Marlena deCarion, CPCC, PCC, is an executive coach, leadership trainer and mindfulness teacher. Marlena has 20 years of personal and professional experience in human development and has been faculty for the Coaches Training Institute since 2005. Marlena has been practicing meditation since 1995. Although she has primarily studied in the Theravada Buddhist lineage, she is influenced by Tibetan and non-dual practices. She is a graduate of Spirit Rock's Dedicated Practitioners Program, is a Certified Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leader and a graduate of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute Teacher Training, sponsored by Google. Marlena has taught Mindfulness classes at San Francisco Insight, Spirit Rock, Genentech, Airbnb and Dominican University. Marlena has training in Somatic Experiencing and is a student of the Diamond Approach.
Marvin G. Belzer, PhD, has taught mindfulness meditation for twenty years. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. For many years he taught a semester-long meditation course in the Department of Philosophy at Bowling Green St. University, where he was an Associate Professor of Philosophy. He teaches an undergraduate course at UCLA (Psychiatry 175: Mindfulness Practice and Theory) and teaches mindfulness in many different venues in Los Angeles.
Lately, my own practice is moving more and more into the monastic world. As I teach out of that nourishment, I find people hungry for the traditional, solid forms of the Dharma. I see people's lives changing when they engage in these forms. Certainly, as I deepen my own Sutta study, I find the traditional ideas so helpful it encourages me to delve further.
In this, I am learning how to ride the edge of a question, instead of reaching for answers. When I let the question hang there, as a living presence, its very aliveness stimulates movement toward an answer, an opening.
Some key factors imprint my teaching. The fact that I'm a purely Western-produced Dharma teacher, without the influence of Eastern traveling, and that I'm a middle-aged Western woman with a psychological background. Also, my years in a Christian practice now translate into my engagement with such ideas as embodiment: how do we take the practice and live it? What is practical in the Dharma, a sort of Buddhist Householder Hints.
From my perspective, the world is in serious trouble. We have separated ourselves from all other beings, and in the process do a lot that keeps us from being present. It is so urgent that we learn to be present and see what is true about our being here, that we live with kindness and compassion for all beings. Vipassana supports these intentions and helps us all heal, no matter what the eventual outcome may be.
Matthew Brensilver, MSW, PhD, serves on the Guiding Teachers Committee and Board of Directors at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. He was previously Program Director for Mindful Schools and for more than a decade, was a core teacher at Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society. Each summer, he lectures at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center on the intersections between mindfulness, science and mental health. Before committing to teach meditation full-time, he spent years doing research on addiction pharmacotherapy at the UCLA Center for Behavioral and Addiction Medicine. He is the co-author of two books about meditation during adolescence.
Matthew Morey has been practicing vipassana meditation since 1995 and has sat residential retreats around the world-Massachusetts, England, India, Thailand, and at Spirit Rock. Matthew has been working with youth since 1990 as a school teacher in New York, Connecticut, and California and as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sierra Leone. He currently serves on the Spirit Rock Teen Teacher Council and co-teaches the Middle School and Teen Meditation Series. In addition to teaching, Matthew is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with a practice in San Francisco. He completed a doctoral degree in East-West Psychology at CIIS, for which his dissertation examined the healing effects of compassionate awareness in both Buddhist practices and existential psychology. Matthew finds vipassana practice enriching and admires the freshness and authenticity youth bring to their practice.
Mayuri Onerheim is a Diamond Approach teacher in the Bay Area, a Canadian chartered accountant and enrolled IRS agent. She has guided individuals and small businesses with their money issues for over 25 years. She has taught a Money Course in Diamond Approach groups throughout the world.
Mei Elliott is a Dharma teacher in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, who practices at the intersection between Zen and Vipassana. Mei began training as a Zen monk at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in 2014, and has spent eight years living at Zen temples and monasteries. During this time she served as the director of San Francisco Zen Center and the guiding instructor for Young Urban Zen. Mei was authorized to teach by James Baraz and is currently a participant in Insight Meditation Center’s Dharma Teacher Training. She now resides at Insight Retreat Center where she serves as Managing Director.
Melanie Waschke has had a Meditation practice since her early twenties. She has been deeply involved in the mindfulness practice taught by Thich Nhath Hanh, living in his retreat centers for over a year as well as doing a lot of long term practice in the Vipassana tradition worldwide. Currently she is part of the teacher training program led by Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein and others. Melanie Waschke is a clinical psychologist, working in Germany. She teaches meditation in English and German.
For over 35 years Michele has been a pioneer in bringing together Zen and Vipassana, Deep Ecology, Social Justice, Non-Violence, Leadership Training, and Personal and Business Development modalities, before such integration was considered possible. She works extensively to create diverse environments and champion high-risk communities. Michele is a high ranking woman Sensei (teacher) in Aikido and Iaido sword, a visual artist, Hypnotist, NLP Transformational Mentor and Coach, and co-founder of Manzanita Village Center in Warner Springs, CA and Five Changes.
