Sharon Salzberg One of America’s leading spiritual teachers and authors, Sharon Salzberg is cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts. She has played a crucial role in bringing Asian meditation practices to the West. The ancient Buddhist practices of vipassana (mindfulness) and metta (loving kindness) are the foundations of her work.
She served as a panelist with the Dalai Lama and leading scientists at the 2005 Mind and Life Investigating the Mind Conference in Washington, DC., and coordinated the meditation faculty for the 2005 Mind and Life Summer Institute, advancing research on the intersection of meditation and the cognitive and behavioural sciences. She has also addressed audiences at the State of the World Forum, the Peacemakers Conference, and was selected to attend the Gethsemani encounter, a dialogue on spiritual life between Buddhist and Christian leaders.
Dr. Riane Eisler is a social scientist, attorney, and author whose work on cultural transformation has impacted many fields, including history, economics, psychology, sociology, and education. A pioneering leader in the movements for peace, sustainability, economic equity and women’s rights, Dr. Eisler is internationally known for her bestseller The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future, a ground-breaking book on the history of societies based on the Divine Feminine prior to the patriarchal period. Her newest book, The Real Wealth of Nations, proposes a new approach to economics that gives visibility and value to the most essential human work: the work of caring for people and planet.
Dr. Eisler teaches in the Transformative Leadership Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, is a founding member of the General Evolution Research Group, Councilor of the World Future Council, and commissioner of the World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality, along with the Dalai Lama and other spiritual leaders. She is president of the Center for Partnership Studies, dedicated to research and education on bringing in greater balance between masculine and feminine values and cooperative leadership in society.
Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D. is a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, and an internationally known author and speaker who draws from spiritual, feminist, Jungian, medical and personal wellsprings of experience. She is the author of The Tao of Psychology, Goddesses in Everywoman, Gods in Everyman, The Millionth Circle, Goddesses in Older Women and Urgent Message from Mother.
Dr. Bolen is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a former clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco, a past board member of the Ms. Foundation for Women and the International Transpersonal Association. She was a recipient of the Institute for Health and Healing's "Pioneers in Art, Science, and the Soul of Healing Award", and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. She was in two acclaimed documentaries, the Academy-Award winning anti-nuclear proliferation film Women—For America, For the World, and the Canadian Film Board's Goddess Remembered.
Joan Borysenko is a pioneer in integrative medicine and world-renowned expert in the mind/body connection. Her work has been foundational in an international health-care revolution that recognizes the role of meaning, and the spiritual dimensions of life, as an integral part of health and healing.
She has three postdoctoral fellowships and has been a faculty member at the Harvard Medical School in the fields of behavioural medicine, psychoneuroimmunology, psychology and mind-body medicine. She is author of the best-seller “Minding the Body, Mending the Mind”, co-founder of the Mind-Body Clinic and Mind-Body Health Sciences, and the Director of The Claritas Institute Interspiritual Mentor Training Program.
Author or co-author of 13 other books and numerous audio and video programs, including the Public Television special Inner Peace for Busy People, Joan is one of the most sought after speakers in the field of health, healing, and spirituality.
Andrew Harvey is a renowned scholar of mysticism and Sufism, a Rumi translator and explicator, poet, novelist, spiritual teacher and writer. He is the founder of the Institute for Sacred Activism, an international nonprofit organization focused on inviting concerned people to take up the challenge of our contemporary crises in order to become inspired and effective agents of institutional and systemic change towards peace and sustainability. Andrew's many books include The Divine Feminine: Exploring the Feminine Face of God Around the World; The Return of the Mother; The Hope; and Heart Yoga.
Karuna Erickson, yoga teacher and psychotherapist, is the founder of Heart Yoga, and Director of the Heart Yoga Center. Her transformative approach interweaves yoga with Sufi poetry and Buddhist practices of mindfulness and loving-kindness meditation. Karuna co-authored “Heart Yoga: The Sacred Marriage of Mysticism and Yoga” with Andrew Harvey, and co-teaches retreats with him around the world, in Costa Rica, Canada and Bali.
