"Choke"
“CHOKE” (she/her) is a self-taught artist of Taíno and Aztec ancestry and co-founder and director of The Mind Body Ecology Institute. She is also founder and CEO of Arté Tea Co., specializing in artistically curated teas and tisanes, along with tea ceremonial sittings and tea travel adventures around the globe. “CHOKE” stands for ‘Creating Her Own Kinetic Energy’. Her presence is deeply felt in communities throughout the U.S., from the Bay Area to southern Oregon and Florida to the greater metro area of D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, even to Fort Worth, Texas, a.k.a, Panther City, where she still keeps a…
Alex Julie
Alex Julie (he/him) is an Awake in the Wild meditation teacher, specializing in contemplative nature practice. He received EcoSattva training through One Earth Sangha, as well as EcoDharma training at the Rocky Mountain EcoDharma Retreat Center. He is a RYT-200 yoga instructor and has a background in regenerative economics and investing. He is a director of the Mind Body Ecology Institute. Alex is a PADI Rescue Diver, with over 25 years of experience. He is developing a first-of-its-kind Underwater Meditative Immersion program (UMI), launching in 2024. Alex draws his inspiration from wild spaces and believes our stories of separation from the Earth lie at the…
Alice Robbins (retreat manager)
Alice Robbins (Retreat Manager) – My life’s passion has been a calling to be of service to others and has taken form in many different capacities. My love of the wilderness drew me to meditation and the Dharma over 24 years ago when I attended an 11-day silent backpacking meditation retreat in the Sierra mountains. Since then, I found my place of service as a meditation retreat manager and have had the privilege over the past 20 years of managing meditation retreats in the wilderness and wild rivers of Colorado and Southern Utah, and more recently at Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat…
Alice Robison
Alice Robison is a Restorative and Yin Yoga teacher and a dedicated Buddhist practitioner in the Theravada tradition. She sits retreats at Spirit Rock, IMS, Forest Refuge, Barre Center of Buddhist Studies, Cloud Mountain, and participated in an EcoDharma retreat on the Green River with Impermanent Sangha. Alice was on staff at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, MA as a Retreat Support Fellow for one year. She has completed the Advanced Practitioner Program (APP), Dedicated Practitioner’s Program (DPP), the Community Dharma Leader training (CDL), and Mindfulness and Yoga Teacher Training (MYMT) at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA. She is also a…
Andrea Valeska
Andrea Valeska is a Mapuche descendant, born and raised in the South of Chile. She has dedicated her life to the healing of ancestral wounds and women empowerment. She serves as a Holistic Life Integration and Nutrition Health Coach, Herbalist, Women’s circles Facilitator and Intuitive guide. She is a catalyst of change, and through her holistic and integrative approach she guides individuals and communities to reconnect with the rhythms of nature, embrace bio-individuality and authenticity, co-creating heart led sustainable systems based on Empowerment and Conscious Leadership. As a first generation graduate, she has a degree in Engineering Business Administration, a…
Asia Dorsey
Asia Dorsey is at home in her body. She deepened her practice as a Kingian Nonviolence facilitator at Navdanya International studying with the great Gandhian Satish Kumar and the earth warrior Vandana Shiva. Asia completed her first Yoga Teacher Training in Denver with Lakshmi Nair in 2016. They later collectively organized the Satya Yoga Cooperative, an organization that empowers people of color to use yoga as a tool for personal liberation and social transformation. Asia’s tantric style of teaching cultivates the seeds of collective creativity and play, seeing the goal of any practice as coming home to the divinity that…
Asia Whitlock
Retreat Manager Asia Whitlock is passionate about building and sustaining people of color (POC) communities, decolonizing our minds, reparations by any means necessary, and growing her own foods. After several years in real estate, Asia co-founded Southwest Van Builders where she converts vans into tiny homes as an alternative housing solution. She currently lives in New Mexico. Asia is a two year alumni of People of Color Ecodharma Retreat and in summer 2022 stepped into the retreat manager role for these retreats which are co-hosted at least once a year by Boundless in Motion sangha and the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat…
Ayya Dhammadhira
Ayya Dhammadhira is a Bhikkhuni trained in the Theravada tradition. She first took ordination in 2001 at Amaravati Monastery in the lineage of the Thai Forest Master Ajahn Chah. Later, she traveled to Thailand, Myanmar, Australia, and India to continue her practice. In 2012, she retrurned to her native land of California where she took bhikkhuni ordination in Los Angeles. Ayya presently lives at Deer Park in Colorado Springs, CO where she engages in community-wide outreach through the non-profit Web of Connection. Her aim is to build a resilient, regerative and integrated community by bringing the essence of timeless wisdom…
Barry Gillespie
Barry Gillespie was introduced to meditation practice in 1978, through the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Ashram. In 2003 he began exploring Theravada Buddhist practice, sitting many long retreats at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA and Spirit Rock in Woodacre, CA. His principal teacher is Guy Armstrong. Barry is an affiliated teacher with the Insight Meditation Community of Colorado (IMCC). He teaches mainly in Boulder and at the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center.
Ben Connelly
Ben Connelly is a Soto Zen teacher and Dharma heir in the Katagiri lineage. He also teaches mindfulness in a wide variety of secular contexts and leads wilderness meditation retreats. He works with multifaith groups focused on intersectional liberation, racial justice, and climate justice. Ben is based at Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, travels to teach across the United States, has written for Tricycle and Lion’s Roar magazines, and is author of Inside the Grass Hut, Inside Vasubandhu’s Yogacara, Vasubandhu’s “Three Natures”, and Mindfulness and Intimacy.
