Online: 31 Days of Practice with New York Insight

Leslie Booker

Booker is a heart – centered, spirit – driven activist and meditation teacher committed to creating a culture of belonging through her teaching and writing. She completed Spirit Rock’s 4 year Retreat Teacher Training in 2020, and shared the practices of yoga and mindfulness with New York City’s most vulnerable populations for over a decade. Booker has co – authored and contributed to several publications including the trauma – informed anthology Practicing Liberation and its accompanying workbook, for folks working towards social justice. She is a co-founder of the Yoga Service Council at Omega Institute and the Meditation Working Group of Occupy Wall Street. In 2020 she was invited to be a Sojourner Truth Leadership Fellow through Auburn Seminary and was voted by her peers as one of the 12 Powerful Women in the Mindfulness Movement.

Booker moved to Philadelphia in August of 2020 to vote in a swing state, and currently serves as the Guiding Teacher of New York Insight.

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Sean Oakes

Sean Oakes, PhD (he/him, queer, of Spanish/Puerto Rican and Northern European ancestry living on unceded Pomo land in California), teaches Buddhism, Yoga, and somatic practice. He received teaching authorization from Jack Kornfield, wrote his dissertation on extraordinary states in Buddhist meditation and experimental dance, and focuses on the integration of philosophy, somatics, and social justice discourse with the Dharma. He teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, East Bay Meditation Center, Insight Timer, and elsewhere. Website: seanfeitoakes.com

JoAnna Hardy

JoAnna Hardy has been exploring and practicing multiple traditions since 1999. In 2005, her focus landed on Buddhism and Vipassana meditation. Helping communities and individuals that don’t typically have access to traditional dharma settings, social/racial justice, and building multicultural community is top on her list of priorities. She is an empowered teacher in the Spirit Rock, IMS lineage, on faculty at USC and a Mindfulness Trainer for Apple Fitness Plus.

Joseph Goldstein

Joseph Goldstein has been leading insight and lovingkindness meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. He is a cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, where he is one of the organization’s guiding teachers. In 1989, together with several other teachers and students of insight meditation, he helped establish the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.

He is the author of Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening, A Heart Full of Peace, One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism, Insight Meditation: The Practice of Freedom, The Experience of Insight, and co-author of Seeking the Heart of Wisdom and Insight Meditation: A Correspondence Course.

Dawn Mauricio

Dawn Mauricio (she/her), a Filipina-Canadian, has been practicing and studying Insight Meditation since 2005. She 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. Subsequently, Dawn co-led two 2-year Dharma training programs for True North Insight and Sacred Mountain Sangha, and currently co-leads the 8-month Spirit Rock Program Living the Dharma. She teaches with a playful, dynamic, and heartfelt approach people of color and folks of all backgrounds. Dawn is a co-founder of the True North Insight BIPOC practice group, serves on the leadership council as well as core teacher for Sacred Mountain Sangha and the Spirit Rock Dharma Institute Stewarding Committee. She is also the author of Mindfulness Meditation for Beginners and in-training for Somatic Experiencing™. For more information, visit dawnmauricio.com.

Jeff Warren

Jeff Warren is a meditation instructor and writer, known for his irreverent and sometimes bafflingly incomprehensible style of teaching. He is the co-author of The New York Times best-selling Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, founder of the nonprofit Consciousness Explorers Club, and co-host of the Mind Bod Adventure Pod. Jeff’s Do Nothing Project streams for free every Sunday night on YouTube; his guided meditations reach millions of people through the Ten Percent Happier and Calm apps, as well as through his Substack, Home Base.

Jeff’s mission is to empower people to care for their mental health, through the realistic and sometimes giddy exploration of meditation and personal growth practices. He is proudly ADHD and bipolar and champions a neurodivergent outlook on life and practice.