Lama Palden Drolma was one of the first Western women to be authorized as a lama in the Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana tradition. Since 1986 she has been a forerunner in helping to make the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism accessible to Westerners and has a deep interest in fostering psycho-spiritual awareness within daily life. Founder and Resident Lama of Sukhasiddhi Foundation, she has helped to integrate healing and psychospiritual systems such as the Diamond Approach into her teaching, as well as bringing the deep feminine wisdom of the Dakinis, the Tantric Buddhist archetypes of the Divine Feminine, into a contemporary context in her retreats and classes. She is a co-founder and teacher of the Feminine Wisdom School, a new one-year program in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Elisabet Sahtouris, Ph.D is an evolutionary biologist, futurist, author and consultant on Living Systems Design. Her books include A Walk Through Time: from Stardust to Us; Biology Revisioned, co-authored with Willis Harman; and EarthDance: Living Systems in Evolution. Dr. Sahtouris uses nature's principles and practice, revealed in biological evolution, as useful models for organizational change. She applies them in global politics and economics in our efforts to create sustainable health and well being for humanity within the larger living systems of Earth.
Marilyn Schlitz Ph.D is a research scientist, medical anthropologist, and writer who has pioneered clinical and field-based research on the subjects of consciousness, human transformation and healing for the last three decades. A thought leader on matters of individual and social change whose respected voice offers new insights into the most pressing challenges of our time, Marilyn is the current Research Director and President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, a nonprofit institute that conducts and sponsors leading-edge research into the potentials and powers of consciousness.
Marilyn is also Senior Scientist at the Research Institute of the California Pacific Medical Center and co-founder of the Integral Health Network. She has published numerous articles on consciousness studies in both scholarly and popular journals, and has lectured at institutions including the United Nations and Harvard Medical Centers. She is co-editor of Consciousness and Healing: Integral Approaches to Mind Body Medicine and co-author of Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life.
Bonnie Greenwell was given dharma transmission in 2004 by the progressive Zen master Adyashanti. She is a transpersonal psychologist, a scholar known for her research into kundalini awakening, and a founder and director of the Kundalini Research Network. She authored the book Energies of Transformation: A Guide to the Kundalini Process, published in five languages, and has lectured and trained therapists internationally to work with kundalini awakening and other spiritual processes. Her teaching combines influences from Zen Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta.
Tara Brach is a leading western teacher of Buddhist meditation, emotional healing and spiritual awakening. She has practiced and taught meditation for over 35 years, and is the senior teacher and founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington. A clinical psychologist, Tara is nationally known for her skill in weaving western psychological wisdom with a range of meditative practices. Her approach emphasizes compassion for oneself and others; mindful presence and the direct realization and embodiment of natural awareness.
Paula Green, Ed. D. is the Founder and Director of the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding. She has extensive international experience in peacebuilding and conflict transformation, working as an international consultant, facilitator and lecturer in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East as well as in the US. As a psychologist, educator and leader in the field of peacebuilding, Dr. Green brings to her work a synthesis of personal change, social responsibility and spiritual awareness.
Bobbi Allan is a Buddhist teacher in the Insight tradition with over 30 years experience in Buddhist practice. Since 1984 she has also worked and trained with US 'Engaged Buddhist', Buddhist scholar, systems thinker and activist, Joanna Macy. She leads "Stillness in Action" retreats, combining meditation with the 'engaged Buddhist' processes developed by Joanna Macy.
Bobbi is Buddhist Chaplain at Southern Cross University, and writes and works on contemporary issues. She has a professional background in facilitation and communication / conflict processes, and a long history in various forms of social and environmental action. She is a founding member of Heart Politics Conferences and the Social Change Training & Resource Centre.