Bhava Jaya
Bhava Jaya embarked on his yoga journey in 2013, delving into Vinyasa flow classes for two years before earning his initial 200-hour yoga teacher certification at Dharma Yoga in Austin, Texas. The intensive training infused him with Buddhist dharma teachings and meditation practices, fueling his dedication to self-discovery and altruism. Following his intuition, Bhava relocated to Atlanta in 2017 to deepen his involvement in the wellness community. There, he obtained his second 200-hour yoga certification from Kashi Atlanta ashram and became actively engaged with Kashi Atlanta programs, including children’s art programs, yoga sponsorship for underserved populations, and aiding those grappling with…
Bianca Acosta
Bianca Acosta is a trained teacher of somatic Qigong, traditional ecological design and farming practices (best known as permaculture), and Ecodharma ceremonies at the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center. She is originally from Zacatecas, Mexico and has been living in Colorado for over 17 years. She is proud of her indigenous roots and her life’s prayer is to be an active co-creator of a more beautiful world by sharing her gifts, being in synergetic relationships with Mother Earth, the diverse communities she is part of and embracing the multi-dimensionality of their being. She currently is in her last year of…
Blake Hestir
Blake Hestir lives in Fort Worth, Texas, the unceded sacred ancestral land of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. He is professor of philosophy and the associate director of CALM Studies at TCU in Fort Worth, Texas. He is director and co-founder of The Mind Body Ecology Institute and a member of the Flourishing Academic Network, and an advisor for the Dallas Movement Collective. His teaching and scholarship are in the areas of ancient Greek philosophy, philosophy of mind, and phenomenology, as well as ecology and contemplative research. His current work is a philosophical inquiry into how inner transformation may be cultivated through expanding worldviews,…
Bridget Blomfield
Bridget Blomfield has had a life-long interest in mysticism, leading her to pursue a PhD in Religious Studies where she focused on Islamic Studies. She has had a forty-year meditation practice and has studied and taught Buddhism and Sufism in the United States, India, Taiwan, Thailand, Morocco and Turkey. Her master’s thesis, “Dance as a Body-Centered Psycho/Spiritual Practice” was written while she attended Pacifica Graduate School. Bridget has studied and developed somatic movement practices for 30 years and has offered movement and meditation workshops globally. Her work stresses intimacy and relatedness with all things. Supposedly retired, Bridget currently teaches adjunct…
Carla Brennan
Carla Brennan, M.Ed., has trained in the Zen, Insight Meditation and Tibetan Buddhist traditions since 1975 and is an authorized Spirit Rock Teacher. She founded Bloom of the Present Insight Meditation (bloomofthepresent.org) in 2014. Carla also taught Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for 18 years and is a former transpersonal psychotherapist. Currently, she teaches with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach in the Mindfulness Meditation Teachers Certification Program (MMTCP) and with Cloud Sangha. Carla has spent many months in silent retreat including two monthlong solos in the wilderness. Her dharma approach emphasizes integrating wisdom into everyday life, releasing the qualities of the awakened…
Carol Kortsch
Carol Kortsch was born in Africa, educated in Canada, and then worked internationally building community in different forms. After 25 years in psychotherapy and group practice at Stonehaven Commons in Radnor, PA., she now offers nature-based retreats from Boulder, Colorado as a Courage & Renewal group facilitator. She is blending the Earth-based practices of Animas Valley Institute in a visionary program called ElderSoul. As a life adventurer and Earth listener, she recognizes our essential and critical human need to stop, slow down, and listen to our lives and all our relations speak. What we offer in these circles is a…
Catherine Marquez
Cat’s indigenous heritage is native to the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado. Her soul’s journey began with answering a subtle call to learn the healing arts. Since then, she has contributed to the healing and education of humanity as a Curandera/healer and teacher. She integrates her training at the Four Winds with shamanic teachings from Aztec, Incan, Mayan and many other spiritual traditions; encouraging and empowering others to heal and find the path of their Divine Destiny. She is passionate about inspiring others and resurrecting ancient wisdom to address contemporary issues facing Earth and humanity. She founded worldwide “Eternal…
Caverly Morgan
Caverly Morgan is a meditation teacher, author, speaker, and nonprofit founder. Her new book, The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together through Sounds True is available here. She is the founder and Lead Contemplative of Peace in Schools—a nonprofit which created the nation’s first for-credit mindfulness class in public high schools. She is also the founder of Presence Collective, a community of cross-cultural contemplatives committed to personal and collective transformation. Caverly blends the original spirit of Zen with a modern nondual approach. Her practice began in 1995 and has included eight years of training in a silent Zen…
Cornelia Santschi
Cornelia (Punnya) Santschi is a neuropsychologist and meditation teacher. She is deeply committed to environmental conservation and social justice. At the RWJ Barnabas Health Institute of Neurology in NJ, she has specialized in brain-behavior relationships for over 20 years. Cornelia is a devoted student of Buddhism with a dedicated insight meditation practice since 2000. She completed yoga teacher training at Integral Yoga in NYC in 2001, and graduated from the Community Dharma Leader Program in 2017. As founder/president of non-profit Anatta World Health & Education Outreach, Cornelia has organized culturally sensitive health, education, and women’s empowerment programs in multiple countries, with local partners…
Cynthia Wilcox
My personal journey is in coming to live from embodied presence, listening to the wisdom of the body, with compassion. I value seeing the goodness and beauty in others, walking alongside, supporting and trusting each one’s own knowing. I hold space and steadiness and hope. I have confidence in this path. The teachings offered here have evolved through integration of various traditions which have been my personal path over the last 14 years: Insight Meditation, Buddhist psychology, Realization Process (a series of practices for opening the body, heart and mind to nondual reality through inward contact with the internal space…
Dave Smith
For over 30 years, Dave Smith has held a practice rooted in the Insight Meditation (Vipassana) tradition. He was empowered to teach through the Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society, is a certified teacher for Cultivating Emotional Balance (CEB) which is combines contemporary emotion based scientific research with contemplative practices and psychology drawn from Buddhism. Dave teaches residential meditation retreats, weekly live dharma classes, online courses, and workshops. He lives in rural Colorado with his wife and two sons.
