Dawn Neal started practicing in 2004, and has cumulatively devoted several years to silent retreat. In 2010, her Burmese teacher asked her to teach through the lens of metta. She serves as the Guiding Teacher for Insight Santa Cruz, and as faculty for the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies Online Buddhist Chaplaincy Training. She offers both residential and online retreats.
She completed Dharma teacher training with Gil Fronsdal and Andrea Fella in 2025. Before teaching full time, Dawn was a professional Interfaith Chaplain at Stanford Medicine. Her writing appears in Buddhist Studies journals and Refuge in the Storm, an anthology.
Dawn loves supporting practitioners to deepen and broaden their wisdom, meditative stability, and integration. She offers teachings to support greater love, liberation, and peace in our hearts and the world.
Dawn remains a dedicated student and practitioner of the Dharma. For more information, see her website, liberatingdharma.org.
Dawn Scott has been practicing insight meditation since 2008, is a Diamond Heart practitioner, and currently serves as the Family Program Coordinator at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She teaches teen retreats at Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (iBme) and is a participant in the 2017-2021 IMS Teacher Training Program.
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 (he/him) has been practicing Insight meditation since 1999. He regularly teaches at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS). Devin has undertaken many periods of silent long-term retreat practice. He was a community teacher at East Bay Meditation center in Oakland, CA where he co-founded both the teen and men of color sangha. Devin recently relocated to Western Massachusetts from the San Francisco Bay area. He is deeply committed to the personal and collective liberation of marginalized communities knowing that through the integration of reflection and insight, clarity and wisdom give rise to wise action.
devon hase loves long retreats. Cumulatively, she’s spent four years in silent practice in the Insight and Vajrayana traditions. Since discovering meditation in 2000, she has put dharma and community at the center of her life: she spent a decade bringing mindfulness to high school and college classrooms and now teaches at the Insight Meditation Society, Spirit Rock, and other centers around the world. She enjoys supporting practitioners with personal mentoring, and her friendly, conversational approach centers relational practice and the natural world. Along with her life partner nico, devon co-authored How Not to Be a Hot Mess: A Buddhist Survival Guide for Modern Life. She continues to spend a good part of the time in wilderness retreat in Oregon, Massachusetts, and elsewhere. For more, visit devonandnicohase.com
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.
Eileen Spillane has practiced Insight Meditation since 2001 and is a graduate of Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leader Program. She has practiced as a Nurse for over thirty years, working with patients in the birthing process as well as many years with critically ill cancer patients. She enjoys teaching meditation in a supportive environment to help participants ease stress in their lives and she is passionate about normalizing conversations around death and dying at Befriending Death
Eric Kolvig, Ph.D., taught meditation for 30 years in the vipassana tradition. He led meditation retreats and gave public talks around the United States and abroad. Eric has a particular interest in “grassroots dharma,” building spiritual community in democratic, non-authoritarian ways. He co-founded wilderness retreats and also Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning and Intersex (LGBTQI) retreats in the vipassana tradition. Now retired, Eric lives in Flagstaff.
Erin Selover offers insight meditation retreats nationally. She also has a part-time psychotherapy practice and teaches leaders, activists, at-risk youth and women in prison to use mindfulness and values-based living to increase well-being and the greater good.
Erin is Guiding Teacher at Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center in northern New Mexico and Resident Teacher at the Durango Dharma Center. Her approach to sharing the dharma is influenced by her love of wild nature, her ongoing experience as a student of the Diamond Approach by A.H. Almaas and by her decades of working with somatics and as a bodyworker.
I am intrigued by how we can live the 'holy life' as lay people. How do we erase the imaginary line between formal sitting practice and the rest of our lives? How can we bring full engagement to formal and informal practice? Is it possible to embody, in our lives, the understanding and insight that comes with intensive training? And can we live our lives in a way that expresses and continues to deepen our realization? These questions fuel my practice and my teaching.
I place a lot of emphasis on the Buddha's teaching about mindfulness of the body. The body is a powerful dharma gate. I encourage people to deeply investigate the body and use it as a place of recollection in daily life.
Our individual and cultural habits, our confusion, all require a sincere and ongoing commitment to spiritual life and practice. In order to mature our 'layastic' practice, we need to develop a palette of practices: mindfulness, loving-kindness, inquiry, reflection, precept practice, service, sutta study, etc.
