Developing a clear understanding of the teachings and learning to fully inhabit the body have been core parts of my Dhamma practice. These areas, as well a strong emphasis on the heart, inform and shape my teaching. The few years I spent training as an Anagarika in the Thai Forest monasteries broadened my understanding of the Buddha's teachings and instilled a profound respect for the Bhikkhu and Bhikkhuni Sangha. All along the way, I've been particularly interested in how other modalities like Nonviolent Communication and Somatics can support our growth in awakening.
Pat Coffey, MEd, began his meditation practice over 30 years ago and has taught meditation since 1996. He studied with numerous Asian and Western teachers in the Theravada, Tibetan and Zen traditions. Pat is the founder of IMCC and the co-founder of the Blue Ridge Prison Project. Pat was selected and trained as a meditation teacher in the joint teacher training program of The Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts and Spirit Rock Meditation Center under the tutelage of Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein. Down-to-earth real world practical dharma is the hallmark of his teaching. The father of two children, owner of several businesses and the holder of several patents, he draws on his varied and rich life experience to articulate the dharma.
Rebecca is deeply devoted to meditation, movement, and applied mindfulness. She enjoys creating continuity of awareness from ‘on the mat’ to ‘off the mat’ in everyday life – and being a support to others in the endeavor to live an awakened life. She first discovered these practices through yoga in her early twenties, which provided tremendous support when she was facing acute anxiety. After benefitting from the gift of yoga over a number of years, her practice evolved to include meditation and mindfulness. Rebecca enjoys sharing her love of the many practices that bring us back home into presence and greater freedom.
She appreciates the joys and challenges of aligning the inner and the outer—ultimately, coming to experience trust in oneself and in life. Rebecca’s passion is to create and hold space for this exploration of ‘dancing with life’ for herself and others, including the dance of work-life balance and bringing wise action to the challenges facing the world.
Rebecca is an affiliate teacher with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington and also has been working in the public health field within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) since 1993. She participated in the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) professional training program in 2006 and has been teaching the eight-week MBSR course in the Washington DC area since then.
As a life-long learner, she continues to deepen her study and practice of mindfulness, meditation, and movement graduating from Spirit Rock’s Mindfulness Yoga and Meditation Training Program; the Spirit Rock Heavenly Messengers – Awakening Through Illness, Aging, and Death Program; the Meditation Teacher Training Institute; and the Kripalu 200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training program.
Ruth King is an insight meditation teacher and emotional wisdom author and life coach. Mentored in Theravada Buddhism and the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, King teaches at insight meditation communities nationwide and offers the Mindful of Race Training program to teams and organizations. King is on the teacher’s council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and is the author of several publications including Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism From The Inside Out. www.RuthKing.net
Sebene Selassie is a meditation teacher and certified Integral Coach®. She has been studying Buddhism since majoring in Comparative Religious Studies as an undergrad at McGill University. For over 20 years she worked with children, youth, and families nationally and internationally for small and large not–for–profits. Her work has taken her everywhere from the Tenderloin in San Francisco to refugee camps in Guinea, West Africa. Sebene is a two–time breast cancer survivor.
Shell Fischer, founder and guiding teacher of Mindful Shenandoah (www.mindfulvalley.com) offers more than 25 years of mindfulness practice and study.
As a full teacher with IMCW, her main focus is on metta (loving-kindness) practice. Her hope is to guide her students in nurturing even more kindness and compassion for themselves -- and for all the situations they find themselves in throughout their lives -- through the practice of meditation and mindfulness.
Prior to teaching, Shell wrote about mindfulness and yoga for national magazines. She’s a 1993 graduate of Naropa University (a Shambhala Buddhist-based university in Boulder, CO), and trained in the two-year Meditation Teacher Training Institute of Washington, D.C. with Tara Brach, Jonathan Foust, Hugh Byrne and Pat Coffey. She’s also a graduate of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction teacher-training program led by Jon Kabat-Zinn (founder of MBSR and the Stress Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center), and an educational partner with both Valley Health (a regional 8-hospital system) and the Foundation of the State Arboretum of Virginia.
Dr. Stephen Fulder was born in the UK and received an M.A. from Oxford University and a Ph.D. He has devoted his life to exploring inner and outer healing and spirituality. He is an author and lecturer in herbal and natural medicine with 14 published books. He lives in an environmental village in the Galilee in Israel, which he helped to found and where he grows his own food. Stephen has been practicing Vipassana meditation since 1975, is the founder and senior teacher of the Israel Insight Society, the main Vipassana/Mindfulness organization in Israel, and has been teaching retreats and courses in Buddhist practice for 15 years. He has established programs and organizations, such as ‘Middleway’, which apply these teachings to aid peace and healing in the communities in the Middle East.
A pervasive but often invisible source of suffering in our culture is self-aversion. We are a busy culture, and we move through our life feeling anxious and dissatisfied, but not fully conscious of how we neglect or judge our inner experience. We suffer from a lack of belonging: to our own bodies, to each other and to the earth. When we practice Buddhist meditation, we learn how to listen deeply and hold our life tenderly.
The open space of compassion allows us to realize that our thoughts and emotions are not who we are; they are waves in our ocean. This gives us the freedom to live more wisely and love more fully.
For over thirty-five years, I've been exploring the awakening of awareness with yoga, meditation, a clinical psychology practice and relationships in spiritual community (sangha). Since the untying of emotional knots is an essential part of "waking up," it is natural for me to weave these elements into my Buddhist practice and teaching. With formal practice, and a genuine engagement in sangha, we can cultivate the qualities of heart and awareness that allow for deep emotional healing and spiritual freedom.
Buddhism guides us in slowing down, quieting and paying attention in an honest and caring way. Through our mindfulness and compassion practices, we establish a sense of intimacy and belonging to our life. We discover that there is no Buddha "out there." Rather, we realize that our true refuge is the wakefulness, openness and love of our own natural awareness.
Trudy mitchell-gilkey is currently a lay (but aspiring) monastic, a licensed clinical social worker, a meditation teacher with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, and a writer, drawing on nearly 20 years of private practice as a mindfulness based cognitive therapist and 15 years as a Vipassana (insight) meditation teacher. Trudy also holds a leadership position in the civil service, where she trains other clinicians to integrate mindfulness into their practice and remain faithful to evidence based practices in the treatment of mental health, substance related and co-occurring disorders.
In September of 2010, Trudy founded the MAAD Dharma Project: a 12-step adapted, deepening practice meditation program for persons suffering with mood, addiction, attachment and anxiety disorders from which her workshops are conducted and her spiritual booklet and memoir are emerging.
In 2012, Trudy completed the Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Community Dharma Leader Program - IV, a two-year training embedded in the ancient lineage of Theravada designed to encourage creative, intuitive and innovative responses that enable the Buddha’s timeless teachings to be applied to modern, contemporary life and reveal a path through the complex difficulties of our world in a spiritual, social, political, cultural, interpersonal, and personal contexts. Over the past 15 years, mitchell-gilkey has committed over 500 nights to silent, residential refuge, and aspires to fully ordain in the coming years.
Trudy received her Bachelor of Science in Business Management from the University of South Carolina and a Master of Social Work from the Catholic University of America.