Dr. Elaine Valdov, Ph.D. is a peace and human rights activist, conflict resolution specialist and psychotherapist. She is Director of the "Task Force on Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality" at the United Nations and President of the "International Institute for a Culture of Peace.” Dr. Valdov is also Secretary General of "Tomorrow's Leaders Today: Young Peoples' Assembly" at the United Nations, as well as Secretary General of the International Medical Assembly. She designed and teaches annually the Yoga Peace Ambassadors Certification Course at the Sivananda Ashram and directs the global program “Yogis Without Borders.” These programs train yoga teachers and practitioners to be peace leaders in their local and international communities through the ancient wisdom of yoga, based on the cultivation of “inner peace for outer peace”.
Katherine Woodward Thomas is a licensed psychotherapist, public speaker and the co-creator and co-leader of the Feminine Power transformative courses and the Feminine Power Global Community, a thriving learning community serving thousands of women worldwide. She is co-facilitator, along with transformative educator Claire Zammit, of the highly acclaimed Women on the Edge of Evolution teleseries. The "WEE Series" has become an international phenomenon, gathering over 30,000 women weekly to engage the biggest questions facing women today regarding our role in co-creating the future of our world, and featuring many of the world’s preeminent female luminaries, thinkers, artists and agents of change.
Katherine is author of the bestseller “Calling in the One,” and currently working on her forthcoming book “Feminine Power: Awakening to the Creative Force of Life".
Miranda MacPherson is a contemporary spiritual teacher, counselor and author of the spiritual guidebook Boundless Love (Random House 2002). She is an ordained interfaith minister and founded the ground breaking educational organization, "The Interfaith Seminary" in London, where she was spiritual director for a decade. This was the first seminary training of its kind in Europe, during which she trained and ordained over 1000 students, making it possible for those outside conventional religious structures to receive quality non-denominational spiritual teachings and support, and offering new models for spiritual awakening grounded in universal spiritual principles.
Miranda's work today is a synthesis of Self-Inquiry, spiritual psychology, and feminine grace that embraces our everyday human experience as an entry point into the depths of who we truly are. Through a blend of silent transmission and articulate teaching, she leads retreats and offers private sessions oriented towards guiding people into direct experience. Miranda shares from the heart's wisdom and is a passionate advocate for the true feminine, leading from the ground of unconditional love, compassion, receptivity and surrender. She is currently launching "The Feminine Wisdom School," a new one year program with Lama Palden and Sherry Anderson.
Betsy Toll is Founding Director of Living Earth, a model for grounding activism in spiritual principles that address the common roots of cultural dysfunction relative to economic justice, social justice, environmental defense and sustainability, and peace. Betsy has been teaching dharma retreats and workshops over the last two decades which incorporate principles from Buddhist activist Joanna Macy’s The Work that Reconnects, the Advaita Vedanta (non-dual) teachings from Ramana Maharshi's lineage, and compassionate action and conscious service practice in connection with Ram Dass and the Seva Project. Betsy has been exploring the terrain of conscious service and compassionate action for three decades.
Linda Johnsen is the author of eight books and over 200 articles on the Shakti and Shaktadvaita traditions, the Hindu traditions of the Divine Feminine, as well as yoga, meditation, astrology and holistic healing. Her books “The Living Goddess: Reclaiming the Tradition of the Mother of the Universe” and “Daughters of the Goddess: Women Saints of India” are a passionate and compelling call to the ancient Hindu traditions of feminine wisdom. She has a Masters degree in Eastern Studies and did post-graduate work in Comparative Religions at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. In addition she spent decades studying Eastern traditions with Shakta and Shaivite yogis in India and North America, and has herself lectured throughout the U.S. on these traditions.
