Teachers

Tara Brach

Senior teacher, Tara Brach, Ph.D., has practiced and taught meditation since 1975 and is the founder of IMCW. Tara is a clinical psychologist, teaches meditation classes locally, and leads workshops, trainings and retreats at centers around the country. She is a co-founder of the Washington Buddhist Peace Fellowship. Tara is the author of Radical Acceptance – Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha. www.tarabrach.com

Luisa Montero-Diaz

Luisa Montero-Diaz has been practicing meditation since 1987 and teaching meditation since 1993. She completed the first three-year Community Dharma Leadership program offered by the Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Luisa has been affiliated with IMCW since its inception and was on the founding Board. She teaches a weekly meditation class in Takoma Park, Maryland, and leads day-long and weekend retreats in the Washington area. Prior to her exploration of Buddhist meditation, she was involved in Gurdjieff's Fourth Way spiritual study.

Hugh Byrne

Hugh Byrne has studied and practiced Buddhism in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. He is a co-founder of the Washington Buddhist Peace Fellowship and the Mindfulness Training Institute of Washington. He teaches classes on Buddhism and meditation for the Smithsonian Resident Associate Program and teaches three weekly classes in Washington, DC.

Hugh has trained in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and in Somatic Experiencing, a mind/body approach to healing trauma. He has a law degree from London University and a Ph.D. in political science from UCLA and has worked extensively on issues of human rights.
http://hugh-byrne.com

Debbie Ratner

Deborah Ratner Helzer has been meditating for over 15 years, and has practiced and studied both western and asian traditions. She spent a year as a Theravadan nun in Burma, and her teaching style reflects the influence of the late Burmese master Mahasi Sayadaw and his emphasis on clear, non-judgmental awareness. Deborah has been mentored in her teaching by Joseph Goldstein and other senior Vipassana teachers connected with the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA. She has been teaching locally and assisting at retreats around the country since 2002.

Stig Regli

Stig Regli has practiced Vipassana meditation for 20 years and facilitated meditation classes since 1997. He was introduced to the practice in Thailand and has been guided by numerous North American and Asian teachers with his primary teacher being Tara Brach.

Carl Skooglund

Carl Skooglund has been practicing Vipassana meditation with IMCW since 1993. He has additional practice experience by way of IMCW’s Kalyana Mitta groups, which he has been a part of since 1996. Carl has come to emphasize “family dharma practice” and has led family and teen classes since 2000. In 2008 he completed the three-year Community Dharma Leadership program sponsored by the Spirit Rock Meditation Center.

Rob Creekmore

Rob has worked with a wide variety of meditative practices over the last 30 years, concentrating for the past 20 on Vipassana meditation and mindful dialogue. He has been part of IMCW since its founding including starting the first Kalyana Mitta group in 1996.

Professionally, Rob has worked in telecommunications engineering and project management, evolving into an organization development consultant, facilitator, and trainer. He studied to be an ordained United Methodist minister in the early 90's and completed the Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leader program in July 2003. Rob has had extensive experience in introducing meditation, mindful dialogue, rites of passage, and other spiritual practices into many diverse settings, such as businesses, government, schools, and churches. Rob and Susan and their son Andrew (age 12) live near Reston, Virginia.

Jon Waterman

Jon Waterman began practicing yoga and meditation while teaching the martial arts in the early seventies, with a concentration, since 1994, on Buddhist insight meditation. His workshops and retreats focus on strengthening continuity of present moment awareness by combining mindful movement, insight dialogue and meditation techniques. Jon has a personal coaching practice and is a founding partner of Mind Body Health Associates, a group dedicated to bringing applied mindfulness, via Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction programs, to hospitals, universities and the workplace. He has been leading Stress Management programs within the Maryland Department of Corrections since 2000.

Klia Bassing

Klia Bassing, MBA/MPP, is trained through the Community Dharma Leadership Program of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California. She is a regular teacher of IMCW's Sunday night class at All Souls Church in downtown Washington D.C. Klia also provides meditation classes to groups and individuals privately and at workplaces--such as the National Academy of Sciences, Washington Post, Georgetown Law School, Discovery Channel, and World Bank--through /Visit Yourself at Work/ (www.visityourself.net), which she founded and directs. Before teaching meditation, Klia worked in international development abroad and with the World Bank.

