Online: New York Insight’s Annual New Year’s Eve Gathering & Celebration

Lani Miller

Lani Miller has been practicing Insight Meditation since 1976. She is a graduate of the third Community Dharma Leaders Program. Lani is also a graduate of the MMTCP – “Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program” and “The Mindful Mentor Training Program.”
As a teacher, Lani values the opportunity to be a “channel” for supporting individuals and groups to find and explore spiritual truth through their own present moment experience. As part of this, she feels honored to introduce beginning meditators to meditation.
Lani is also a Singer/ Songwriter who is interested in how music and other creative arts can be a vehicle for sharing spiritual truths and values.

“You must have shadow and light source both. Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.” Rumi

Wildecy de Fátima Jury

Wildecy de Fátima Jury has been formally practicing Theravada/Vipassana meditation over 20 years. She graduated from the Dedicated Practitioner Program and the Community Dharma Leader Program at Spirit Rock, in California. In 2015, she received a non-monastic ordination through the Dharmacharya Program with the Venerables Pannavati and Pannadipa. She has completed the Dharmapala Training with teachers Thanissara and Kittisaro.

She has offered classes and retreats at East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, Insight LA, Zen Center and University of Syracuse, many meditation centers in Brazil, Harlem Insight, Community and New York Insight Meditation Center. At the moment Fátima is at NYIMC Teachers’ Council.

She has studied different spiritual practices and as a spiritual practitioner she has worked with many multicultural communities and groups. She holds a BA in Psychology and Women’s Study and a Master in Social Work. She is certified in Aboriginal Focusing Oriented Therapy through the Justice Institute in Vancouver, BC.

Her intention is to promote the strengthening of sanghas and communities through the cultivation of compassion, unity and decolonization of oppressed and oppressive minds. She is an artist, a writer, and a poet who describes herself as a person within floating identities.

Amy Selzer

Amy Selzer has been practicing vipassana meditation since 2002. She completed two year-long classes on Integrated Study and Practice with Andrew Olendski.
She is a graduate of the Community Dharma Leaders Program. After she graduated, she saw a need to address the aging population. She is one of the founders of that sangha, Aging As A Spiritual Practice, which meets weekly to this day.
She has also been one of the core teachers in the year- long Death and Dying classes. She has served as Co-Chair on the Teacher’s Council for over 3 years.
Amy’s former career was team- teaching young children in an inclusion program for children with and without special needs. In addition, she worked with and supported the parents of those children.
She is particularly passionate about the dharma and the aging population, as well as all other practitioners.

Brian Simmons

Brian is a former award-winning Writer/Producer for Comedy Central and currently Dean of Students in NYC, where he has pioneered the use of Mindfulness in diverse educational environments from high school to college. Brian has vigorously maintained an intensive daily Mindfulness practice since the 1990’s and studies extensively on retreat with world masters. He completed teacher training at the Center for Mindfulness at UMASS Medical College as well as the Community Dharma Leaders program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California.

Brian’s work was prominently featured in a documentary series on the teenage brain and he has appeared in media outlets to discuss Mindfulness including ABC News with Diane Sawyer

karen g. williams

karen g. williams, Ph.D. (she/her) is on New York Insight’s Teachers Council and the board of Insight Meditation Society. She also co-chairs the Diversity, Equity and Liberation committee at New York Insight. In 2017 she graduated from the joint Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leader Training Program; and since then she has taught around the NYC metropolitan area, primarily in communities of color and in the LGBTQI community. karen is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Guttman Community College. Her research focuses on the carceral state and the aftermath of mass incarceration. Specifically, her scholarship examines how the institutionalization of evidence-based practices has ushered in a new wave of governance, one that synthesizes punitive power with systems of care within prisons. She brings mindfulness and meditative practices to her research and teaching to build compassionate engagement and to recognize the interconnectedness of all things. When karen is not writing or teaching, she can be found knitting or inhabiting her alter ego, “BackAlley Dred” (ohh, dare we talk about egos) who coaches junior roller derby.

Lin Wang Gordon

Lin has studied insight meditation under the guidance of Jonathan Foust, Mark Coleman, and Sebene Selassie in the past decade.

In the last few years, Lin was particularly moved by the power of nature meditation to connect with a deep sense of well-being, love, wonder, resilience, and interconnection with all beings. Lin was inspired to share nature meditation and ecodharma as a doorway for personal transformation as well as a form of environmental activism.

She graduated from Mark Coleman’s Awake in the Wild Nature Meditation Teacher Training in 2017 and has been learning to lead ecodharma retreats from Johann Robbins and David Loy since 2018. She has taught at New York Insight Meditation Center and around the country. She is enrolled in the Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leaders Program (CDL6). linwanggordon.com