Matthew Brensilver, PhD

Residential Retreat Teacher

Matthew Brensilver teaches at the Insight Retreat Center, Spirit Rock and Insight Meditation Society. He was previously program director for Mindful Schools and for more than a decade, was a core teacher at Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society. Matthew worked as a clinical social worker, serving severely and persistently mentally ill adults. He subsequently earned a PhD from the Dworak-Peck School of Social Work at USC. His dissertation examined the mechanisms of risk and resilience in maltreated adolescents in a large, longitudinal study in South Los Angeles. Before committing to teach meditation full-time, he spent years doing research on addiction pharmacotherapy at the UCLA Center for Behavioral and Addiction Medicine. Each summer, he lectures at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center on the intersections between mindfulness, science and psychotherapy. He serves on the Board of Directors at Spirit Rock and Insight Meditation Center.

Matthew Brensilver, PhD

The more attuned we are to our hearts, the clearer our ethical behavior becomes. So the more we actually become embodied, start to feel our body fully, to feel our heart, the clearer ethical conduct becomes. It’s like we become attuned to our own system in such a way that we begin to see that doing good feels good. And the kind of karmic loop, when we act out of alignment with our own deepest integrity, that feedback loop gets shorter and shorter, so we really feel it. And this clarity breeds more careful, non-harming behavior.

 
Matthew Brensilver, Sīla, Samādhi, Pañña

Matthew Brensilver's Upcoming Programs

Training Online Dharma Institute

January 11 - May 3, 2025 6 Sessions

Buddhist Psychology Training

18 CE Credits. Deepen your meditation practice and nourish your work with clients in this training designed for clinicians, counselors, and mindfulness teachers. Through meditation, Dharma talks, small group explorations, and clinical case studies, you will develop greater confidence in applying mindfulness-based interventions with clients while enhancing your understanding of Buddhist psychology and meditation practices that illuminate our minds, foster goodness, and transform habits that compound suffering. This training brings both sides of ourselves—patient and healer—together as we practice and learn in community.

Matthew Brensilver

Matthew Brensilver

Retreat On-Land

May 9 - May 16, 2025 Friday - Friday | 7 nights

Spring Insight Retreat

15 CE Credits.

Registration Opens November 13, 2024. All the time before you were born plus all the time after you die is almost exactly all the time there is. Yet we find ourselves alive, with a question: how should I live? We begin by listening deeply. Throughout this retreat, we'll sit together in the refuge provided by a 2,600-year legacy of wisdom and kindness. In the silence, we come to know the preciousness of life and the poignancy of the human condition.

Matthew Brensilver

Matthew Brensilver

Brian Lesage

Brian Lesage

Tuere Sala

Tuere Sala

Retreat On-Land

August 5 - August 10, 2025 Tuesday - Sunday | 5 nights

Young Adult Retreat

Registration Opens - February 19. Join a kind community to practice mindfulness and compassion. Give yourself a break from overstimulation and come home to the simple experience of being alive. In mindfulness meditation, we practice resting, looking deeply, knowing moment-by-moment what it’s like to be human. Some of us are hesitant to look because we’re concerned what we’ll find. But our practice shows us that the more deeply we look into experience, the more reason we have to love.

Matthew Brensilver

Matthew Brensilver

Cara Lai

Cara Lai

Vinny Ferraro

Vinny Ferraro

Hakim Tafari

Hakim Tafari

Retreat On-Land

October 16 - October 24, 2025 Thursday - Friday | 8 nights

Fall Insight Meditation Retreat

Registration Opens - February 19. Grounded in the Thai Forest Tradition, this Vipassanā retreat will focus on quieting the mind, opening the heart, and developing clarity and depth of practice. During our time together, traditional meditation instruction will be combined with a spirit of lovingkindness, and the retreat will include silent sitting and walking meditation, Dharma talks, and practice meetings with the teachers.

Tuere Sala

Tuere Sala

Eugene Cash

Eugene Cash

Matthew Brensilver

Matthew Brensilver

devon hase

devon hase

Hakim Tafari

Hakim Tafari

Dharma Library

Can't join us live online or on the land? Study and practice at your convenience with Matthew Brensilver through our new library of recordings, articles, and self-paced online courses.