Adam Asare

Adam Asare has been practicing Vipassana meditation since 1996, and has had broad exposure to meditation and contemplative practices found in East Asian and Sufi traditions. He participated in the two-year Dedicated Practioner’s Program sponsored by the Spirit Rock Meditation Center and the teacher training program led by Matthew Flickstein. He has also been a group facilitator for a local Kalyana Mitta group and served as an IMCW board member. He is currently engaged in a two-year training program focusing on non-dual teachings sponsored by The Forest Way (www.forestway.org). Adam holds a doctorate in computational biology and directs biomarker research for auto-immune and transplantation studies. He, his wife, and their son live in Bethesda, Maryland.

Catherine Brousseau

Catherine Brousseau began mindfulness and vipassana meditation in 1998. She has participated in meditation retreats throughout her life, first as a Catholic and now as a Buddhist. Her teachers include IMCW teachers Luisa Montero-Diaz, Deb Ratner, and Lynn Kelly (now in Australia), and Bhante Gunaratana and Bhante Rahula of the Bhavana Society, WV. Since 2002, Catherine has been active in sutta study groups, exploring the teachings of the Buddha directly from the scriptures. She took Bhavana Society Teacher Training courses and completed the Advanced Study & Practice Program at BCBS (Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, Massachusetts). Trained as a life coach, Catherine’s meditation practice deeply informs her coaching practice as well as people management in her work role as a department director.

Jonathan Foust

Jonathan Foust has practiced meditation since 1972. A senior teacher and former president of Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, he has been teaching yoga and meditation for over twenty years in both residential and corporate settings.

Jonathan leads three weekly meditation classes as well as retreats in the DC area and around the country. He is the creator of the "Year of Living Mindfully" program and offers private sessions in Focusing, a body-oriented therapy that is powerfully synergistic with mindfulness meditation. www.jonathanfoust.com

Vicki J. Goodman, LCSW

Vicki has been meditating with IMCW for over 15 years. She regularly sits long term meditation retreats at Insight Meditation Society. Vicki was invited to train in the three year Community Dharma Leader training program sponsored by the Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She completed that program in 2008. She coordinated the Mentor Program for IMCW from 2003 through 2007. Vicki has been teaching at IMCW’s Sunday night class at All Souls Church, Unitarian in Washington, DC. She also teaches various classes and retreats for IMCW and in the DC area. Vicki has pursued a special interest in the interface of Buddhadharma and psychotherapy. She has maintained a psychotherapy practice since 1985 with a emphasis in Dharma-based psychotherapy in Washington, DC and in Maryland. Vicki can be contacted at VJGoodman@gmail.com.

Trish Magyari, MS

Trish Magyari, MS, began studying meditation and yoga while in college in the 70's. She started practicing mindfulness meditation in 1987, and began teaching in the mid-90's. Trained as a counselor and educator, Trish currently works full time teaching Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR--see www.mindful-healing.org), is an adjunct faculty member of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in the Dept of Health, Society and Behavior, has been the lead teacher on three successful clinical trials using MBSR (2 for people with chronic pain, 1 for at-risk youth), and leads retreats and trainings nationally. Trish teaches Intro to Vipassana series, leads a weekly class and retreats in Baltimore, and has practiced with IMCW since 2000.

John McIliwain

John McIlwain is a past President of IMCW. He is a former member of the St. Mark’s Episcopal Church Vestry and of the St. Mark’s teaching community. He has practiced and studied both Vipassana and Tibetan meditation techniques since 2000 with Tara Brach and others. He has a university degree in Philosophy and has studied and practiced a variety of spiritual disciplines over the course of his life.

Trudy ann mitchell-gilkey

Trudy ann mitchell-gilkey is a licensed independent clinical social worker and started her private (mindfulness-based cognitive) psychotherapy practice (in District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia) in 1997 when she completed graduate school at The National Catholic School of Social Work (The Catholic University of America). She began her formal meditation practice in 1998 and joined the IMCW community in 2001, first attending the Takoma Park (Willow Street Yoga Center) sangha as a student then - seven years later - as a teacher alongside Luisa Montero, her good friend and local mentor. Trudy has made invaluable contributions to IMCW, serving as a member of its first formal Diversity Committee, as student teacher, founder of Takoma Park's first Kalyana Mitta group in 2004 (and it's still going strong), co-coordinator of the Teachers Council and Teachers in Training Track, a solid mental health resource, and in May of 2008, she fully revamped IMCW's mentoring program into The IMCW Meditation Practice Mentoring Program, where mentors and dharma students are thoughtfully paired up with the goal of deepening their meditation practice together. Trudy's therapy practice has been greatly influenced by the writings of Carl Jung, John Welwood, Irvin Yalom, Dan Siegel, Winnicott, Rilke, Gibran, Paul Brunton and Thoreau. Her meditation practice and teaching style have been most profoundly influenced by Pema Chodron, whose life and Buddhist teachings have made the single greatest impact on Trudy's life over the past ten years. She completed the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) training for Mental Health Professionals with Jon Kabat-Zinn in 2007 and currently serves as a meditation practice mentor to five (5) devout dharma students.