David Chernikoff
David Chernikoff is a meditation teacher, spiritual counselor, and life coach who taught psychology and meditation at Naropa University for many years. A student of meditation since 1971, David completed the inaugural Community Dharma Leader Training at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and began teaching Insight Meditation in 1988. His teaching has been influenced by senior teachers from the Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock, Zen teacher Yvonne Rand, and spiritual guides from other contemplative traditions, most notably Ram Dass, Father Thomas Keating, and Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. In the early 1980s, he worked at Ram Dass’s Hanuman Foundation Dying Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico…
David Loy
David identifies his spiritual roots as primarily in the Japanese Zen tradition. His Zen practice began in Hawaii in 1971 with Yamada Koun and Robert Aitken, and continued with Koun-roshi in Japan, where he lived for almost twenty years. He was authorized to teach in 1988 and has led retreats and workshops nationally and internationally in places such as Spirit Rock, the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, Terre d’Eveil in Paris, and Dharma Gate University in Budapest. In 2014 David received an honorary PhD from Carleton College, his alma mater, for his contributions to socially engaged…
Denise Ackert
Denise has been practicing Insight Meditation since 1986, training in the US, India, and Nepal and teaching meditation at the Salida Insight Meditation Community since 2012. Her core teachers include John Travis, Brian Lesage, Susie Harrington, Erin Treat and many other Spirit Rock and IMS teachers. Denise has studied with teachers from other Buddhist lineages including Anam Thubten and Tsoknyi Rinpoche. Her background as a yoga teacher, body worker, and environmental scientist deeply informs her focus on nature and embodied practice. In addition, she teaches meditation in schools, jails, non-profit organizations, businesses and on the trail. Denise is currently in…
Djuna Devereaux
Djuna is a core teacher and board chair for Sacred Mountain Sangha, supporting her primary Dharma teachers, Thanissara and Kittisaro. She teaches on retreats and daylong events at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and leads their Dharma and Yoga Teacher Training. Djuna is faculty for Prajna Yoga and offers workshops and teacher training internationally. She is also a certified yoga therapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner in private practice. Djuna’s teaching weaves asana training, with somatic movement, biomechanics, and the wisdom of yoga and the Buddha Dharma, into each offering. Her movement sessions are crafted to cultivate embodied awareness while supporting the…
Donna Roe Daniell LCSW
Donna Roe Daniell LCSW brings over 35 years of experience as a family therapist, trauma therapist, Zen and Vipassana meditation practitioner and Ecodharma teacher, MBSR teacher, Certified IFS therapist, Mindful Self Compassion teacher, retreat leader and climate activist. Her unique retreat offers women in major transitions in their lives a mindful path through grief to true authenticity and fierce compassion. She has received training in The Work that Reconnects and has completed trainings with Deborah Eden Tull, bringing her facilitation tools more specifically focused on bringing women through their personal and global darkness safely to an emerging role in the…
Doshin Daigu Nelson Roshi
Doshin is a poet, teacher, and troublemaker – a Zen Master of no rank. He is the founder of Integral Zen and the Poetry of Dying Project, which uses the mirror of death to point to the essence of life. Doshin worked directly with JunPo as he first released and then developed the Process of Mondo Zen. Doshin uses several similar practice methods, he calls “Wu Technologies” to initiate curious seekers into a direct experience, a glimpse of the deepest truth of who we are – pure selfless awareness unpolluted by the perceptual illusion of self and the perpetual delusions…
Elaine Yeh
Elaine Yeh met Master Hua when she was studying computer science at the University of Texas in 1989 and was inspired to become his monastic disciple. During her 33 years as a Buddhist nun, she worked on translating Chinese Buddhist texts, served as principal at Instilling Goodness and Developing Virtue Schools, and taught at Dharma Realm Buddhist University. She earned an MA in Buddhist Classics from Dharma Realm Buddhist University and an MA in Asian Studies from UC Berkeley. In recent years she has been exploring how Buddhist and Western psychological approaches can work together to bring about deeper self-transformation…
Emerson James
Emerson James (they/them) is imagining, articulating, and captivated by a world permeated with the possibilities of queerness. Nourished by contemplative practices, they find vocational calling in cultivating and offering skills in spiritual care and facilitation. After first being introduced as an undergraduate to the Church of the Brethren’s deep commitment to pacifism and social justice, they have been called to the particular role of spiritual practice and action in the transformation and expansion of cultures, systems and modes of awareness. They took to heart young Wendell Berry’s statement that one’s relationship with place is like all relationships, including that of…
Frederic Wiedemann
Frederic is an elder sage … and renaissance kind-of-guy. He “downloaded” his life/soul mission in his 30’s. The essence hasn’t changed in these 40 years since: “to explore, embody, and share paradoxical Wholeness.” His 50 years of journeying with this mission –and catalyzing others to find theirs — has led him to: founding and directing two educational nonprofits; local community activist for Dharma’s Garden — a 5 acre, educational farm in the heart of Boulder living abroad for total of five years; Human Resources VP for an entrepreneurial start-up rocketing to $50,000,000 sales; poet of over 200 poems; two year…
Gene Dilworth
Gene is dedicated to the project of rewilding the human spirit as an essential dimension of being fully alive in these times. Facilitating deep inquiry into the mystery of one’s true nature through meaningful engagement with the more-than-human world, he supports individuals to discover, re-member and live from their soul-rooted sense of belonging to the world. Gene is founder of Wild Heart Center for Nature & Psyche and is a lead guide at Animas Valley Institute
Grace Fisher
Grace Fisher, MFT, JD, MEd, is the Staff Dharma teacher at Spirit Rock and a psychotherapist in private practice in the Bay Area. She is a former lawyer who holds a Masters in Education from Stanford, and is a graduate of the Community Dharma Leaders program at Spirit Rock. She recently completed the Somatic Experiencing training and has studied at the Money Coaching Institute. At Spirit Rock, Grace also teaches a weekly women’s class and various daylongs. She is committed to exploring how the teachings support us navigating the gritty, the challenging and the beautiful. A former Coloradan, she lives…
