I have two main aims in teaching. The first is to spread the dharma as widely as possible, offering it to as many different people as I can. The second is to teach a smaller number of people over sustained periods of time. This in-depth teaching engages my tremendous love for intensive, long-term meditation practice, where people can immerse themselves in the retreat experience and see how it transforms their understanding.
Although deeply rooted in the Vipassana tradition of Theravada Buddhism, I enjoy working with various skillful means from different Buddhist schools to help convey the essence of all practice, the one dharma of liberation. This essential dharma includes the wisdom of non-clinging, the motivation of compassion to practice for the benefit of all beings, and the potential for liberation within us all.
Given the speed and complexity of our culture, the Buddha's teachings offer a much-needed means to slow down, a way to create some inner calm. We need to touch base with this place of tranquillity in order to allow our bodies and minds to unwind. We then have the chance to see more deeply and profoundly the nature of our lives, how we create suffering and how we can be free. The dharma begins with the development of calm and it carries us all the way to liberation.
Juha Penttilä has been practicing meditation since 2002. He has spent extended periods of time on retreats and in monasteries in Asia and Europe and is one of the founding members of Nirodha, the Finnish Insight Meditation practice community. Juha completed his Insight Meditation teacher training in 2020. In addition to exploring meditation, Juha’s teaching is influenced by the current climate crisis and engaged perspectives into the Dharma.
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.
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.
