Next Step for Survivors Empowered MBSR Teacher Training

Instructors

Hugh O’Neill

Hugh O’Neill is co-owner of Mindful-Way.com, and a certified MBSR Teacher and International teacher trainer and retreat leader.  Hugh has studied and practiced meditation and yoga for more than 20 years. His many years of creative and management experience in the media industry, including significant time working in international news and documentary production, combined with his intensive training in Mindfulness Meditation programs enable him to skillfully relate the concepts and practices of mindfulness with sensitivity and compassion to a wide range of populations.  His experience working in the news business in Ireland and Northern Ireland has given him personal experience with Gun Violence; combined with his training in Trauma Informed Mindfulness makes him a key part of our work with offering MBSR to Survivors Empowered.. Hugh has taught more than 100 MBSR courses and dozens of other mindfulness programs at universities, medical centers, corporations and government agencies including the US Navy.  He is the lead instructor on a multi year- multi site NIH study on MBSR for Parents of developmentally delayed children. Hugh has also been a presenter at the International Scientific Conference on Mindfulness, is a regular event speaker, and is the lead mindfulness teacher in a number of clinical research projects. Hugh has trained in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction with the originator of the MBSR program, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn Ph.D. He has studied and lived in residence at Yokoji Zen Mountain Center under the guidance of Zen Master Charles Tenshin Fletcher, Roshi, and is Certified as an MBSR teacher through the UCSD Center for Mindfulness.

John Taylor

John Taylor is a Certified Teacher of MBSR as defined by the UCSD Mindfulness-Based Professional Training Institute. He has practiced Reiki, and other hands on healing modalities for over 30 years. John is currently a faculty member of the Innerwork Center in Richmond, Virginia where he teaches Mindful Based Stress Reduction, facilitates Silent Retreats and leads other mindfulness programs. In UCSD’s Mindfulness-Based Proffessional Training Insitites’ commitment and our offering of a Teacher Training for a cohort to BIPOC Teacher trainees; he brings a wealth of experience to guide the training. His trauma sensitivity makes him the perfect team member for our MBSR Program for Survivors Empowered  , 

John is an active member of the Greater Richmond community where a large focus of his work has been on racial equity, reconciliation initiatives, and facilitated community dialogues. He currently he serves as a director of Side by Side, an organization that provides supportive communities for Virginia’s LGBTQ+ youth as well as training, education and awareness programs for adults. John lives in North Chesterfield, VA with his partner, their three children (and three dogs).

Korantemah Pierce Williams

Nana Korantemah is a certified MBSR Teacher through the UCSD Mindfulness Based Professional Training Institute. For more than 20 years, she has been an educator, counselor, and senior priest practitioner (Nana Okomfo Panyin) in the Akom Tradition, Ghana, West Africa. Korantemah is a  diversity and equity trainer for multiple organizations, in her life long passion to bring healing to the racial oppression in our country. As such she is a key part of UCSD’s Mindfulness-Based Professional Training Institute’s BIPOC MBSR teacher training. Her experience with trauma informed Mindfulness also makes her the perfect teacher for UCSD’s work with Survivors Empowered. We are so fortunate to have  her on the team

By embracing mindfulness meditation, Nana Korantemah serves as a bridge between traditional practice and modern existence. She remains humbled by the healing powers of compassion, forgiveness, and love.

Zayda Vallejo

Zayda Vallejo is an adjunct faculty member at Cambridge Health Alliance Center for Mindfulness and Compassion (CMC). She is a mindfulness instructor, trainer , and part of the team that developed the Mindfulness Training for Primary Care Group Leadership Manual. She is an adjunct faculty member at the Mindfulness Center at Brown University School of Public Health. For the past 18 years Zayda has served as a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) instructor, teacher, and supervisor of professionals who aspire to teach MBSR at the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society (CFM). She is now a senior teacher and trainer at the UCSD Mindfulness-Based Professional Training Institute, invloved in our “Diverse communities” teacher training, to devlop a group of BIPOC MBSR Teachers . After years of workng closely with Jon Kabat-Zinn and other developers of MBSR at the birthplace of this program, UCSD MBPTI is honored and fortunate to have her on our team. Originally from Colombia, her presence  also supports our commitment to diversity . Zayda is a Trauma informed Mindfulness teachre which makes her a key part of our MBSR program for Survivors Empowered.