I believe passionate engagement is the foundation of the spiritual path. Spiritual life blossoms when mindfulness is woven with a heartfelt sense of loving-kindness and compassion. With warm mindfulness as the basis of practice, our attachment to identity, roles and experience begins to loosen. As our experience and understanding matures, faith develops. This nourishes a devotion to practice which further deepens our insights.
It is precious to be born in the human realm and have an opportunity to practice and awaken. May we appreciate our inheritance and bring to life the teachings of the Buddha.
Eve is a long time student of the dharma. She began practicing Vipassana in the early 1990s, trained in mindfulness-based social action through the two-year Path of Engagement program at Spirit Rock. and is a certified meditation teacher through the Community Dharma Leader Program. Eve is also a performing artist and co-founded the feminist folk trio Rebecca Riots(1993-2009). They were dubbed “Best Band with a Conscience” by the SF Bay Guardian, toured nationally, and released five CDs. In 2006 Eve released a solo CD, “Commentary on the Perfections of the Heart”, ten original songs based on a Buddhist list of qualities that promote a contented heart. A review of the CD in Tricycle magazine said, “Decker’s melodies, and her luscious, inventive phrasing, give her songs the power of a transmission”. Here's what James Baraz has to say, "Listening to Eve’s songs are often just what I need to remind myself of the truth inside. They’ve been a big part of my daily life practice to inspire and open my heart. I love Eve Decker’s music!"
Driven by a passion for understanding the universe, Fernmarie earned degrees in Physics, Mechanical Engineering, and Human-Centered Design. After a 15-year career at Microsoft, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and NASA, she shifted her focus to the “inner universe,” embarking on a global pilgrimage where she learned meditation and heart-opening healing practices.
In 1987 Frank co-founded the Zen Hospice Project, the first Buddhist hospice in America. In 2004, he created the Metta Institute to provide broad based education on mindful and compassionate end of life care. He is a frequent keynote speaker for many healthcare organizations such as Harvard Medical School, the Mayo Clinic, the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization and others. He teaches at dharma centers around the world including the Spirit Rock Meditation Center, the Upaya Zen Center, and Rigpa's international centers and many more.
Franz Moeckl has practiced and studied insight meditation, Tai Chi and Qigong for more than 25 years, including time as a Buddhist monk in Thailand. He now teaches in the US, Europe and Asia.
Gavin Harrison died on October 24, 2018, in Seattle, Washington. He was 68. “The realization of our True Nature is the birthright of all of us, and an ever-present possibility. We awaken to the sacred ground of Love, Awareness and Joy that was always there, perhaps unrecognized, yet abiding and full beyond description. This Truth of our Being reveals itself as Simple Silence, Infinite Wisdom and Boundless Compassion. The teachings and poetry of Awakening are invitations into the Truth of our Being. By neither bypassing nor transcending our humanness, but embracing it fully, the Love we are flowers and extends across the immensity of time and space touching the greatest and smallest of things.”
Gavin studied in South African schools and received his degree from the University of Witwatersrand. Although trained as a CPA, Gavin early on developed a deep connection with Buddhism, traveling widely to study and practice with a variety of spiritual teachers and communities. He became a vital part of the Buddhist community at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA.
Gavin published a memoir of his spiritual journey, "In the Lap of the Buddha" (1994) and a collection of his spiritually-based poetry, "Petals and Blood" (2014). Most recently, Gavin joined a spiritual community in Mt Shasta, CA, meditated in India at the ashram of Ramana Maharshi, and continued to teach in his beloved Hawaii. Gavin nurtured a close bond with the indigenous Zulu community of South Africa and fundraised for Woza Moya, an organization that supports AIDS orphans. Donations in Gavin's memory can be made to Woza Moya at P.O. Box 847, Ixopo 3276, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. www.wozamoya.org.za.
George Mumford has taught meditation since 1986 in a range of environments, from prisons to Harvard Medical School. He is the author of The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance.
Right now I'm deeply involved with developing an urban meditation center in my community. It's important for me to sink my teaching roots into a commitment to my community, to ongoing relationships with people as they practice inside retreats and out of retreats. What are all the ways Sangha is relevant and applicable to our family life, our work, and our play?
Ongoing is my investigation of my own understanding about the assumptions behind what we teach. The graduate work I did in Buddhist studies greases the wheel for this type of reflection. Since part of the inquiry about freedom involves not being stuck in one position, I enjoy pulling the rug out from underneath what we, as teachers, stand on. In other words, to practice the practice.