Gregory Crespo
Gregory Crespo is an Awake in the Wild nature meditation teacher, having trained with Mark Coleman to learn to foster a rich sensitivity and connection to the natural world through mindfulness and contemplative practices. He has led weekend retreats and workshops and finds sharing mindfulness and nature practices with others to be a rewarding and inspiring part of life. He believes deeply that nature can be a healing and supportive element of meditation practice and that—for our own health and for the health of our planet—we as a species desperately need to reconnect with nature. Gregory is also a husband,…
Gulwinder “Gullu” Singh
Gulwinder “Gullu” Singh is a corporate real estate attorney who regularly teaches both secular and Buddhist classes, groups and retreats at Insight LA and at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, including Mindful-Based Stress Reduction. He 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 job was extremely stressful. Gullu is deeply inspired to share meditation as an antidote to stress, a way to cope…
Heidi Bourne
Heidi Bourne is a meditation teacher in the Insight Meditation tradition and is the founder and guiding teacher of Pacific Mindfulness. She has been teaching since 2005 offering classes, series courses, nature retreats, trauma-informed and resiliency-focused professional programs, and teaches regularly for Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She holds certification in mindfulness facilitation from UCLA, trauma resiliency from the Trauma Resource Institute, and is a member of the International Mindfulness Teachers Association. Heidi is especially interested in the integration of the common sense, accessible and timeless teachings of awareness, ethics, and compassion into the complexity of our everyday lives. She is…
Imtiaz Rangwala
Imtiaz Rangwala has been practicing meditation for ~20 years and is a lay meditation teacher in the lineage of Cold Mountain Zen. He is also one of the founding members of Boulder Ecodharma Sangha. Professionally, he is a Climate Scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder where he provides climate science support to people managing our land, water and wildlife. He loves to nurture community through his love for cooking, gardening and sharing of songs and stories. He also greatly loves the outdoors and considers nature to be a very important teacher. Imtiaz was raised in the Islamic tradition of progressive Dawoodi…
Jade Sherer
Jade Sherer is a wild elder in the making, a “grief astronomer” (a la Andrea Gibson), and one who apprentices to death and joy. She has devoted her life to showing up to support others as they navigate the transitions of their lives, guiding others in nature-based transformational processes and ceremonies, a mentor to hundreds as they bring their integrity and authentic genius alive and accessible for the world. Jade was trained and then guided with Animas Valley Institute for 15 years and now works independently. (www.ItsOurNature.net) As an animist through and through, Jade’s particular passion is focused on listening…
Jane Seaton
Jane Seaton PhD., at just two and half years old, declared to her mother that she would teach art. She grew up to become both a multimedia artist and a creativity guide for others. Since 1973, Jane has taught hundreds of people from all walks of life how to reawaken and explore the many dimensions of their real artistic nature – often by allowing them to relax and let their hands and heart lead the way. Her teaching programs have varied from weekend workshops to five year training programs. Jane has also been in private practice as a transpersonal psychotherapist…
Janet Surrey
Janet Surrey, PhD is an Insight Dialogue Teacher. She teaches Insight Dialogue retreats worldwide and leads a longstanding practice group in the Boston area. Her first meditation teacher was Vimala Thakar . She has practiced in the Insight tradition for over 30 years, and trained as a Community Dharma Leader at Spirit Rock. Since 2007, Jan has worked intensively with Gregory Kramer and is currently serving on the Teachers Council of the Insight Dialogue Community. Jan is a practicing clinical psychologist and founding scholar of the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute at the Wellesley Centers for Women. She is on…
Jean Leonard
Jean Leonard, Ph.D. (she/her) is a licensed psychologist, dharma teacher, certified Mindful Self-Compassion teacher, and Buddhist Ecochaplain in private practice in Louisville, Colorado. Jean teaches mindfulness classes and mentors mindfulness teachers in training through Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach’s Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program. She has practiced yoga for over 30 years and vipassana meditation (primarily in the Theravada tradition) since 2003, and holds the Dharma as a sacred compass that guides her personal and professional life. Some of her primary teachers have included James Baraz, Gil Fronsdal, Dana DePalma, Thanissara and Kittisaro. She is currently participating in the two-year…
Johann Robbins
Johann has been meditating since starting with TM in college in 1974. He was asked by Eric Kolvig to begin teaching in 2008, and completed Community Dharma Leader teacher training at Spirit Rock shortly thereafter. His primary Insight teachers were Eric Kolvig, Joseph Goldstein, and Shinzen Young, and his primary Direct Path teachers were Adyashanti, Stephan Bodian, and Rupert Spira. Johann’s passion is spiritual practice in and with nature, and he has guided and taught wilderness meditation retreats for almost 30 years, including backpacking, camping, canoeing and solo Vision Quests. In 2016 Johann founded RMERC, where he served as unpaid Executive Director until 2022,…
Jon Aaron
A Dharma and Mindfulness teacher at New York Insight Meditation Center Jon first came across meditation in the 1970s, and then became interested in Insight and Mindfulness practices in the late 1990s, studying mindfulness meditation and Buddhism, which have since become central to his life. A Certified MBSR Teacher and Teacher Trainer, Jon trained in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction with the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and Brown University. In 2016 he completed his training with Breathworks in the UK and has integrated many of these techniques and modalities into all his teaching. He is…
Joshua Ellis
Josh Ellis is a mindfulness teacher, wilderness guide, and the former Resident Manager of RMERC. He is certified to teach mindfulness through Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach’s Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training Program. He is the founder and lead guide of Maui Mindful Adventures, a group dedicated to practicing mindfulness in motion in nature.