Because I've been teaching in Burma the last three years, I've been able to see how mindfulness can be nourished by a culture that supports the ancient liberation teachings and by daily experiences of happiness arising from acts of generosity, morality and renunciation. Thus the practice of Buddhism and the living of Buddhism are woven together in a seamless tapestry.
If there is anything that is most engaging to me now, it is the desire to bring this sublime way of life into our culture in the West.
What began as a deep compassion for the suffering of the existential predicament of human beings deepened as I understood that we need not identify with our experience. It is this understanding that has led me far onto the path of befriending others on their spiritual journey. My greatest inspiration is working with students wherever they are in the moment. We are all capable of so much more than suffering; once we learn how to be mindful, it's only a matter of remembering that it is the purity of intention which frees us. Dismantling the myth that we need to be something other than what we are is so important, because if we can learn to be mindful of exactly where we are, we experience the happiness of peace, which is what we deeply are.
My deepest appreciation is for the joy of the spiritual adventure. The purity of mindfulness, which soothes our sophisticated, intellectual, analytical, and out-of-touch-with-our-bodies mindset, is the moment we remember to pay attention without embellishment, interpretation or judgment. That moment becomes overwhelmingly touching because it brings us what we most wish for, unconditional love and peace. This truth, this purity of intention is what brings us home.
Monica Antunes has been practicing Buddhist meditation in Burma and the West since 2008. Monica teaches mindfulness in the context of child protection services and works as an MBCT trainer for cancer patients in Geneva, Switzerland. She is training in NeuroSystemics, a bio-psychosocial approach to individual, group and community resilience. She was invited to teach in 2017 under the guidance of Guy Armstrong. Monica was born and raised in Mozambique.
Monica Magtoto is an artist, yoga instructor, energy worker, educator, and tarot reader based in San Francisco, Ca. Monica believes all work is energy work. Whether painting, teaching yoga, practicing reiki or other modalities, she believes everything is a collaboration with the universe to bring something new into view that was not there before. Monica’s mission is to hold space and provide tools to empower folks to walk their own healing paths.
Magtoto is a Yoga Alliance 500 Registered Yoga Teacher, holding additional certificates in Restorative and Yin yoga. She has also received Reiki Master level training from Usui Reiki Masters Sandra Wong, Ph.D. and Teresa Visini, MA, and Shannon O’Neill-Loyola.
Mushim Patricia Ikeda is a co-founder of East Bay Meditation Center, EBMC, in Oakland, California. She's currently a core teacher at EBMC, and guiding teacher of an award-winning yearlong program training social justice activists in secular mindfulness. She has published Buddhist-related nonfiction and poetry widely for journals like Lion's Roar, Buddhadharma, and Tricycle, and she is the recipient of a Global Diversity Leadership Award.
Naomi Newman, MFCC, Graduate of Gestalt Institute, co-founder of A Traveling Jewish Theatre, has been a Vipassana practitioner for 24 years. She was a member of the Spirit Rock Vision Council that articulated the visions and intentions of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Ms. Newman has traveled throughout the United States performing “Crossing The Broken Bridge,” created in collaboration with John O’Neal, African American playwright, artistic director of Junebug Productions and political activist. Mr. O’Neal was one of the founders of the Free Southern Theatre, the artistic arm of the Civil Rights movement. In their five years of touring and performing together, O’Neal and Newman entered into communities, facilitating dialogues, story circles, meetings and workshops focused on diversity issues. In the 70’s, Ms. Newman was a senior therapist at the Center for the Healing Arts in Los Angeles, an organization that pioneered psycho-spiritual work with people who have life-threatening illnesses.
I try to help practitioners approach their meditation practice and their lives with compassion and wisdom. Bringing a loving attentiveness into each moment allows us to learn kindness rather than condemnation, and discernment rather than judgment.
I feel that it is essential not to make a split between the formal practice that happens on retreat and the informal practice that happens in daily life. At the core, formal practice and daily life practice are the same. In all arenas of life we can create the same dedication to wakefulness and sensitivity. The right place to practice meditation is wherever we are. The right time to practice is right now. And the right way to practice is to know what we are doing whenever we are doing it.
We can live each moment in a fresh way, free from expectations of how things should be and open to how things are whether we are sitting on the cushion, washing the dishes, or talking with a friend. With practice, we can discover a current of underlying joy and find that all of life is sacred.
Meditation practice is an offering to the world. When we meditate, we practice not only for ourselves, but for all beings. In meditation there is a gradual purification of heart. This purification allows us to trust ourselves and to respond spontaneously to others with compassion and insight.