At the core, what deeply motivates me is my compassion for the suffering in our world. Vipassana teachings, especially as we adapt the forms to an American culture, offer our society a chance to truly look at the turmoil caused by such behaviors as consumerism and individualism. Vipassana creates a different set of values by fostering a high degree of self-reflection on our underlying motivations and intentions, both as individuals and as a society.
Gina LaRoche (she/her) was introduced to meditation in 2000 and had a sporadic mindfulness practice for a decade. In 2010 she began attending residential retreats at Insight Meditation Society. Since that time, Gina has participated in several retreats, sitting the annual People of Color retreat as well as other retreats with teachers such as Gina Sharpe, Larry Yang, Sharon Salzberg and DaRa Williams. She was a teacher at the New Haven (Connecticut) Insight Sangha, now called Elm Community Insight, and currently serves as their board chair. She is a member of Cambridge Insight Meditation Center and sits often with the POC affinity group. Gina is an entrepreneur, coach, writer and collage artist, and the co-author of The Seven Laws of Enough: Cultivating a Life of Sustainable Abundance (Parallax Press).
In 2014, Gina was nominated by Sharon Salzberg for the Community Dharma Leaders Program at Spirit Rock where she graduated in 2017. She has completed the eight-week MBSR training. She is currently on the Board of Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA
Gina Sharpe is a founding teacher of New York Insight. She discovered the Dharma over 30 years ago and has studied and practiced in Asia and the United States. She was trained as a Retreat Teacher under the mentorship of Jack Kornfield. She teaches at Retreat Centers and meditation communities around the United States, including at a maximum security prison for women. She holds two meditation classes in Westchester County, New York.
Grace Fisher, MFT, JD, MEd, has practiced Insight Meditation for over 18 years. She has a private practice in San Anselmo working with teens, individuals and couples. She is a former lawyer who holds a Masters in Education from Stanford. Grace is a graduate of the Community Dharma Leaders training at Spirit Rock. She is in her third year of Somatic Experiencing training, and has studied at the Money Coaching Institute. At Spirit Rock, she was a member of the Teen Council and Family Council for many years and taught the parenting and teen classes; she has assisted on a variety of retreats. Grace teaches the weekly Women's class on Thursday mornings. She is committed to exploring how the teachings support us navigating the gritty, the challenging and the beautiful.
Greg Scharf has practiced with Western and Asian teachers in the Theravada tradition since 1992, and has been teaching residential retreats since 2007. His teaching emphasizes the confluence of love and wisdom on the path to liberation. If you feel drawn to donate to Greg on this website, he says, "Please consider making a donation to Dharma Seed instead - Dharma Seed needs your support!"
Gulwinder “Gullu” Singh is a corporate real estate attorney who regularly teaches both secular and Buddhist classes and groups at InsightLA and at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, has taught mindfulness at the University of Southern California and has been a guest lecturer on mindfulness at UCLA Law School. Although he was exposed to meditation as a child, he found his own practice when he started his legal career, working at firms where the mindsets where insane and as a result, the job was extremely stressful.
Gullu spends several weeks per year teaching silent meditation retreats and has done over 200 nights of silent retreat practice including a 2-month retreat in 2017. Gullu is deeply inspired to share meditation as an antidote to stress, a way to cope more effectively with the challenges of work and live and to inject more sanity, compassion and wisdom into this world.
I have always enjoyed working with practitioners who are continuing to deepen their practice. In the many long retreats I teach at both IMS and Spirit Rock, I feel free to pass on the deepest pointings I’ve found in the teachings of the Buddha in the Pali Canon. Those are my guiding lights in practice and understanding.
It is fun for me to take the most difficult concepts and put them into accessible language, to unwrap the mystery. So I try to find ways to explore the breadth of concepts like "emptiness" -- to see how the entire path can be explained in terms of this synonym for nibbana. One of my aims is to bring the goal of freedom into the here and now. This way practitioners get a taste of freedom, so they know what they are heading toward on their journey to liberation.
The tools of mindfulness and lovingkindness can be picked up by anyone. They are easy to understand and they bring immediate benefit to our lives. The essence of vipassana is ideally suited to western society, especially to the resonance between our psychological turn of mind and our quest for spiritual understanding.
Heather Martin has been meditating since 1972, and practicing Vipassana since 1981. Beginning with S.N. Goenka, she has since been influenced by both Burmese and Thai streams of the Theravada tradition, and by Tibetan Dzogchen with Tsoknyi Rinpoche. Most recently she has been studying with Burmese Sayadaw U Tejaniya.
