After more than thirty years using film, writing, and public engagement to break silence around, heal from, and work to end sexual violence without relying on policing and prisons, I now bring that same survivor-centered commitment into my teaching of trauma-informed Buddhist and secular mindfulness meditation.

This practice is inseparable from the work of healing and transforming harm, including sexual violence, and from how we learn to be with ourselves and one another without reproducing harm.

A devoted Vipassanā practitioner since 2002, with over a year of cumulative residential silent retreat experience in the United States and India, I began teaching Dharma and mindfulness in 2020. I am a certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher and a qualified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher.

I am currently part of the 2025–2028 Residential Retreat Teacher Training Program through Spirit Rock Meditation Center and the Insight Meditation Society, one of the most selective and revered Dharma teacher formation pathways in the (Buddhist) Western Theravāda tradition. As part of this four-year program, I serve on teaching teams for residential retreats at Spirit Rock and IMS, offering brahmavihāra (heart-based) practices and one-on-one practice interviews, while deepening my own path in silence and in community.

I am also a resident teacher at Delaware Valley Insight, where I teach multi-week course series, offers daylong retreats, and supports practitioners in one-on-one meetings.

This is not a turning away from the work I have committed my life to. It is a deepening. Learning to meet our inner lives with clarity and compassion is part of how we show up for each other and the world without reproducing harm, even as we resist what is inhumane.

I offer my Dharma teachings freely or at minimal cost. Your donation, your dāna, supports my continued training and teaching practice.

Dāna is the practice of generosity, an offering freely given to support the continuation of Dharma teachings.

I am grateful to all who support this work.

To learn more about my current work, including my Dharma teaching and practice offerings, please visit aishahshahidahsimmons.com.