Dr. Bettina Baumer is a direct disciple of the last Acarya of Kashmiri Saivism, Swami Lakshman Joo. Dr. Baumer is a highly-respected scholar who has authored, translated and edited books on Indian philosophy, art, aesthetics, mysticism and spirituality, with a special focus on original texts of Kashmiri Saivism. She has led courses and retreats worldwide on this profound system of spiritual philosophy and meditation, as well as on texts on the theme of Shakti from both the non-dual Saivite and related Shakta traditions. Living and working in Varanasi, India, she is currently Visiting Professor in Religious Studies at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla.
Dr. Riane Eisler is a social scientist, attorney, and author whose work on cultural transformation has impacted many fields, including history, economics, psychology, sociology, and education. A pioneering leader in the movements for peace, sustainability, economic equity and women’s rights, Dr. Eisler is internationally known for her bestseller The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future, a ground-breaking book on the history of societies based on the Divine Feminine prior to the patriarchal period. Her newest book, The Real Wealth of Nations, proposes a new approach to economics that gives visibility and value to the most essential human work: the work of caring for people and planet.
Dr. Eisler teaches in the Transformative Leadership Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, is a founding member of the General Evolution Research Group, Councilor of the World Future Council, and commissioner of the World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality, along with the Dalai Lama and other spiritual leaders. She is president of the Center for Partnership Studies, dedicated to research and education on bringing in greater balance between masculine and feminine values and cooperative leadership in society.
Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D. is a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, and an internationally known author and speaker who draws from spiritual, feminist, Jungian, medical and personal wellsprings of experience. She is the author of The Tao of Psychology, Goddesses in Everywoman, Gods in Everyman, The Millionth Circle, Goddesses in Older Women and Urgent Message from Mother.
Dr. Bolen is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a former clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco, a past board member of the Ms. Foundation for Women and the International Transpersonal Association. She was a recipient of the Institute for Health and Healing's "Pioneers in Art, Science, and the Soul of Healing Award", and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. She was in two acclaimed documentaries, the Academy-Award winning anti-nuclear proliferation film Women—For America, For the World, and the Canadian Film Board's Goddess Remembered.
Joan Borysenko is a pioneer in integrative medicine and world-renowned expert in the mind/body connection. Her work has been foundational in an international health-care revolution that recognizes the role of meaning, and the spiritual dimensions of life, as an integral part of health and healing.
She has three postdoctoral fellowships and has been a faculty member at the Harvard Medical School in the fields of behavioural medicine, psychoneuroimmunology, psychology and mind-body medicine. She is author of the best-seller “Minding the Body, Mending the Mind”, co-founder of the Mind-Body Clinic and Mind-Body Health Sciences, and the Director of The Claritas Institute Interspiritual Mentor Training Program.
Author or co-author of 13 other books and numerous audio and video programs, including the Public Television special Inner Peace for Busy People, Joan is one of the most sought after speakers in the field of health, healing, and spirituality.
Andrew Harvey is a renowned scholar of mysticism and Sufism, a Rumi translator and explicator, poet, novelist, spiritual teacher and writer. He is the founder of the Institute for Sacred Activism, an international nonprofit organization focused on inviting concerned people to take up the challenge of our contemporary crises in order to become inspired and effective agents of institutional and systemic change towards peace and sustainability. Andrew's many books include The Divine Feminine: Exploring the Feminine Face of God Around the World; The Return of the Mother; The Hope; and Heart Yoga.
Karuna Erickson, yoga teacher and psychotherapist, is the founder of Heart Yoga, and Director of the Heart Yoga Center. Her transformative approach interweaves yoga with Sufi poetry and Buddhist practices of mindfulness and loving-kindness meditation. Karuna co-authored “Heart Yoga: The Sacred Marriage of Mysticism and Yoga” with Andrew Harvey, and co-teaches retreats with him around the world, in Costa Rica, Canada and Bali.