Narayan Helen Liebenson

Narayan Helen Liebenson is a guiding teacher at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center in Cambridge, MA, where she has been teaching since it opened its doors in 1985. She is also one of the guiding teachers at IMS (the Insight Meditation Society) in Barre, MA. Narayan is the author of a small book entitled Life as Meditation as well as The Magnanimous Heart; Compassion and love, Loss and Grief, Joy and Liberation, published January 2019. Her training includes over 35 years in the Theravada tradition as well as ten years in the Chan tradition with the late Master Sheng-yen. She finds it a joy and a privilege to share the buddha’s teachings with all who are interested.

Oneika Mays

Oneika Mays is a meditation teacher, E-RYT yoga instructor, and author of Sit With Me: A No BS Journey to Mindfulness and Meditation (HarperOne, 2026). She specializes in metta (lovingkindness) meditation and has nearly 15 years of teaching experience with an accessible, justice-centered approach that welcomes all bodies, all identities, and all levels of experience.

Oneika has taught for Yoga International, Kripalu, and Embodied Philosophy. She was a Mindfulness Coach at Rikers Island and helped spearhead wellness programming for NYC Health + Hospitals. Her teaching emphasizes that contemplative practice must lead to real-world action and behavioral change.

Oneika completed her 200-hour meditation teacher certification with the Interdependence Project (IDP), where she also served as a mentor teacher. She has studied MBSR, metta, and trauma-informed mindfulness, and is a guest teacher at the Community Meditation Center in Manhattan. Her accessible style of teaching creates space for people to practice being with themselves exactly as they are. She believes that learning to love ourselves is how we change the world.

Rebecca Bradshaw

Rebecca Bradshaw, Guiding Teacher Emeritus of the Insight Meditation Society, is the author of Down to Earth Dharma: Insight Meditation to Awaken the Heart. She has been practicing Vipassana meditation since 1983 in the United States and Myanmar and teaching since 1993. She completed her dharma teacher training at Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, where she is part of the three-month retreat teacher team and leads retreats for young adults. Rebecca teaches a body centered approach to meditation, supplemented with large doses of loving kindness. Her teachings are infused with the vitality of chi gong and her love of the natural world. She also holds a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology. For more information, please see her webpage at www.rebeccabradshaw.org.

Yong Oh

Yong is a core teacher at the Durango Dharma Center and for Sacred Mountain Sangha, and is a visiting teacher for other community centers across North America. He teaches retreats at the Insight Meditation Society, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Big Bear Retreat Center, and Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center. He is a graduate of the 4-year Insight Meditation Society Retreat Teacher Training program, Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Community Dharma Leaders program, and the Sacred Mountain Sangha Dharmapala training, taught by his primary teachers Kittisaro and Thanissara. He is also a graduate of the 2-year Nature Dharma Retreat Teacher Training program, and is a member of the 2023 Eco-Advisory Group sponsored by the Bess Foundation. Yong is a retired acupuncturist, is passionate about Nature and Dharma, and has particular interests in devotional expression, supporting caregivers, and offering teachings to communities of color in the Dharma.

Dr. Shanté Paradigm Smalls

Dr. Shanté Paradigm Smalls (They/Them) is a teacher and student in Vajrayana/Tantric Buddhism. They currently study under Lama Rod Owens and Lama Justin von Bujdoss, co-founders of Bhumisparsha. Shanté began studying and practicing Buddhism at age 17 and has practiced in Zen, Sokka Gakkai International, Shambhala, and Bhumisparsa communities. They began on the teaching path in 2009 and were authorized by the Shambhala lineage to teach meditation and buddhadharma in 2015. Shanté is focused on the healing impact of meditation in Black, Indigenous communities, and People of Color communities, LGBTQ+ communities, and incarcerated and recovery communities. Shanté is a Teacher on the Liberate App and is a Lead Teacher on Weekly Dharma Gathering, which they co-founded and curate. Shanté identifies as a Black person descended from enslaved and trafficked African Indigenous people. Shanté is queer and genderqueer. They live on Canarsie Munsee Lenapehoking Territory (Brooklyn, NY).