Kaira Jewel Lingo
Kaira Jewel Lingo is a Dharma teacher who has a lifelong interest in blending spirituality and meditation with social justice. Having grown up in an ecumenical Christian community where families practiced a new kind of monasticism and worked with the poor, at the age of twenty-five she entered a Buddhist monastery in the Plum Village tradition and spent fifteen years living as a nun under the guidance of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. She received Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh and became a Zen teacher in 2007, and is also a teacher in the Vipassana Insight lineage through Spirit…
Kathleen Rude
Kathleen Rude fell in love with the natural world as a young child and found her voice for environmental activism at age 10. She has a B.S. in Wildlife Ecology and an M.S. in Natural Resources. Kathleen began her career as an environmental writer. Her studies of indigenous spiritual practice eventually led her to become a shamanic practitioner, ceremonial leader and teacher. She is a senior facilitator of the Work That Reconnects (WTR), an interactive process/workshop that helps to transform despair and overwhelm into empowerment and inspiration. She has been mentored by Joanna Macy, the internationally-acclaimed root teacher of the…
Kazu Haga
Born in Japan, Kazu has been engaged in social change work since participating in the Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage at 17 years old. He has over 20 years of experience in nonviolence training and organizing work, and has been trained by elders such as Dr. Bernard Lafayette and Rev. James Lawson. He has been a Kingian Nonviolence trainer since 2009, is a restorative justice facilitator, a core member of the Ahimsa Collective, and sits on the board of PeaceWorkers. He is the author of the upcoming book, Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm. He is also…
Kirsten Rudestam
Kirsten Rudestam (she/her) believes that practices of (re)connection are crucial in maintaining our capacity to face and respond to ecological loss and to embrace our inherent interbeing. Kirsten holds a Ph.D. in environmental sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she studied water policy and management, feminist political ecology, and environmental justice. She began practicing meditation in 1997, graduated from Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leaders program in 2005 and is currently in a four-year teacher training program with Andrea Fella and Gil Fronsdal of the Insight Meditation Center. She has taught meditation and dharma for Insight Santa Cruz,…
Kritee (Kanko)
Kritee (dharma name Kanko) is a Climate Scientist, Buddhist Zen priest, Educator & Founding Spiritual teacher of Boundless in Motion. She is an ordained teacher in the Rinzai Zen lineage of Cold Mountain and a co-founder of Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center. She has served as faculty for courses or retreats at the intersection of climate crisis, racial justice, trauma healing and spirituality for many organizations including One Earth Sangha, Al Gore’s Climate Reality, Stanford University, World Council of Churches, San Francisco Zen Center, Mind & Life Institute and Lama Foundation. She has served as a leading scientist in the Climate Smart…
Lakshmi Nair
Lakshmi Nair: Lakshmi Nair is a yoga educator, engaged in reclaiming the pre-patriarchal, non-hierarchical indigenous resilience and resistance of her ancestral tradition of yoga and creating spaces for herself and others to authentically engage with the practices of yoga for self and collective healing and liberation. In 2014, Lakshmi created a yoga immersion and teacher training program exclusively for BIPOC which has since grown into Satya Yoga Cooperative, one of the first BIPOC owned and operated yoga cooperatives in the country.
Lama Rod Owens
Lama Rod Owens is a Black Buddhist Southern Queen. An international influencer with a Master of Divinity degree in Buddhist Studies from Harvard Divinity School with a focus on the intersection of social change, identity, and spiritual practice. Author of The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors and Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger and co-author of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love and Liberation, his teachings center on freedom, self-expression, and radical self-care. Highly sought after for talks, retreats, and workshops, his mission is showing you how to heal and free yourself. A leading voice in a new generation of Buddhist teachers with over…
Lauren Golten
Lauren Golten is a nature-based therapist and a group facilitator drawing upon her extensive training and experience with the Wild Mind model of Animas Valley Institute, the Work That Reconnects, and Matrix Leadership Institute. She holds masters degrees in Field Biology and Wilderness Therapy. Lauren’s 20-year practice and study of meditation and mindfulness, and her life-long love of the natural world, are core to her work as a therapist and facilitator. She sees clients and leads nature-based programs at her home-place of Wild Tinaja Ridge near Lyons, Colorado. https://www.mountainsandrivers.com/
Laurie Adams
Laurie was raised among mountains and rivers of Idaho and lives with a felt sense of the sacred threads that weave through this wild world. She longs to hear the thrum of soul’s truth and guides humans on the journey home to intimacy with the world’s sovereign aliveness, and their own, in this cosmic web. She is part of the Animas Valley Institute Soul Initiation and Apprenticeship program. Laurie has a passion for nature based, soul-connected ancestral work and intergenerational ceremony and journeys in which humans of many ages find themselves longing for and risking stepping through thresholds of…
Laurie Cousins
Laurie Cousins is a mindfulness teacher, integrative somatic practitioner, and trauma-informed educator based in Los Angeles. Part of her education and training include the mindfulness centers of UCLA & UCSD and she teaches their signature evidence-based programs of Mindful Awareness Practices and Mindful Self-Compassion. Laurie is mentored by Susan Kaiser Greenland and a lead teacher of the International Inner Kids Collaborative. As a certified CRM Teacher of the Trauma Resource Institute and specializing in the field of trauma and addiction recovery for over 15 years, Laurie offers a holistic approach in her private practice through somatic-centered healing, compassion training, and…
Lin Wang Gordon
Over the past decade, Lin has studied insight meditation (vipassana) under the guidance of Jonathan Foust and Mark Coleman. In stillness and silence, she discovers the transformative power of meditation to help live a life of flow, joy, grace and gratitude. She was particularly moved by the power of nature meditation to connect with a deep sense of love, wonder, resilience, and belonging. She graduated from Mark Coleman’s Awake in the Wild Nature Meditation Teacher Training in 2017. Since then, she has taught at Kripalu and other retreat centers around the country, has attended several programs at RMERC including the Ecodharma Training…