Trudy lives in Takoma Park, MD with her teenaged daughter, who provides inspiration to her unique "kitchen-table" wisdom teachings of the Buddha. Trudy can be reached at Tamgilkey@aol.com.

Carole Rogentine

Carole has been meditating for many years and has attended retreats with Tara Brach, Leigh Brasington, Shinzen Young, Bhantes Gunaratana and Rahula at the Bhavana Society where she is on the Board of Directors. She has co-led Introduction to Meditation classes, teaches fall and spring meditation classes at Cedar Lane UU church and has been visiting teacher at several IMCW meetings. Carole is on the IMCW teacher council. She has taken the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction training program (MBSR), Bhavana Society Teacher training and the Advanced Study and Practice Program at Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. Carole traveled to India on a Buddhist pilgrimage in 2002, visiting many significant places in the Buddha's life.

La Sarmiento

La Sarmiento has been practicing Vipassana meditation and has been a member of IMCW since 1998. La's practice and approach to the Dharma has been influenced greatly by the teachings of Tara Brach, Pema Chodron, Eckhart Tolle, Larry Yang, Eric Kolvig, and Ruth King. Currently on the IMCW Teacher Training Track, La is also the facilitator of the IMCW LGBTQ sangha and co-facilitator of the IMCW People of Color sangha since 2005 and of the multi-cultural sangha "Refuge 3" since 2007. La integrates the Kalyana Mitta process and the concepts of Non-Violent Communication into her gatherings to create a sacred space for group wisdom to arise. La is a senior retreat/event manager committed to bringing diverse teachers to IMCW and to making the Dharma accessible to all. La has been a bodyworker in private practice since 1992 and teaches mindfulness-based Reiki classes with her life partner Wendy Taylor in Adams Morgan, DC.

John Stevens

John began practicing meditation and yoga in the late 70’s. He spent nineteen years as a Theravadan Buddhist monk, practicing in Thailand for three years in the vipassana tradition of the Burmese teacher, Mahasi Sayadaw, and then moved to England where he spent fifteen years with Ajahn Sumedho, of the Ajahn Chah Thai forest tradition. In England he taught daylong, weekend and ten-day retreats, and some summer camps, and he assisted with the administration of the British monasteries. In 2000, John made the difficult decision to disrobe and leave monastic life. He married in 2006 before moving to Washington, D.C., where he now teaches insight/vipassana meditation, and yoga, and practices as a craniosacral therapist. Detailed bio here.

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Visiting Teachers

Eugene Cash

Eugene Cash has practiced meditation since 1981. He leads weekly sitting groups in San Francisco and meditation retreats nationwide. Many streams of the Vipassana tradition and the Zen school of Buddhism influence his teaching. Eugene is also a teacher in the Ridhwan School. As a psychotherapist he has worked extensively with those who are ill, the dying and the bereaved.

Pat Coffey

Pat Coffey has been practicing meditation for over 20 years. He has completed the three-year Community Dharma Leadership program sponsored by the Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and has studied with numerous North American and Asian teachers. Pat currently leads two meditation classes in Charlottesville, Virginia and regulary leads retreats with Tara Brach.

Howard Cohn

Howard Cohn has practiced meditation since 1972. He has led Vipassana meditation retreats since 1985 and leads ongoing classes in San Francisco and Marin. He has studied with many Asian and western teachers of several traditions, including Theravadan, Zen, Tibetan, and Advaita Vedanta and incorporates a non-dual perspective in his teaching. A Ph.D. candidate in East/West psychology, he has a private counseling practice.