Lama Palden Drolma was one of the first Western women to be authorized as a lama in the Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana tradition. Since 1986 she has been a forerunner in helping to make the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism accessible to Westerners and has a deep interest in fostering psycho-spiritual awareness within daily life. Founder and Resident Lama of Sukhasiddhi Foundation, she has helped to integrate healing and psychospiritual systems such as the Diamond Approach into her teaching, as well as bringing the deep feminine wisdom of the Dakinis, the Tantric Buddhist archetypes of the Divine Feminine, into a contemporary context in her retreats and classes. She is a co-founder and teacher of the Feminine Wisdom School, a new one-year program in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Elisabet Sahtouris, Ph.D is an evolutionary biologist, futurist, author and consultant on Living Systems Design. Her books include A Walk Through Time: from Stardust to Us; Biology Revisioned, co-authored with Willis Harman; and EarthDance: Living Systems in Evolution. Dr. Sahtouris uses nature's principles and practice, revealed in biological evolution, as useful models for organizational change. She applies them in global politics and economics in our efforts to create sustainable health and well being for humanity within the larger living systems of Earth.
Marilyn Schlitz Ph.D is a research scientist, medical anthropologist, and writer who has pioneered clinical and field-based research on the subjects of consciousness, human transformation and healing for the last three decades. A thought leader on matters of individual and social change whose respected voice offers new insights into the most pressing challenges of our time, Marilyn is the current Research Director and President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, a nonprofit institute that conducts and sponsors leading-edge research into the potentials and powers of consciousness.
Marilyn is also Senior Scientist at the Research Institute of the California Pacific Medical Center and co-founder of the Integral Health Network. She has published numerous articles on consciousness studies in both scholarly and popular journals, and has lectured at institutions including the United Nations and Harvard Medical Centers. She is co-editor of Consciousness and Healing: Integral Approaches to Mind Body Medicine and co-author of Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life.
Bonnie Greenwell was given dharma transmission in 2004 by the progressive Zen master Adyashanti. She is a transpersonal psychologist, a scholar known for her research into kundalini awakening, and a founder and director of the Kundalini Research Network. She authored the book Energies of Transformation: A Guide to the Kundalini Process, published in five languages, and has lectured and trained therapists internationally to work with kundalini awakening and other spiritual processes. Her teaching combines influences from Zen Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta.
Tara Brach is a leading western teacher of Buddhist meditation, emotional healing and spiritual awakening. She has practiced and taught meditation for over 35 years, and is the senior teacher and founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington. A clinical psychologist, Tara is nationally known for her skill in weaving western psychological wisdom with a range of meditative practices. Her approach emphasizes compassion for oneself and others; mindful presence and the direct realization and embodiment of natural awareness.
Paula Green, Ed. D. is the Founder and Director of the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding. She has extensive international experience in peacebuilding and conflict transformation, working as an international consultant, facilitator and lecturer in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East as well as in the US. As a psychologist, educator and leader in the field of peacebuilding, Dr. Green brings to her work a synthesis of personal change, social responsibility and spiritual awareness.
Bobbi Allan is a Buddhist teacher in the Insight tradition with over 30 years experience in Buddhist practice. Since 1984 she has also worked and trained with US 'Engaged Buddhist', Buddhist scholar, systems thinker and activist, Joanna Macy. She leads "Stillness in Action" retreats, combining meditation with the 'engaged Buddhist' processes developed by Joanna Macy.
Bobbi is Buddhist Chaplain at Southern Cross University, and writes and works on contemporary issues. She has a professional background in facilitation and communication / conflict processes, and a long history in various forms of social and environmental action. She is a founding member of Heart Politics Conferences and the Social Change Training & Resource Centre.
Dr. Elaine Valdov, Ph.D. is a peace and human rights activist, conflict resolution specialist and psychotherapist. She is Director of the "Task Force on Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality" at the United Nations and President of the "International Institute for a Culture of Peace.” Dr. Valdov is also Secretary General of "Tomorrow's Leaders Today: Young Peoples' Assembly" at the United Nations, as well as Secretary General of the International Medical Assembly. She designed and teaches annually the Yoga Peace Ambassadors Certification Course at the Sivananda Ashram and directs the global program “Yogis Without Borders.” These programs train yoga teachers and practitioners to be peace leaders in their local and international communities through the ancient wisdom of yoga, based on the cultivation of “inner peace for outer peace”.