Linda Modero
Linda Modaro is the founder and lead teacher at Sati Sangha, a vibrant online meditation community that offers daily virtual meditation sittings, online retreats and in-person retreats throughout the year. Linda began teaching Buddhist meditation in 2008 after she completed her intensive training for meditation and dharma teaching in Recollective Awareness Meditation with Jason Siff. Previously, she had a thriving acupuncture practice in Santa Monica, California, for more than 20 years. A master of Qi Gong, Linda also created a best-selling, four-part instructive Qi Gong video series called Discovering Chi: Energy Exercises (offered freely on the Sati Sangha website). Now…
Liz Reynolds
Liz Reynolds (she/her) Originally from east Tennessee, Liz began her meditation practice in 2010 while living and working in the Russian Far East. Her practice has accompanied her through living and working in Russia, Japan, Greece, Germany, several US states and through several Dharma study and leadership programs. In 2020, Liz became a teacher with the Insight Meditation Community of Charlottesville, in central Virginia. She is currently in Upaya Zen Center’s two-year Buddhist chaplaincy training program and volunteers as a chaplain intern at UVA hospital, and is also a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique. Liz believes that the dharma can…
Mark Coleman
Mark Coleman is an inner and outer explorer, who has devotedly studied mindfulness meditation practices for three decades and has taught mindfulness workshops and meditation retreats on six continents for the past twenty years. Mark is a senior meditation teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and cofounder of the Mindfulness Training Institute. Mark is an unabashed nature lover and, through his organization Awake in the Wild, he leads wilderness meditation retreats integrating meditation and nature. Based on his book, Awake in the Wild, Mark leads year-long meditation-in-nature teacher training programs in the US. Mark also holds a MA in Clinical…
Michelle Gabrieloff-Parish
Michelle Gabrieloff-Parish is an ethnofuturist mama, “cultural therapist” and ecotopian dreamer preoccupied with ancestors, art, Environmental Justice and Earth (re)becoming a paradise. She brings over 27 years of experience uniting sustainability, justice, and art. Michelle is the founder of FLOWS environmental justice program, serves on the Colorado Water Equity Partnership, the advisory board for Frontline Farming, and the State of Colorado Biochar for Oil and Gas Plugging Working Group. As founder of the consulting group “Once and Future Green” Michelle facilitates and trains communities to reclaim diverse ecological wisdom and cultural traditions with anti-oppression and ecological design tools. Leaning on…
Natasha Deganello Giraudie
As a child growing up in Venezuela, Natasha learned some of her most valuable lessons outside the classroom – from indigenous people living on their ancestral lands. As an adult, she studied with the Dalai Lama for more than 20 years and had the opportunity to attend nature-based retreats with Thich Naht Han in his monastery. As a professional nature meditation teacher and certified moon guide, she has taught groups from the United Nations, Google and Airbnb as well as medical practitioners, politicians, nonprofit leaders and filmmakers in the US, Latin America and Asia. Natasha is also a documentary filmmaker.…
Naveed Heydari
Naveed (he/they) creates relational contexts in which regeneration is the norm. They identify in the spaces in between with regards to sexual identity (queer), culture (Ecuadorean, Persian, American), spiritual orientation, and profession. He is a master revealer, and uses this superpower to open a field in which others feel safe to reveal their deeper truths to be witnessed by the collective. After a period of commitment pruning, Naveed has found his niche with the social permaculture community; he thrives cultivating the relational soil and creating the conditions that support a more resilient “we-space”, or mycelial network. They are an embodied…
Nelly Kaufer
Nelly Kaufer is the founder and lead teacher at Pine Street Sangha, a meditation center in Portland, Oregon. Nelly was introduced to Vipassana (Mindfulness) meditation in 1978 on retreats taught by Ruth Denison and began teaching women meditation soon thereafter, as there were no female teachers in her community at that time. She co-authored A Woman’s Guide to Spiritual Renewal (HarperOne,1994), a book for which she interviewed women about their spiritual experiences. She completed two intensive teacher trainings, one in Vipassana with Jacqueline Mandell and the other in Recollective Awareness Meditation with Jason Siff. Nelly is a psychotherapist in private…
Nicoya Helm (Assistant)
Nicoya Helm is a certified Unified Mindfulness Pathways coach and Mental Health First Aid Instructor. She began meditating in 1999 as part of recovery from a serious health challenge; now she offers mindfulness and mental health education to help others look deeper, dream bigger, and live better. Since 2018, she’s served as a lead instructor for multiple cohorts of Unified Mindfulness’s Pathways coach training program, a support instructor for Jansusz Wellin’s Progress of Shinsight course, and an associate teacher at Temple Buddhist Center of Kansas City. She is a regular facilitator at the University of Kansas Medical Center’s Turning Point…
Peter Williams
Peter has practiced meditation for 29 years in the Theravada and Tibetan Buddhist traditions. He has done more than 31 months of silent retreat. He has taught insight meditation (mindfulness) since 2003 and has completed the Community Dharma Leader training through Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Peter teaches retreats and dedicated practitioner groups based in Longmont, CO. He has taught mindfulness to diverse audiences, from Colorado juvenile justices to school teachers to environmentalists. He is one of the founders of the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center in the mountains near Boulder, CO. Peter has been practicing as a transpersonal psychotherapist since 2007,…
Piero Falci
Piero Falci teaches Mindfulness Meditation and Mindful Living. He is certified to teach the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, the Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM) model, and Mindfulness in Schools (MiSP) programs for teenagers. He received his MBSR teacher training at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and at the Brown University School of Public Health. He is a board member of the Academy of Heart and Mind and the organization’s Representative on Sustainable Development to the United Nations. Piero has written several books, including the book series “A Better Life in a Better World,” and has created a variety of courses on how to apply mindfulness…