Mark Coleman

Mark Coleman has been engaged in Buddhist practice since 1984, primarily within the vipassana tradition, and has been influenced by the teachings of Advaita and Dzogchen. He has taught vipassana retreats since 1997 and teaches meditation classes and courses in Marin. Mark has a Masters degree in psychotherapy and is a spiritual counselor and wilderness retreat teacher.

Mark Epstein, M.D.

Mark Epstein is a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City and a long-time meditator. He lectures frequently about the interface between Buddhism and psychotherapy. His books include Thoughts Without a Thinker, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, and Open to Desire, Embracing a Lust for Life: Insights from Buddhism and Psychotherapy, to be published in early 2005.

Gregory Kramer

Gregory Kramer, co-developer of Insight Dialogue. Greg is an author and meditation teacher, as well as director of the Metta Foundation. He has practiced Vipassana meditation for 25 years and taught nationwide. His primary teachers have been Anagarika Dhammadina, Achan Sobin Namto, and Ven. Ananda Maitreya Mahanayaka Thera. Formerly a composer, Greg holds a doctorate in Learning and Change in Human Systems.

Joseph Goldstein

Joseph Goldstein first became interested in Buddhism as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand in 1965. Since 1967, he has studied and practiced different forms of Buddhist meditation under eminent teachers from India, Burma, and Tibet. Joseph has been leading insight and lovingkindness meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. He is a cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, and of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and the author of several books, the newest being One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism.

Dori Langevin

Dori Langevin, Psy.D., has studied and practiced Vipassana meditation since 1997 with Tara Brach. She began teaching daylongs in 2003 and co-teaching the Takoma Park class in 2004. She has a special interest in the interface between mindfulness practice and addiction recovery. She currently lives in Seattle.

Phillip Moffitt

Phillip Moffitt is a member of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center's Teachers Council and the founder and president of the Life Balance Institute, a nonprofit organization devoted to the study of the mind/body relationship in both personal growth and organizational leadership. A yoga instructor and somatic educator, Phillip teaches Vipassana meditation in San Rafael, California and writes the “Dharma Wisdom” column for Yoga Journal.

Noah Levine

Noah Levine, M.A. is a Buddhist teacher having trained with Jack Kornfield and the teaching collective at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA. He teaches meditation retreats nationally as well as leading groups in juvenile halls and prisons around the San Francisco Bay Area.

Bhante Rahula

Born Scott Joseph DuPrez in southern California, Bhante Yogavacara Rahula was ordained a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka in 1975. He returned to the United States in 1986 to take residence at the Bhavana Society, a forest monastery/meditation center in West Virginia, where he now serves as the vice abbot. He conducts retreats worldwide integrating Yoga breathing and exercise with vipassana meditation. In addition to his autobiography, One Night’s Shelter, he has written a book on the Buddha’s teachings entitled The Way to Peace and Happiness.

Sharon Salzberg

Sharon Salzberg has practiced and studied a variety of Buddhist traditions since 1970 with teachers from India, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, and Tibet. She is a co-founder and guiding teacher of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. Sharon teaches both intensive awareness practice and the profound cultivation of lovingkindness and compassion. She is the author of Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness, A Heart as Wide as the World, and Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience.

Affiliated Teaching Staff

Ofosu Jones-Quartey

Ofosu Jones-Quartey has been practicing meditation since 2000, with a focus on Vipassana in the Mahasi and Thai traditions, incorporated with Madhyamaka philosophy. He is a part of the Bhavana Society community and a student of Bhante Buddharakkhita, among others. Ofosu is also an accomplished musical artist and founding member of the Buddhist-inspired Hip Hop band, Shambhala. (www.shambhalatrue.com) Ofosu and his fiancee have two children, Samadhi and Sundara, ages 3 and 5. He currently lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

Ken Yamaguchi-Clark

Ken Yamaguchi-Clark has been practicing a wide variety of spiritual, meditative, movement, and body-based practices since 1987. Since its inception in 2004, he has helped to maintain the IMCW Sangha at All Souls Church, Unitarian where he also serves as Dancer-in-Residence; teaches weekly Qi Gong and movement meditation groups; and co-leads the Mindfulness in Daily Life class with Vicki Goodman. He currently maintains a private bodywork practice in Washington, DC and brings a background in community, complimentary and alternative health as a master trainer, curriculum developer, administrator and consultant. He is most passionate about the integration of healing, performing and living arts and is currently enrolled in Sanctuary, a socially-engaged Dharma training program for activists at Manzanita Village.