Jill Satterfield

Jill Satterfield has been a quiet pioneer in the integration of embodied awareness practices and Buddhist teachings for over 35 years. Her heart/mind and body approach developed from somatic and contemplative psychology, 37 years of Buddhist study, extensive meditation retreat time, and decades of living with chronic pain.

At the invitation of her primary teacher, Ajahn Amaro, Jill was the first person to offer mindful movement and somatic practices on silent retreats—first at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and then the Insight Meditation Society 30 years ago. She has since developed teacher trainings and mentoring programs that integrate embodied awareness with Dharma.

In addition to teaching embodiment and Dharma with Ajahn Amaro, she was also invited to teach on Tsoknyi Rinpoche’s retreats in the US and Nepal. It was at his urging that she began teaching subtle body practices to his students. She contributed movement and subtle body practices to his brother Mingyur Rinpoche’s retreats and was a consultant for his 2 best-selling books.

Jill’s Applied Embodied Mindfulness Trainings were part of UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center. She was on the faculty for Spirit Rock’s Mindful Yoga and Meditation Training, was a mentor for Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach’s Mindfulness Teacher Training, the scholar and teacher in residence at Kripalu Center in 2003, and is a graduate of the Sati Center’s Buddhist Chaplaincy Training.

Her organization, School for Compassionate Action, was a training and service organization that taught mindfulness and somatic practices for chronic pain, illness, and post 9/11 trauma in NYC hospitals and at-risk facilities for over ten years.

She has been featured in and has written for numerous publications such as Tricycle, Lion’s Roar (who named her one of the 4 leading mindful movement teachers in the country), and the New York Times. She contributed to the book “Freeing the Body: Freeing the Mind” by Michael Stone.