Deborah Ratner Helzer has practiced with Western and Asian teachers in the Theravada tradition since 1995, including a year as a nun in Burma. She has been teaching in the Washington, DC area and assisting with retreats around the country since 2001.
Debra Chamberlin-Taylor is a teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She has been meditating since 1973 and has led retreats that combine spiritual and psychological growth since 1978. In addition to practicing Vipassana, she has been influenced by Dzogchen, Diamond Heart, and devotional practices. More recently she has become a certified teacher of Wisdom Healing Qigong, finding Qigong and mindfulness used together to be the most healing and transformative practice in her long spiritual journey. A psychotherapist, she also leads workshops on embodiment of awareness and love in relationships and in our diverse world.
Devin Berry is co-founder of Deeper Still, a teen meditation sangha at East Bay Meditation Center and serves as a founding board member of Mindful Peacebuilding. A meditation practitioner since 1999, he is a student of Thich Nhat Hanh as well as a Vipassana practitioner. Devin is a graduate of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction teacher training practicum. He has worked with a wide variety of groups from children, teens and young adults and elders using culturally-informed approaches. For over a decade Devin has worked with many youth organizations including Stepping Stones, The Mosaic Project and Mindful Schools, designing and implementing curricula, teaching and facilitating groups of all ages based in mindfulness practices. Devin recently co-designed and lead a course for African-American elders, and has been co-facilitating trauma-informed, ancestral healing workshops. After completing the training in Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) in 2014, he co-founded the Transforming Historical Harms Project of the Bay Area. Devin can be described as an engaging, humorous storyteller who uses poignant anecdotes to convey powerful truths and a breadth of life experience.
Devon Hase has been practicing meditation in the vipassana and Karma Kagyu traditions since 1999. A co-founder of Sati Consulting, she loves long retreats as well as finding creative ways to bring depth practice into daily life.
My work since 2006 through UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (uclahealth.org/marc) emphasizes making mindfulness teachings accessible to all, regardless of background, yet without losing depth practice. In recent years I have been teaching on Natural Awareness— the effortless, objectless, and spacious side of awareness practices. Socially engaged Buddhism is a thread woven through many of my talks-- how can we end suffering both internally and externally? Having worked with teens and young adults for many years, some of the talks are geared to young people. Finally as a mom of a tween, I'm deeply inspired by the transformative power of daily life and family practice.
Donald Rothberg, PhD, has practiced Insight Meditation since 1976, and has also received training in Tibetan Dzogchen and Mahamudra practice and the Hakomi approach to body-based psychotherapy. Formerly on the faculties of the University of Kentucky, Kenyon College, and Saybrook Graduate School, he currently writes and teaches classes, groups and retreats on meditation, daily life practice, spirituality and psychology, and socially engaged Buddhism. An organizer, teacher, and former board member for the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Donald has helped to guide three six-month to two-year training programs in socially engaged spirituality through Buddhist Peace Fellowship (the BASE Program), Saybrook (the Socially Engaged Spirituality Program), and Spirit Rock (the Path of Engagement Program). He is the author of
The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World
and the co-editor of Ken Wilber in
Dialogue: Conversations with Leading Transpersonal Thinkers.