Cara Lai

Cara Lai spent most of her life trying to figure out how to be happy, or at least avoid total misery, which ultimately led to her spending the majority of her adulthood meditating. She’s explored the wild beauty of the human experience through many adventures in consciousness, including long retreats, chronic illness, and the profound experiences of childbirth and motherhood. Cara once worked as an artist, wilderness guide, social worker and psychotherapist, but traded it in for an all-out mindfulness rampage. She’s a working mom whose teaching is relatable, authentic, funny and sometimes crass, and is accessible for many people. She teaches at Spirit Rock, Insight Meditation Society, and Ten Percent Happier; ultimately hoping to get woke enough to bend spoons with her mind in front of large audiences. And to help everyone awaken.

Devin Berry

Devin Berry began practicing in 1999. His teaching is rooted in the Buddhadharma and mindfulness daily life practices. His training includes Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction teacher training, the East Bay Meditation Center Commit to Dharma Program, Spirit Rock’s Dedicated Practitioners Program, and Insight Meditation Society’s four-year Residential Retreat Teachers Program. Devin also cofounded both the Teen Sangha and Men of Color Deep Refuge Group at East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland. Twenty years ago, Devin began some of the first mindfulness programs in San Francisco Bay Area schools, including weekly mindfulness groups for youth, and worked as a frontline advocate for marginalized youth living on the streets. Over the years, Devin’s work has included leading wilderness camps for teens, rites-of-passage programs for tweens, and a summer camp for boys. Devin co-created Deep Time Liberation, an ancestral healing journey that explores the impact of ancestral legacy and intergenerational trauma on Black Americans. He is passionate about the power of witnessing and storytelling as a liberation tool. Devin is a father and teaches nationally.

Tenku Ruff

Tenku Ruff, Osho is a Soto Zen Buddhist priest who completed novice training in Zen monasteries in Japan and North America. Tenku is the former President of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association, she holds a Master of Divinity degree from Maitripa College, and she is a Board Certified Chaplain (BCC). Tenku has strong interest in ethics, inter-Buddhist / interfaith dialogue, and ways people can support each other and grow through challenges in life. Tenku Osho is the head priest of Beacon Zen Temple in Beacon, New York (www.beaconzen.org).

Dave Smith

For nearly 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 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 has developed educational tools and resources, including mindfulness and emotional skills training, in both secular and Buddhist contexts. Dave also works with students 1:1 through his dharma mentoring program.

In 2016 he founded the Secular Dharma Foundation to foster the advancement of emotional and psychological well-being through the education and integration of mindfulness, psychology, and various therapeutic modalities. Dave lives in Paonia, CO with his wife and two sons.

Valerie Brown

Valerie Brown is a Buddhist-Quaker Dharma teacher in the Plum Village tradition, author, facilitator, and executive coach. She focuses on leadership development and mindfulness practices, emphasizing diversity, social equity, and inclusion. Formerly a lawyer and lobbyist with a twenty-year high-pressure career, Valerie now supports leaders and nonprofits in building trustworthy, authentic, compassionate, and connected work environments.

www.valeriebrown.us

Mark Epstein

Mark Epstein, M.D., a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City, is the author of a number of books about the interface of Buddhism and psychotherapy, including Thoughts without a Thinker, Going to Pieces without Falling Apart, Going on Being, Open to Desire, Psychotherapy without the Self, The Trauma of Everyday Life and Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself. His latest work, The Zen of Therapy: Uncovering a Hidden Kindness in Life, was published in January 2022 by Penguin Press. He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University.

Fleet Maull

Roshi Fleet Maull, PhD is a Dharma and mindfulness teacher, who began his formal Dharma practice and study with the Vidyadhara Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in 1977. He has been practicing and studying in the Kagyu and Nyingma Lineages of Tibetan Buddhism since that time. He began studying with Roshi Bernie Glassman in 1994 and received Inka from Roshi Glassman 2017. Roshi Maull is the founder of Prison Mindfulness Institute and Heart Mind Institute. His current teaching focuses on the deeply embodied approach to mindfulness-awareness meditation he has developed called Neuro-Somatic Mindfulness (NSM) meditation, which integrates traditional teaching and yogic science with current developments in network neuroscience.

