Marcy Reynolds, BA is a longtime practitioner of Qigong and Vipassana meditation. She currently teaches Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction at El Camino Hospital, and Qigong Movement at Insight Santa Cruz and other places in the Monterey and San Francisco bay areas.
Margarita Loinaz, M.D. has been a Buddhist practitioner since 1977 in the Tibetan and Theravada traditions with an emphasis on Dzogchen practice for the past 10 years. She is a graduate of the first Community Dharma Leader's program at SRMC where she contributed to the initial stages of the diversity program and taught at the first POC retreat. She also trained in MBSR at the UMass Stress Reduction Clinic and is a student of the Diamond Approach. She is originally from Dominican Republic.
Marisa Handler has practiced Insight Meditation in retreats and daily life for 16 years, and is a writer, singer-songwriter, teacher, and coach. She has taught writing as a tool for healing chronic physical and mental illness, and for deepening our experience of awakening, and has published her writing on her own journey through the dark night. She is the author of the memoir, Loyal to the Sky, which won a Nautilus Gold Award for world-changing books, and her essays, fiction, and poetry have appeared in numerous publications. She teaches Creative Writing at Mills College and Stanford University and workshops at Esalen and CIIS. She is also a committed practitioner of Byron Katie’s The Work, Authentic Movement, and Biodanza.
Marjolei Janssen is originally from the Netherlands. Since 2011 she has been practicing insight meditation intensively in Europe, the US, as well as Myanmar, where she was ordained as a Buddhist nun. Marjolein brings both formal practice and practice in daily life to her teachings. She seeks to offer a practical approach to Buddhist concepts and ideas. Her sharing of the Dharma comes from her wish to contribute to the freedom and happiness of all beings. Marjolein is a graduate of Sati Center’s Buddhist Eco-chaplaincy program. She is currently enrolled in the Insight Retreat Center's Dharma Teacher Training.
Mark Coleman has been engaged in meditation practice since 1981, primarily within the Insight meditation tradition. He has been teaching meditation retreats since 1997. His teaching is also influenced by his studies with Advaita Vedanta and Tibetan teachers in Asia and the West, and through his teacher training with Jack Kornfield. Mark primarily teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California, though he also teaches nationally, in Europe and India.
He leads backpacking retreats, nature-based retreats, and teaches retreats for environmental activists in the wilderness at Vallecitos Mountain Refuge in New Mexico, and at Knoll Farm in Vermont. In the Bay Area, Mark has a counseling practice, where he integrates his studies of psychotherapy and meditative work. He is the author of “Awake in the Wild - Mindfulness in Nature as a path of Self-Discovery." Mark has been an avid hiker, and backpacker for most of his life and spends much of his time in the outdoors. He lives in the woods in Marin County, Northern California.
