Teaching Mindfulness to Empower Adolescents

Matthew Brensilver, MSW, PhD, is a member of the Teachers Council and Guiding Teachers Executive Committee at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. He previously served as Program Director for Mindful Schools and for more than a decade, was a core teacher at Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society. He lectures at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center about the intersections between mindfulness and mental health and teaches retreats nationally. Before committing to teaching meditation full-time, he spent years doing research on addiction pharmacotherapy at the UCLA Center for Behavioral and Addiction Medicine and is interested in the unfolding dialogue between meditation and science. JoAnna Hardy has been teaching meditation practices to young people since 2005.  She teaches retreats, is on the Spirit Rock teachers council, and focuses her work on building multicultural community with a focus on social and racial justice issues. Oren Jay Sofer leads retreats and workshops on meditation and communication throughout the United States. A member of the Spirit Rock Teachers Council, he holds a degree in Comparative Religion from Columbia University and is a Certified Trainer of Nonviolent Communication and a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner for the healing of trauma.