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Trudy Goodman

Trudy Goodman

Founder, Executive Director and Guiding Teacher of InsightLA

Trudy Goodman is the senior Vipassana teacher in Los Angeles from the Theravada lineage of the major meditation centers on both coasts where Trudy trained, and now teaches: Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA, and Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA.

Trudy has trained and practiced in two fields for over 25 years: meditation and psychotherapy. She studied developmental psychology with Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Carol Gilligan, and trained with a widely respected psychiatrist/psychoanalyst in Cambridge, Massachusetts -- Richard Chasin, MD. For 20 years, Trudy worked with children, teenagers, couples and individuals in a full psychotherapy practice and was a psychological consultant to K-12 independent schools. Since 1974, Trudy devoted much of her life to practicing Buddhist meditation with Asian and Western teachers in the Zen and Theravada traditions, including Zen Master Seung Sahn, Kobun Chino Otagawa Roshi, and Maurine Stuart Roshi.

She taught mindfulness with Jon Kabat-Zinn in the early days of the MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) clinic at University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester. With Zen Master George Bowman, Trudy created courses and retreats for clinicians and others for many years. From 1991-1998, Trudy was a resident Zen teacher at the Cambridge Buddhist Association. She completed Jack Kornfield’s teacher training program and teaches meditation retreats and workshops with Jack (and others) at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, the Insight Meditation Society, the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, and throughout the United States.

In addition, she co-founded, and is the Guiding Teacher for the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, teaching Buddhist psychology and mindfulness meditation for clinical practice at conferences and workshops nationwide. In 2002, Trudy founded InsightLA, dedicated to teaching mindfulness to people from 'cradle to grave'. In addition, Trudy teaches at UCLA, USC, Children’s Hospital of LA, and a variety of community settings. She co-founded Growing Spirit, a family program, in 2004. Trudy’s mother, sister, daughter, son-in-law and her grandchildren — four generations — are now all settled in Los Angeles.

You can read articles by Trudy here.

Christiane Wolf, MD, PhD

Christiane Wolf

Director of MBSR Programs

Christiane is a physician licensed to practice Ob/Gyn in Europe and holds a PhD in Psychosomatic Medicine from Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. She has completed all steps of the professional Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) training program of the University of Massachusetts under Jon Kabat- Zinn and his colleagues and is a certified MBSR teacher. She is also a graduate of the 2.5 year Community Dharma Leader program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA. She first encountered meditation and Buddhism in 1988 at Amaravati Monastery near London in the Vipassana tradition of Ajahn Chah. Between 1996 and 2003 she studied and practiced with the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO) in Germany and England before moving to the US.

Christiane has been training with Trudy Goodman in Los Angeles since 2003. In 2005, she co-founded InsightLA’s MBSR program together with Trudy and has since implemented three other MBSR related programs: Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting (MBCP), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and MBSR for chronic disease and pain management.

Christiane has worked with different populations such as patients with chronic pain and disease, parents of children with developmental disabilities and low income, non-English speaking immigrants. She has taught mindfulness and MBSR classes for research studies for UCLA, Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA and the Westside Regional Center in Culver City, CA.

Christiane's areas of expertise include working with patients who have cancer and chronic disease, and working with pain in the general population She is the mother of three young children in addition to being an OB/GYN, so mindful parenting and preparing for birth are both personal and professional interests of hers.

Maureen Shannon-Chapple

Maureen Shannon-Chapple

Maureen Shannon-Chapple has been working with children and families for over twenty-five years. Her professional experiences have included classroom teaching, parenting classes, adult school and college teaching. She currently teaches first grade at Chadwick School. A long-time practitioner of yoga and meditation, Maureen is able to merge her teaching and yoga/meditation background through her participation in Growing Spirit. She is a founding member of The Center for Non-Violent Education and Parenting.