Katherine Woodward Thomas is a licensed psychotherapist, public speaker and the co-creator and co-leader of the Feminine Power transformative courses and the Feminine Power Global Community, a thriving learning community serving thousands of women worldwide. She is co-facilitator, along with transformative educator Claire Zammit, of the highly acclaimed Women on the Edge of Evolution teleseries. The "WEE Series" has become an international phenomenon, gathering over 30,000 women weekly to engage the biggest questions facing women today regarding our role in co-creating the future of our world, and featuring many of the world’s preeminent female luminaries, thinkers, artists and agents of change.
Katherine is author of the bestseller “Calling in the One,” and currently working on her forthcoming book “Feminine Power: Awakening to the Creative Force of Life".
Miranda MacPherson is a contemporary spiritual teacher, counselor and author of the spiritual guidebook Boundless Love (Random House 2002). She is an ordained interfaith minister and founded the ground breaking educational organization, "The Interfaith Seminary" in London, where she was spiritual director for a decade. This was the first seminary training of its kind in Europe, during which she trained and ordained over 1000 students, making it possible for those outside conventional religious structures to receive quality non-denominational spiritual teachings and support, and offering new models for spiritual awakening grounded in universal spiritual principles.
Miranda's work today is a synthesis of Self-Inquiry, spiritual psychology, and feminine grace that embraces our everyday human experience as an entry point into the depths of who we truly are. Through a blend of silent transmission and articulate teaching, she leads retreats and offers private sessions oriented towards guiding people into direct experience. Miranda shares from the heart's wisdom and is a passionate advocate for the true feminine, leading from the ground of unconditional love, compassion, receptivity and surrender. She is currently launching "The Feminine Wisdom School," a new one year program with Lama Palden and Sherry Anderson.
Betsy Toll is Founding Director of Living Earth, a model for grounding activism in spiritual principles that address the common roots of cultural dysfunction relative to economic justice, social justice, environmental defense and sustainability, and peace. Betsy has been teaching dharma retreats and workshops over the last two decades which incorporate principles from Buddhist activist Joanna Macy’s The Work that Reconnects, the Advaita Vedanta (non-dual) teachings from Ramana Maharshi's lineage, and compassionate action and conscious service practice in connection with Ram Dass and the Seva Project. Betsy has been exploring the terrain of conscious service and compassionate action for three decades.
Linda Johnsen is the author of eight books and over 200 articles on the Shakti and Shaktadvaita traditions, the Hindu traditions of the Divine Feminine, as well as yoga, meditation, astrology and holistic healing. Her books “The Living Goddess: Reclaiming the Tradition of the Mother of the Universe” and “Daughters of the Goddess: Women Saints of India” are a passionate and compelling call to the ancient Hindu traditions of feminine wisdom. She has a Masters degree in Eastern Studies and did post-graduate work in Comparative Religions at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. In addition she spent decades studying Eastern traditions with Shakta and Shaivite yogis in India and North America, and has herself lectured throughout the U.S. on these traditions.
Dr. Bettina Baumer is a direct disciple of the last Acarya of Kashmiri Saivism, Swami Lakshman Joo. Dr. Baumer is a highly-respected scholar who has authored, translated and edited books on Indian philosophy, art, aesthetics, mysticism and spirituality, with a special focus on original texts of Kashmiri Saivism. She has led courses and retreats worldwide on this profound system of spiritual philosophy and meditation, as well as on texts on the theme of Shakti from both the non-dual Saivite and related Shakta traditions. Living and working in Varanasi, India, she is currently Visiting Professor in Religious Studies at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla.