Kathy Cherry

Kathy Cherry is a Somatic Experiencing® (SE) practitioner and Dharma/mindfulness teacher based in Brooklyn. A founding member of DharmaPunx NYC, she has been teaching since 2014 and regularly leads retreats and workshops in the U.S. and internationally.

Kathy combines SE® with mindfulness and Buddhist teachings to foster mind-body integration, supporting psycho-spiritual growth and well-being. Her teaching emphasizes embodiment, compassion, and practical wisdom both on and off the cushion.

She leads DailyPause, a morning meditation group, and teaches online courses through The Nervous System Solution. Kathy is also the creator of DailyPause: A Card Deck for Regulation, Resilience, and Well-Being and recently launched a digital version to support mindfulness on the go.

Learn more at: KathyCherry.com / Daily-Pause.com / DharmaPunxNYC.com

Martin Aylward

Martin Aylward has been meditating for 35 years and teaching Dharma since 1999. He took a one-way flight to India aged 19 and spent most of the next 4 years in Asian monasteries, retreat centres and Ashrams. Martin practiced with Ajahn Buddhadasa in Thailand and sat annual month-long retreats for 10 years in Bodh Gaya with Christopher Titmuss. He spent 2 years living with Indian Sadhus and Himalayan hermits and 13 years as a student of AH Almaas’ Diamond Approach.

Martin is guiding and founding teacher of Sangha.Live and Moulin de Chaves, a retreat centre in South West France where he has lived and taught for the last 20 years, and where his children grew up. He is co-founder with Mark Coleman of the Mindfulness Training Institute,  training Mindfulness teachers in Europe and the US, with 300 graduates from 30 countries worldwide, and author of Awake Where You Are (2021). Find out more at MartinAylward.com.

Rashid Hughes

Rashid Hughes (he/him) is a writer, meditation teacher, yoga instructor and a restorative justice facilitator. He is the co-founder of the Heart Refuge Mindfulness Community, a Mindfulness Community in Washington, DC that is dedicated to inspiring Black, Indigenous, and People of Color to live with love and courage. Rashid is an Affiliate Teacher for the Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC and he is also a teacher of the Presence Collective. He holds a Master of Divinity Degree from the Howard University School of Divinity and has two recently published articles in Mindful Magazine “R.E.S.T. – A Guided Practice for the Tired & Weary” and Lions Roar Magazine “When Aggression Masquerades as Compassion.”

nico hase

nico hase lived in a monastery for six years before earning a PhD in counseling psychology and becoming an Insight meditation teacher full-time. He currently mentors mindfulness teachers, teaches online and in-person retreats, and speaks with students in one-on-one sessions. He and his beloved life partner Devon are the authors of How Not to Be a Hot Mess: A Survival Guide for Modern Life. Find out more at devonandnicohase.com.

Jill Satterfield

Jill Satterfield has been a quiet pioneer in the integration of embodied awareness practices and Buddhist teachings for over 30 years.

Her heart/mind and body approach developed from somatic and contemplative psychology, 35 years of Buddhist study, extensive meditation retreat time and decades of living with chronic pain.

At the invitation of her primary teacher, Ajahn Amaro, Jill was the first to offer mindful movement and somatic practices on silent retreats first at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and then the Insight Meditation Society 30 years ago. She has since developed teacher trainings and mentoring programs that integrate embodied awareness with Dharma ever since.

In addition to teaching embodiment and Dharma with Ajahn Amaro, she was also invited to teach on Tsoknyi Rinpoche’s retreats in the US and Nepal. It was at his urging that she teach subtle body practices to his students. She contributed movement practices to his brother Mingyur Rinpoche’s retreats and was a consultant for his 2 best-selling books.