Ramon Gabrieloff-Parish
Ramon Gabrieloff-Parish Ramon Gabrieloff-Parish is a lifelong star gazer, Afrofuturist philosopher, dancing mythologist and storyteller, practicing astrologer, social artist and creative ceremonialist. His current project is to utilize the many outer planetary alignments of the 2020’s as occasions to create new holidays and festivals that open spaces for alternative futures and social realities. He serves as an assistant professor of Interdisciplinary Studies Naropa University, focusing on the intersections of equity and sustainability through courses on food and environmental justice. He also teaches foundations in contemplative learning and theory, embodiment, social identity, and conflict transformation. Ramon is committed to community, cultural and…
Rashid Hughes
Rashid Hughes serves as the Lead Facilitator of the Inaugural Cohort of the Howard University Contemplative Justice Fellowship. Rashid is passionate about bridging the worlds of contemplative practice, spirituality, and collective care. He is a proud graduate of the Howard University Department of Music and the Howard University School of Divinity. Rashid is a certified Mindfulness Teacher, a certified Yoga Instructor, a Restorative Justice Facilitator, and is currently in training to become a Fire Pujari. Most recently, Rashid was selected to be a 2022-2024 fellow of the Garrison Institute and was also featured in the new groundbreaking project, gOD-Talk, a project…
Reggie Hubbard
Reggie Hubbard is the founder and Chief Serving Officer of Active Peace. He is a gifted strategist, teacher, and communicator with an innate ability to inspire change and simplify chaos. His work is guided by a commitment to truth-telling, healing, social justice, and holding space for transformation. His contemplative practices have been a refuge of peace and perspective while navigating the stresses of being a black man in the world and serving in pressure-filled jobs. He began yoga and meditation practices under extreme emotional distress at work. Through the blessing of ancestral guidance, consistent practice, and curiosity he offers peace…
Renee Sills
Renee Sills is a second generation astrologer, intuitive, somatic educator and practitioner, and the founder of Embodied Astrology – a community-based, hybrid platform exploring intersectional astrology and the synthesis and application of astrology with other forms of knowledge, healing and creating. The through-lines of their work involve ongoing investigations of inter-relatedness, spirituality, mindfulness, creative agency, and the adaptive processes and queering of human bodies and consciousness in times of apocalypse. Renee’s work weaves together and between the realms of astrology, mysticism, bodywork, healing ritual and participatory art. She seeks to proliferate (through all means possible) accessible, adaptable, embodied practices that…
Rochelle Calvert
Rochelle Calvert, PhD, CMT, SEP, is a licensed clinical psychologist, ecodharma teacher, certified mindfulness teacher, and somatic experiencing practitioner. She has a devoted love to share the power and healing potential of mindfulness, somatic awareness and nature to heal trauma and to awaken and heal the Earth. She has studied and taught mindfulness for the past 22 years and knows personally the transformational potential. To share the love of these healing practices she has published a book Healing with Nature: Mindfulness and Somatic Practices to Heal from Trauma. Dr. Calvert leads courses and retreats in nature-based mindfulness, somatic experiencing and…
Sarah Heffron
Sarah Heffron, LCSW is a Buddhist Eco-Chaplain, lover of our planet, meditator of 30 years, and licensed clinical therapist dedicated to collectively reckoning with the immense suffering of this time and deepening our capacity for awakening into our fullest potential of wisdom, compassion, and joy amidst it. She has shared meditation and wisdom in the insight tradition for 24 years and has a private therapy practice in Moab, Utah. Mothering, gardening, exploring/hiking, engaging creatively with climate change, learning from Indigenous wisdom and the more than human world, and silence sustain and nourish her purpose.
Sarah Sampson
Sarah Sampson (she/her) is a social-emotional learning (SEL) educator, mindful movement teacher, ceremonial facilitator, and devoted student of life. Sarah is the founder of Art of the Circle, an organization that provides training and consulting to schools, businesses, and individuals using circling practices based in restorative justice, SEL, and mindfulness. Sarah is also co-founder and director of The Mind Body Ecology Institute. As the former Social-Emotional Learning Facilitator for Keller ISD, she led the implementation of equity-lensed SEL, restorative circles, and mindfulness-based activities in classrooms that serve over 35,000 students. Sarah is Founder and Director of the Dallas Movement Collective…
Satya Larrea
Satya discovered yoga and meditation in 1993 out of her need to be happy. She was desperate to heal from the depression and anxiety she felt in her mind/body. She was a work study student at an ashram for many years and while “chopping wood and carrying water” she underwent a rigorous training to teach yoga, starting in 1997. Satya currently owns the Whole Yoga Center in Denver and has led numerous yoga teacher training‘s and daylong meditation retreats there, since 2004. Her calling in life is in the healing arts, she’s a body worker with an emphasis on somatics and she’s earned multiple certifications in ayurvedic and yogic studies, massage therapy and Qigong. Satya specializes in teaching embodiment and…
Shinei Sara Monial & Soten Danney Lynch
Shinei Sara Monial and Soten Danney Lynch are ordained Soto Zen Priests. They lived and practiced full-time at Great Vow Zen Monastery with Chozen and Hogen Bays for a decade (https://zendust.org/). Shinei is a yoga teacher and Soten is a long distance ultra-runner and musician. Together they have been leading annual backpacking meditation retreats in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest since 2016. Recently they embarked upon a pilgrimage through Mexico and Central America, covering 3,000 miles purely on foot. Back from this journey they each seek to merge their passions for Embodiment, Nature and Dharma and share this unique…
Susie Harrington
Susie Harrington is the guiding teacher for Desert Dharma and Sky Mind Retreats, teaching both in the Southwest and internationally since 2005. She delights in teaching outdoors, knowing that nature nourishes the heart and inspires wisdom. She encourages, through silence and intimate presence, coming home to our embedded natural aliveness and belonging, and the freedom that is our natural state. Her roots are in the Insight tradition, having trained extensively with Jack Kornfield, Guy Armstrong, and Joseph Goldstein; she is also well practiced in the Tibetan and Diamond Heart traditions as well as in Hakomi Therapy. For more information: www.desertdharma.org.
