for profound lovingkindness and compassion--a transformation of the heart--to underlie the insights and understandings that come out of the practice. An opening of the mind needs to be supported by compassion from the heart if the practice is to be integrated, fulfilled, and lived in our lives.
The value of mindfulness practice is discovered in the freedom we find through awareness. Without awareness, we repeat the patterns of fear and conditioning that keep us entangled individually and collectively. Without awareness, we suffer. With awareness, we can see the contractions of the mind, how the mind gets caught and how we can learn to let go. With awareness we can reawaken to the purity of joy and freedom that is fundamental to our true nature.
As a Dharma teacher, I simply remind others how it is possible to live in this world and find freedom. I listen to practitioners and try to remind them that it is truly possible to be free.
Jake Dartington has practised Buddhist meditation since 1995 and trained as a meditation teacher with Christina Feldman, the co-founder of Gaia House in Devon. He began to teach retreats and meditation courses in 2007. As well as teaching at Gaia House, Jake leads daylong and evening courses at various places around the country. He teaches Insight Meditation, Mindfulness courses and yoga in Nottingham.
I try to convey that the wisdom and compassion we are looking for is already inside of us. I see practice as learning how to purify our mind and heart so we can hear the Buddha inside. In doing so, we naturally embody the dharma and help awaken that understanding and love in others we meet.
I try to use the formal teachings as a doorway for people to see the truth in themselves. I feel I'm doing my job when people look into themselves to come to their own deep understandings of the truth, access their own inner wisdom and trust in their "Buddha-knowing," as Ajahn Chah called it, which is different from their intellectual knowing.
The Buddha-knowing is a deeper place, underneath the concepts, which is in touch with the truth, with our seed of awakening. I want practitioners to have more and more confidence in, and familiarity with, that deeper place of knowing. It is accessing this dimension of our being that becomes the guide to cutting through the confusion caused by greed and fear. We have everything we need inside ourselves. We do not need to look to a teacher when we remember who we really are.
Jason Murphy- Pedulla MA, has been practicing Vipassana meditation since 1994. He is a teacher and therapist who has been working with youth, families and adults for over 20 years. Jason has taught mindful awareness in a variety of settings throughout the United States and leads weekly groups in Santa Cruz and San Jose.
Jason has studied and trained with several prominent teachers in the Thai Forest Tradition of Ajahn Chah. Some of them are Ajahn Sumedho, Ajahn Passano and Amaro Bhikkhu Other teachers and mentors have been, Gil Fronsdal, John Travis, Sylvia Boornstein and Jack Kornfield.
Jason is empowered to teach by the Spirit Rock teachers counsel. He received his training with Noah Levine MA. author of Dharma Punx, Against the Stream, Mary Grace Orr Spirit Rock teacher and Bob Stahl, Ph.D., Guiding Teacher at Insight Santa Cruz and author Living with your heart wide open.
Jaya Karen Rudgard began meditating in the 1980s and practiced for eight years as a nun in the Theravada tradition with Ven. Ajahn Sumedho. A graduate of the IMS/Spirit Rock Teacher Training, she teaches insight meditation and mindfulness in the UK and internationally.
JD Doyle(they/them) has practiced Insight Meditation in the US, Thailand, and Burma since 1997. They are based in Oakland, CA and teach at the East Bay Meditation Center, where they co-founded the LGBTQIA+ Sangha, over 18 years ago. They graduated from Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Retreat Teacher Training. For over twenty-three years, they worked as a public-school teacher. They are committed to celebrating the diversity of our human sangha, transforming the impacts of racism on our communities, expanding concepts of gender, and living in ways that honor the sacredness of the Earth.
Jean Esther, MSW has been practicing meditation since 1975 and teaching in the dharma since the early 90’s. She is one of the Guiding Teachers at True North Insight in Canada and teaches locally in the Northeastern US. Trained in Jungian transpersonal psychology and Somatic Experiencing she has been a practicing psychotherapist in Western MA since 1981 with a specialization in the healing of trauma. Her passion is attuning to and supporting the liberating intersection of body, mind and heart and helping others of all ages do the same.
Jeanne Corrigal is the guiding teacher for the Saskatoon Insight Meditation Community, and a graduate of the 2017-2021 IMS teacher training program. She deeply appreciates metta and nature based practices. She has been practicing since 1999, and is a graduate of Spirit Rock’s Dedicated Practitioner and Community Dharma Leader Programs. Jeanne is certified with Indigenous Focusing Oriented Trauma Therapy (IFOT), is a certified MBSR teacher, and she has trained with Mindful Schools and Somatic Experiencing. She is Métis, and one of her first teachers in loving presence was Cree Elder Jim Settee.
Jeff began practicing insight meditation in 1996 at Spirit Rock. He later moved from San Francisco to Oklahoma and in 2003 started a meditation group there, where he continues to teach. He has taught at meditation groups, daylongs, and residential meditation retreats in California, Massachusetts, Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. Jeff is a Chiricahua/Warm Springs Apache and a former longtime tribal leader. He is currently developing plans to adapt meditation instruction to provide culturally relevant teachings to the Native American community. Visit the website https://collectedmeditation.com
Jenny Wilks has practised Buddhist meditation for many years and has an MA in Indian religions. She has taught on retreats and dharma gatherings since 2005, is a regular teacher at the Barn retreat centre at Sharpham in Devon, and has been teaching at Gaia House since 2008. Jenny trained as a clinical psychologist; she leads mindfulness-based therapy groups in healthcare settings and for the general public and teaches and supervises on the MBCT diploma course at Exeter University.
Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey aims to inspire the skills, determination, and faith necessary to realize the deepest human freedom. He is the resident teacher for Vipassana Hawai’i and when off-island teaches across the US, Canada, and in Burma.