Jill’s Applied Embodied Mindfulness Trainings were part of UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center. She was on the faculty for Spirit Rock’s Mindful Yoga and Meditation Training, and she is currently a mentor for Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach’s Mindfulness Teacher Training, was the scholar and teacher in residence at Kripalu Center in 2003 and is a graduate of the Sati Center’s Buddhist Chaplaincy Training.

Her organization School for Compassionate Action was a training and service organization that taught mindfulness and somatic practices for chronic pain, illness and post 9/11 trauma in NYC hospitals and at-risk facilities for over ten years.

She has been featured in and has written for numerous publications such as Tricycle, Lion’s Roar (who named her one of the 4 leading mindful movement teachers in the country) and the NY Times. She contributed to the book Freeing the Body: Freeing the Mind by Michael Stone.

David Nichtern

David Nichtern (Founder & CEO Dharma Moon / co-founder and CCO Strawberry Moons Media) is a senior Buddhist teacher who has been practicing and teaching meditation for over 40 years. He was one of the initial American students of renowned Tibetan meditation master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and studied closely with him soon after his arrival in the United States in 1970.

David is the author of the critically acclaimed books Awakening From the Daydream: Reimagining The Buddha’s Wheel of Life and Creativity, Spirituality & Making a Buck. He mentors individual students both in person and online, and leads meditation teacher training programs around the world via his Dharma Moon platform.

He is also a highly regarded composer, producer and guitarist. David has recorded and played with Stevie Wonder, Jerry Garcia, Lana Del Rey, Maria Muldaur, Paul Simon and many others. Among his many credits in records, film and TV, he wrote the classic hit song “Midnight at the Oasis” and composed the score for Christopher Guest’s film The Big Picture. In recent years he has produced multiple records for and periodically tours with Grammy nominated kirtan singer Krishna Das.

Bryan Welch

Bryan Welch studies in the sangha of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, connected with the Kagyu and Nyingma schools of Tibetan Buddhism. His new book, The Gift of a Broken Heart, is just out this month from New Harbinger Publications.

He is the former CEO of Mindful Communications, a media and corporate meditation-training company; and was founder and CEO of B The Change Media, a multi-platform media company focused on business as a force for good in the world.

For 19 years, from its founding, he ran Ogden Publications, the founding B Corp that published Mother Earth News, Mother Earth Living, Utne Reader and several other category-leading media brands focused on sustainability and natural health. More recently, he served as Co-CEO of Silk Grass Holdings, a B Corp developing 32,000 acres of regenerative organic farms, food-processing facilities and wildlife preserves in Belize.

Bryan’s award-winning book, Beautiful & Abundant: Building the World We Want, appeared in 2011.

He and his wife, Carolyn, raise organic, grass-fed cattle and sheep on their farm near Lawrence, Kansas, with the help of their grandsons.

Dalila Bothwell

Dalila Bothwell’s (she/her) Dharma-meditation practice lives at the intersection of love for community, land, wholeness, and 12-step recovery. The granddaughter of Claudia and Gussie Pearl, she finds refuge and hope in the liberation teachings of revolutionary lovers – from the Buddha to bell hooks.  During her nearly decade-long tenure as a director for New York Insight Meditation Center, she learned the priceless value of sangha and the role relationships play in embodying the teachings and in creating kinder human beings.

Celeste Young

Celeste Young is a Theravadin Buddhist mindfulness and Dharma teacher. She has been practicing meditation and sitting retreats since 2002. She was one of the first teachers to be empowered at InsightLA, a nonprofit Buddhist and secular mindfulness organization based in Los Angeles.

Since 2011, Celeste has worked with thousands of meditation and Dharma students teaching classes, leading silent meditation retreats, and working with individual students. She teaches both in the US and internationally. Additionally, she has led corporate sessions and retreats for organizations such as Netflix and the University of Southern California.

