About me
I love
My husband and my cats. In that order. But let me tell you about my gorgeous kitties
I care deeply about
The planet and the people in it.
My training
I have twenty-five years of practice experience and have been guiding meditation sessions, workshops and retreats since 2005.
I have practiced within the Triratna Buddhist Community for 25 years, and have received the guidance and inspiration of many, many incredible teachers.
I have spent over three years on retreat.
I undertook ordination training and was Ordained (aka spiritually reborn) in 2007 as Ananta – he who is boundless or just simply Mr. Infinity!!
I am a leading teacher of Triratna New York and of the Triratna US & Canada Men’s ordination training team.
I am a certified Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction teacher through the Mindfulness Center at Brown University, and have studied other mindfulness modalities such as for pain, for teens, for emotional regulation and in understanding and responding to racism. I have also trained as a yoga teacher with Bodhi Yoga
I have degrees in International Relations and Development Studies from the University of Sussex in the UK
I worked with the United Nations Children’s Fund for seven years setting up and supporting networks for young people’s engagement in their communities and nations.
My story
I started meditating when I was 18. Perhaps because of the trauma of being in the closet as a teen, the acrimonious split of my parents, and an avid curiosity in Asian philosophies. I knew I wanted a way to work directly with my mind because I intuited that the mind was the site of my suffering. It turned out my hunch was right. After dabbling in a few different groups, I quickly got involved in a Buddhist tradition called Triratna and have continued practicing in it ever since. I lived in Buddhist communities for ten years communities, worked for five years in a Buddhist international nonprofit, and got on retreat as much as I could, totalling around three years. I got ordained in 2007 and was ‘reborn’ as Ananta – ‘he who is boundless’ and ‘the protector king’ or as some friends call me – Mr Infinity!! My practice follows a system of practices including mindfulness, loving kindness and compassion, approaches to insight, visualizations, and ritual and devotion. I’ve undertaken in-depth studies of numerous Buddhist texts and made a lot of friends around the world within my own and other traditions.
I also have spent 20 years working in the international nonprofit sector, including with the United Nations, directly working with and for the empowerment of marginalised communities (including Indian Dalits, indigenous and afro-Brazilians, Kenyan youth, displaced Rohingyas of Myanmar, Syrians refugees, Tibetan diaspora). I currently head up a nonprofit, Karuna USA, dedicated to the uplift of marginalized communities in South Asia and the US. Social engagement work has been deeply informed by my practice, which has sustained me in facing difficulties.
My approach to Mindfulness
Stress and being driven are hard-wired into our biology. Threats to our ancestors were more direct and apparent. Now threats take on different shapes: assaults on democracy, inadequate action on climate change, global pandemics, not to mention worries about how we’ll cover the rent, micro-aggressions directed at our values etc. In the same way as our ancestors, these fire our nervous systems.
If we make time to nurture and resource the body and mind, our rage, stress, and even our despondency, can be redirected in constructive ways and allow creative ways of being to arise. This is what I see mindfulness as essentially being about. Agitation and anxiety can be met, calmed and channelled towards creative action.
Much of our discomfort and unhappiness in life comes from not being right here and now in the present. Instead we are thinking about some imagined future (that may be glorious and incredible, dire and desolate, and anything in between) or in the past which has already gone and so we can do nothing about it. The feeling of your foot, for example, is right here and now, just like your butt on the seat (if you’re sitting reading this), your breath, the sound of the birds/car/music, etc. Learning to be more present helps undercut unhelpful speculation and rumination. It’s more efficient, more fulfilling – as it’s a richer sense of what’s actually happening, sometimes more enjoyable (though not always) – as because we can be in touch with the simple fact of being alive.
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