Kabir Hypolite is an African American gay man, father, poet and visual artist. Kabir began practicing Vipassana meditation in San Francisco in 1990, during the AIDS crisis. During the 2000s, Kabir practiced sitting meditation at the Syda Foundation in Emeryville, and he attended East Bay Church of Religious Science services lead by Rev. Elouise Oliver in Oakland, California. Kabir has practiced sitting and walking meditation with the East Bay Meditation Center’s POC and Alphabet sanghas and was a participant in the Spirit Rock/IMS Commit to Dharma 6 cohort before it was suspended due to COVID-19. He is currently a participant in EBMC’s Spiritual Teacher and Leadership Training cohort.
Kaira Jewel Lingo is a Dharma teacher and lived as an ordained nun for 15 years in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing, and is now based in New York. She provides individual spiritual mentoring and leads retreats internationally, offering mindfulness programs for educators, parents and youth in schools, in addition to activists, people of color, artists and families. She mentors with the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program, was lead teacher for Mindful Schools’ year long training for educators, teaches teens and adults with Inward Bound Mindfulness Education, and is a guiding teacher for One Earth Sangha. She edited Thich Nhat Hanh’s Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children and has been published in numerous other books and magazines. She explores the interweaving of art, play, ecology and embodied mindfulness practice and is an InterPlay leader. Read her recent article, In Times of Crisis Call Upon the Strength of Peace, published in Lion’s Roar magazine.
It has long been important for me to offer the purity of the teachings of the Buddha in a way that connects with our common sense and compassion as human beings, which allows for the natural blossoming of wisdom.
Katchie Ananda, E-RYT 500
Katchie Ananda is an international Yoga and Dharma teacher who has well over 10,000 hours of teaching experience spanning 25 years as a full-time teacher.
She is certified in Anusara, Jivamukti, Integral and Ashtanga yoga by Richard Freeman.
A committed student of Vipassana Meditation, she has practiced with Jack Kornfield, her Buddhist teacher, for over 15 years. She offers retreats and workshops world-wide, often with her co-conspirator, senior Dharma teacher Wes “Scoop” Nisker.
She was the co-founder/director of Yoga Sangha, a beloved community center in San Francisco dedicated to Yoga and Dharma.
She works with authors and activists, such as Milena Moser, John Robbins and Julia Buttefly Hill and is dedicated to raising awareness about human and animal rights, the environment and social justice. Her leadership in yoga and social change prompted Yoga Journal to name her one of five top yoga teachers making change in the world and she volunteered for many years at San Quentin, teaching Yoga and Dharma to long-term inmates.
She has brought her humor and stories to conferences, festivals and workshops all over the world and is loved by her students for her authenticity and wisdom.
She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her husband Joshua and dog Leelou.
Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. Between the two my life flows. Sri Nisargadatta
Hi! I’m a meditation teacher, facilitator and writer based in Philadelphia. I teach classes and retreats on mindfulness, creativity, and social change in museums, universities, and meditation retreat centers all around. A lifelong dancer turned systems change nerd, I've also trained hundreds of business and nonprofit leaders to use embodied awareness practices that support resilience, spark innovation, shift culture and inform organizational transformation. I just finished a book called Radical Friendship: Seven Ways to Love Yourself and Find Your People in an Unjust World (August 2020 - Shambhala Publications).
Kate Munding is co-guiding teacher of IMCB. She has been practicing since 2002 and has done numerous 1-2 month intensive practice periods. Kate is currently in Spirit Rock's Teacher Training program. Kate has also trained approximately 2,000 educators, therapists, and parents in mindful awareness techniques and philosophy in the U.S. and abroad.
She is founder of The Heart-Mind Education Project, a consulting business focused on mindfulness in education.
Katy Wiss began meditating in 1976. In 2002, she shifted to a focus on Vipassana meditation. She graduated in 2012 from Spirit Rock's Community Dharma Leaders Program. She has also completed Spirit Rock's Dedicated Practitioners Program and other advanced study and practice courses at New York Insight Meditation Center with Gina Sharpe, and Chuang Yen Monastery with Bhikkhu Bodhi. She regularly teaches insight meditation at Katonah Yoga in Bedford Hills, NY and Western Connecticut State University where she teaches relational communication. Her aspiration is for relational communication to begin to repair trauma. Her classes focus on listening, emotion, and family dynamics. Her practice focuses in part on ways to bring together the spiritual study of insight and kindness, and the academic study of relational communication. She is also interested in meditation, pain, and chronic illness.