For the last 14 years, her own practice has been centered around yearly long silent retreats in the Insight meditation tradition lasting from one to three months in length. She is also a certified Life Balance Strategist and is extremely passionate about this work which empowers people to make mindful change in their lives. She sees life balance strategy work and Dharma teaching and practice as a pragmatic way of supporting people in living their deeper values and navigating their lives with much more clarity and well being. Sharing in the Dharma with others brings her immense joy.

Paul Fulton

Paul R. Fulton, EdD, is a clinical psychologist, founding member and former president of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, and until recently, a board member of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. Dr. Fulton is a lecturer, part time, in psychology at Harvard Medical School at Cambridge Health Alliance, and is Director for the Institute’s year-long Certificate Program in Mindfulness & Psychotherapy, a cornerstone of Cambridge Health Alliance’s Center for Mindfulness & Compassion’s training fellowship. He has lectured internationally on the integration of mindfulness and psychotherapy. He is co-editor and co-author of Mindfulness & Psychotherapy, 2nd Edition (Guilford), and numberous published papers and book chapters. Paul has been a student of psychology and meditation for 53 years, having received lay ordination in Zen Buddhism at age 19. He holds a doctorate in comparative developmental psychology from Harvard’s Laboratory for Human Development.

Margrit Pittman-Polletta

Margrit is an educator with almost two decades of teaching experience, as well as a dedicated practitioner in the Theravadan lineage of Insight Buddhism, with over 15 years of meditation practice. She finds great joy in sharing with others the path and practices that have been so transformative for her. Margrit teaches with different sanghas, and offers Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction classes. She is a trainee in the current cohort of the Spirit Rock and Insight Meditation Society Teacher Training Program. She lives with her cats in her hometown of Brooklyn, NY.

Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison

Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison, MFA, LMSW, DMin, is a best-selling author/editor and nationally recognized spiritual teacher and psychotherapist. Widely acclaimed for his guidance in helping people understand and apply time-tested Buddhist teachings as simple strategies for living in today’s chaotic world, Paley Ellison is a dynamic, original and visionary leader, teacher and speaker. He is a co-founder of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, the author of Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up and an editor of the best-selling book Awake at the Bedside: Contemplative Teachings on Palliative and End of Life Care.

Lama Justin von Bujdoss

Lama Justin von Bujdoss is an internationally renowned Vajrayana Buddhist teacher, writer, and the is Founder and Spiritual Director of Yangti Yoga Retreat Center – a retreat center in Buckland, Massachusetts dedicated to the practice of dark retreat. He is the author of Modern Tantric Buddhism: Authenticity and Embodiment in Dharma Practice published by North Atlantic Books, and contributor to Buddhism and Whiteness: Critical Reflections published by Lexington Books, and the author of a forthcoming title on Dark Retreat to be published by Wisdom Publications. From 2016 until December 2021 Justin served as the Executive Director of Chaplaincy and Staff Wellness for NYC Department of Correction where he also served as the head chaplain supervised over 30 chaplains and oversaw spiritual care for the agency.

Lama Justin was ordained as a repa, a lay tantric yogin in the tradition of Milarepa, by His Eminence Gyaltsab Rinpoche, one of the heart sons of His Holiness the 16^th Karmapa and is a ngakpa in the Yuthok Nyingthik tantric Buddhist lineage. Lama Justin has presented on Buddhist practice at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, University of Chicago, Wellesley, Columbia University, and has been a visiting instructor at Union Theological Seminary. Justin is passionate about helping to create the conditions for authentic embodied tantric Buddhist spiritual practice in the West.

More of his work can be found at yangtiyoga.com and at justinvonbujdoss.com.

Walt Opie

Walt Opie was first introduced to insight meditation in 1993 and began sitting retreats in 2005. Currently, his most influential teachers include Bhikkhu Analayo, Joseph Goldstein, Sayadaw U Tejaniya, and Gil Fronsdal. Walt is a graduate of the 2017-2021 IMS Teacher Training Program, as well as Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leaders program. He has led sitting groups for people in recovery and served as a volunteer teacher in several California prisons. His website is www.waltopie.com.