Sylvie Rokab
Sylvie is a certified nature-therapy guide, mindfulness teacher in the Vipassana tradition, and an Emmy-nominated filmmaker. By blending these three disciplines, Sylvie offers simple but powerful techniques that help participants find freedom from suffering, to access the healing, wisdom, and wonder that can only be found in mindful relationship with nature. Narrated by Liam Neeson, her film Love Thy Nature earned 27 awards and has helped viewers realize that the illusion of separation from the natural world is at the root cause of our dire human condition. Through her teaching, Sylvie helps participants rekindle mindful loving awareness, awakening to the power…
Tara-Lloyd Burton
Tara-Lloyd Burton sat their first Insight Meditation retreat with Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, and Sharon Salzberg in 1975, as a spiritually wounded Vietnam Veteran. In 1985 they incorporated the organization that founded Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. In 2000 they graduated with the charter class of SRMC’s Community Dharma Leader training program. From that time forward they have served as resident guiding teacher (and more recently, environmental chaplain) for the Insight Meditation Community of Denver, Colorado. They have periodically assisted or co-taught Jhana retreats with Leigh Brasington since 2005. Lloyd’s inner deva Tara came forth in their affirmation…
Terry Ray
Terry Ray is a licensed psychotherapist who has been practicing Insight (Vipassana) meditation since 1974, and teaching for over 45 years. She completed the first Community Dharma Leader’s program at Spirit Rock, leads retreats and teaches through the Insight Meditation Community and at Naropa. Terry also studied intensively with Charlotte Selver in Sensory Awareness, and is certified to lead this somatic based mindfulness practice. Terry is the author of Embodied Presence, A Spiritual Memoir. For information go to www.TerryRay.org
Thanissara
Thanissara is the co-founder and co-guiding teacher of Sacred Mountain Sangha. She started Buddhist practice in the Burmese school in 1975. She was inspired to ordain after meeting Ajahn Chah and spent 12 years as a Buddhist nun, where she was a founding member of Chithurst Monastery and Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in the UK. She has facilitated meditation retreats internationally for the last 30 years and has an MA in Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy Practice from Middlesex University & the Karuna Institute in the UK. With Kittisaro, she co-founded Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat and helped initiate and support several HIV/Aids response projects…
Tory Capron
Victoria (Tory) Wolf Capron is the principle teacher for the Golden Bowl Foundation. Inspired by Buddhism, particularly the crazy wisdom teachings of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the body, nondual teachings, the natural world, and shamanism, Tory weaves together Buddhist practices, meditation, and psychology to challenge her students to be fearless and gentle in uncovering the truth of their own true nature and experiencing the sacredness of life. Tory has been working with individuals, couples, women and groups for the last 25 years. From 1980-1996, her life and career was deeply connected with the natural world. She worked as a wildlife biologist, backcountry ranger, and…
Upasaka Upali
Upasaka Upali is a Dharma teacher who aims to demystify meditation, provide tangible instruction, and create a rewarding experience for practitioners. Upali received transmission in a lineage traced back to the Buddha through Namgyal Rinpoche (Ananda Bodhi), and he took his Upasaka vows in 2015. He has a degree from St. Olaf College and has studied Dharma and meditation with Tucker Peck, Ph.D., and Upasaka Culadasa. Upali was the founding director of Open Dharma Foundation and currently serves as the Board Chair for Center Space, a non-profit community meditation studio. He co-hosts the Teaching Meditation podcast and is a somatic…
Viviane Ephraimson-Abt
“Viviane Ephraimson-Abt,, MS, M.Ed, LPC (she, her) has practiced with the Plum Village Community since 1998. In 2002 she co-founded a local and a regional OI sangha. Viviane, True Mountain of Peace, ordained in 2005 and received the lamp transmission in Plum Village in 2018. As a Dharma Teacher she teaches with the Lotus Institute, the Mindful Educators Network, with diversity and inclusion efforts, and days of mindfulness and retreats with various sanghas. She has been on the planning team of many retreats in Colorado, including 6 monastic retreats with Thay, as part of the Colorado Community for Mindful Living. Viviane is a co-founder…
Yong Oh
Yong Oh serves as a teacher on the Dharma Council for the Durango Dharma Center and has sat on the board of directors since 2019. He is also a core teacher for Sacred Mountain Sangha. Yong began meditating through the Soto Zen tradition and eventually transitioned to study, practice, and teach in the Insight tradition. He teaches retreats at the Insight Meditation Society, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center, and Big Bear Retreat Center, as well as being a visiting teacher for other community centers across the US and Canada. Yong is a graduate of the 4-year Insight…