Her practical and wholehearted approach embodies ease and joy, while grounded in realism.
She has been leading retreats in Canada and the US since 2001. She worked for 20 years as a midwife, and lives on Salt Spring Island, off the south coast of B.C. For more information and Heather's teaching schedule, please visit: ssivipassana.org.
Heather Sundberg has taught insight meditation since 1999 and completed the Spirit Rock/IMS Teacher Training. Beginning her own meditation practice in her late teens, for the last 25 years, Heather has studied with senior teachers in the Insight Meditation (Vipassana) and Tibetan (Vajrayana) traditions and has sat 1-3 months of retreat a year for almost 20 years. She was the Spirit Rock Family & Teen Program Teacher & Manager for a decade. Between 2010- 2015 she spent a cumulative one-year in study, practice, and pilgrimage in Asia. Since 2011, she has been a Teacher at Mountain Stream Meditation Center and sister communities in the Sierra Foothills, and also teaches nationally, especially at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Her teaching emphasizes embodiment, compassion and practical wisdom.
The more I rest in present awareness, and don't separate myself out from life, the more I appreciate the impact that I have on others. Only when I am present am I sensitive to my connection to the world, am I able to feel how important it is to be non-harming in my words and actions. When I am lost in thought, I lose that simplicity and sensitivity.
I continually point toward this secret of the present moment, for if I am really present, I don't suffer as much, I don't cause as much suffering, and I am less afraid. I may experience intense pain or pleasure, but the degree of mental suffering lessens. Practicing mindfulness de-conditions the habits that prevent me from being centered in the present. This in turn gives me a more stable awareness, which allows me to recognize my inherent peace and freedom.
It is this taste of nowness--introducing people to the living quality of the present moment and its sense of freedom--that most engages me in my teaching practice. I find no evidence of suffering, in my mind, unless I remind myself of some event that is not in the present. Suffering arises when I am lost in my imagination, reviewing the past or fearfully anticipating the future.
I feel tremendous gratitude and love for the dharma, and the practice of awareness. Knowing my mind a little better, and being less preoccupied with my internal drama, makes me more available to the suffering of others. Consequently, I am moved to give to others rather than focusing on what I can get. In spite of being more attuned to suffering, staying present allows each day to become more joyful, compelling and intereesting. My desire to run from this moment, by running after an imagined, better future, or away from a past fear, has diminished. It is present wakefulness that helps me recover my capacity to live with balance and ease in the world.
Hozan Alan Senauke is a Soto Zen priest in the tradition of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. He was ordained by Sojun Mel Weitsman in 1989. Alan is presently head of practice at Berkeley Zen Center in California, where he lives with his wife and two children. He is also Senior Advisor to Buddhist Peace Fellowship, where he served as Executive Director for more than a decade. In another realm, Alan has been a student and performer of American traditional music for more than forty years.
Over the years of teaching, I've found a growing need for profound lovingkindness and compassion--a transformation of the heart--to underlie the insights and understandings that come out of the practice. An opening of the mind needs to be supported by compassion from the heart if the practice is to be integrated, fulfilled, and lived in our lives.
The value of mindfulness practice is discovered in the freedom we find through awareness. Without awareness, we repeat the patterns of fear and conditioning that keep us entangled individually and collectively. Without awareness, we suffer. With awareness, we can see the contractions of the mind, how the mind gets caught and how we can learn to let go. With awareness we can reawaken to the purity of joy and freedom that is fundamental to our true nature.
As a Dharma teacher, I simply remind others how it is possible to live in this world and find freedom. I listen to practitioners and try to remind them that it is truly possible to be free.
Jacques Verduin, M. A. Somatic Psychology, is the Founder and Director of Insight-Out, a non-profit which aims to turn violence and suffering into opportunities for healing and learning for prisoners and challenged youth.
Jacques has been a leader and innovator in the field of rehabilitation for prisoners since 1997. He is an expert on violence prevention, emotional intelligence, restorative justice and mindfulness. Born from 18 years of listening to the traumas of thousands of offenders and victims, a deeply transformational program, Guiding Rage Into Power (G.R.I.P.), has emerged.
Verduin's presentations make interesting connections between the specific predicament of incarceration and the general suffering of the human condition. His perspective draws from working in-depth with victims and offenders, rival gangs and racial factions, and articulates a methodology that helps transcend the 'Us and Them' fallacy. Besides the US, presentations and trainings have been offered in Guatemala, El Salvador, Bosnia, Italy and the Netherlands.