Sensei Chodo Robert Campbell

Sensei Chodo Robert Campbell, GC-C, is a Zen teacher, bereavement specialist, grief counselor and a recognized leader for those suffering with the complexities of death & dying, aging, and sobriety. The educational non-profit he co-founded, the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, touches thousands of lives every year through its numerous educational programs, contemplative retreats, and Soto Zen Buddhist practices. Chodo has been featured in the New York Times, PBS, CBS Sunday Morning and other media outlets.

Rebecca Li

Dr. Rebecca Li, a dharma heir in the lineage of Chan Master Sheng Yen, is the founder and guiding teacher of Chan Dharma Community. She teaches meditation and dharma classes, gives public lectures, and leads retreats in North America and Europe. Li is the author of Allow Joy into Our Hearts: Chan Practice in Uncertain Times, and her latest book, titled Illumination: A Guide to the Buddhist Method of No-Method, was published by Shambhala Publications in October of 2023. She is a sociology professor and lives with her husband in New Jersey. Her talks and writings can be found at www.rebeccali.org.

Caverly Morgan

Named one of 2025’s powerful women of the mindfulness movement, Caverly Morgan is a spiritual teacher, nonprofit founder, speaker, and writer whose practice began in 1995 and has included eight years of training in a silent Zen monastery. She is the author of The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together as well as A Kids Book About Mindfulness.

Caverly is the founder of Peace in Schools, a nonprofit that created the nation’s first for-credit mindfulness class in public high schools. She is also the founder of Realizing Freedom Together, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making practices that lead to liberation for all, accessible to all. Caverly leads meditation retreats, workshops, and online classes internationally. Learn more at caverlymorgan.org.

George Haas

George Haas is a meditation teacher and the founding teacher of Mettagroup, an organization he launched in 2003 to bring together Vipassana (Insight) meditation and attachment‑theory‑based healing. He began teaching meditation in 2000, and has since led daily meditations, retreats, intensives, and private mentorship across the world. George is also the host of the popular I Love You Keep Going podcast, where he explores how Buddhism and attachment repair intersect in everyday life. In addition to his teaching, he is an accomplished artist whose work is held in permanent collections at MoMA, the Library of Congress, the Hammer Museum, and the American Irish Historical Society.

Martine Batchelor

Martine Batchelor lived in Korea as a Zen nun under the guidance of Master Kusan for ten years. She is the author of Meditation for Life, The Path of Compassion, Women in Korean Zen, and Let Go: A Buddhist Guide to Breaking Free of Habits. She is a member of the Gaia House Teacher Council. She teaches meditation retreats worldwide and lives in France. Her latest works are the The Spirit of the Buddha, What is this? and The Definition, Practice and Psychology of Vedana. Recently she has been involved with the Silver Sante Study, teaching meditation, mindfulness and compassion to seniors in France to see if this could prevent aging decline.

Ajahn Canda

Ajahn (Ven) Canda first encountered the Dhamma in India in 1996 and went on to meditate and serve on numerous Vipassana retreats, before ordaining in Myanmar in 2006. In 2014, she moved to Australia where she received full bhikkhunī ordination under the guidance of her teacher Ajahn Brahm.
For the past ten years, Ajahn Canda has been leading a UK charity dedicated to establishing a monastery where, for the first time in the nation’s history, women can practice as fully ordained members of the Saṅgha. In March 2024, this cherished vision began to take shape with the acquisition of a suitable property in rural Oxfordshire. Whilst the monastery, Anukampa Grove, serves primarily as a residence for bhikkhunīs, it also welcomes people of every gender identity, race, sexual orientation and background to visit or stay as guests, providing an opportunity to deepen practice within an inclusive, loving community.

Alongside this work, Ajahn Canda teaches widely and spends several months a year on silent retreat. Her teachings draw deeply from the Early Buddhist texts and emphasise loving-kindness and letting go as essential supports for developing samādhi (stillness) and the liberating wisdom that follows.