Insight
Network Teacher Group
The Insight
Network Teacher Group is an
internationally recognised group of
experienced Australian Dharma teachers. All
teachers in the Group have fifteen years or
more experience in Dharma practice, have a
broad understanding of Buddhist perspectives
and the ability to see mindfulness and other
types of meditation in the context of those
perspectives.
In addition to time spent teaching
on retreats, each member of the Group has
spent regular periods on retreat as a
practitioner. These periods generally amount
to six months or more in total time spent in
silent retreats. All teachers have a
commitment to ethics, both broadly and in
terms of respectful teacher-student
relationships.
While teachers in the Group have
diverse teaching styles and different
approaches to the Dharma, each teacher has
been recognised by peers as having a solid
level of understanding. New teachers
are at times invited to be part of the Group
by a panel of senior teachers.
All teachers in the Group run retreats on a
dana basis.
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Bobbi Allan has practiced
meditation since 1974 with many teachers in
the Insight traditions. She studied
with leading US Buddhist scholar, social
activist and deep ecologist, Joanna Macy.
Bobbi leads Stillness in Action retreats,
which emphasise engaged Buddhist practice.
These retreats combine a focus on
tranquility, insight and compassion with
dynamic processes for reconnection and
positive engagement with the world. She also
leads “Natural Mind” retreats with her
husband, John Allan, using Jason Siff’s
‘Recollective Awareness’ approach to
meditation. Bobbi has trained in Mindfulness
Based Stress Reduction (Jon Kabat-Zinn). She
teaches mindfulness
in
schools, trains teachers to use
mindfulness practices for their own
wellbeing, and lead the practices in their
classrooms.
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Subhana
Barzaghi is both a Zen Roshi
and a teacher in the Insight Meditation
tradition. She is a resident teacher of the
Sydney Zen Centre and founding teacher of
both the Bluegum Sangha in Sydney and the
Kuan Yin Meditation Centre in Lismore.
Subhana's teaching emphasises liberation
here and now through the practice of calm
abiding and inquiry. She leads Zen and
Insight Meditation retreats in the Northern
Rivers, Sydney, Melbourne and in New
Zealand.
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Alan Bassal has been studying and
practicing meditation and Buddha’s teachings
for over 35 years beginning in India in the
Vipassana meditation tradition and then
developing in Eastern & Western Insight.
For over 28 years he worked internationally in
the field of management consulting and
organisational change and for many years has
integrated meditation and psychotherapy in his
leadership development work. Alan’s Insight
Meditation teaching is eclectic and practical,
he encourages people to awaken to each moment
and find the fulfilment they seek. |

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Ellen Davison has practiced in both
the Zen and Vipassana traditions for over 30
years with teachers in Japan, India, North
America, Hawaii and Australia. Ellen is a
Zen teacher in the Diamond Sangha Lineage
and teaches both Zen and Insight/Vipassana
retreats in Australia. She is a guiding
teacher at the Kuan
Yin Meditation Centre in Lismore, NSW,
and at Bay Insight in Byron Bay. Ellen is a
Psychologist and has worked primarily as a
counsellor in tertiary education.
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Victor
von der Heyde has been practising meditation for
thirty five years. He's spent over two years
in total in silent retreats and has taken
dharma teaching roles since the mid 1990s.
He was co-founder of Sydney Insight
Meditators and of the Bodhgaya Development
Association. He also trained in Gestalt
Therapy and worked for years as a
counsellor. His main teacher was Rob Burbea
from Gaia House in the UK. Victor writes:
These days my passions in teaching - and
practice - include ethics, exploring
the various responses to climate breakdown
and the ways that we get often stuck with
particular concepts of self and world. And
stuck with particular meditation
practices. My intention is to open up
freeing and soulful possibilities for
people.
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Winton Higgins began meditating and
practising the dharma in 1987. He took up
teaching meditation in 1995. In 2003, he
became a regular teacher at Bluegum
Sangha. He is a member of Kookaburra
Sangha, in Sydney's Inner West, and
also teaches at Golden
Wattle and Beaches
sanghas, as well as for Sydney
Insight Meditators, which he helped
found. Winton’s meditation teaching has
developed towards non-formulaic insight
practice based on the Buddha’s original
teachings, while his dharmic orientation
inclines towards a secular Buddhism. He
fosters interest in the original teachings
and their affinity with modern streams of
thought and progressive social commitments.
A writer and a social-science academic, he
and his partner Lena have 2 daughters and 2
grandchildren. His website
is here, and much of his dharma
writing can be found
here.
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Jess
Huon has been engaged in meditative
and embodiment practices since she was
seventeen years old. She has trained in
traditional Buddhist monastic settings and
also within intensive periods of solitary
forest practice. This training has taken
place in Asia, Australia, Spain, and the
USA. Jess holds a Bachelor of Creative Arts
and a post grad in the therapeutic arts
practice. She is a published author (The
Dark Wet, Giramondo Publishing) and when
based in Melbourne, writes and co-directs
for rollercoaster, a theatre company
comprising actors with intellectual
disabilities. Whilst deeply informed by but
not bound to tradition, her style is
grounded in contemporary life. Jess teaches
retreats in both India and Australia. She
currently teaches regularly with the Melbourne
Insight Group.
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Mal
Huxter is a clinical psychologist in
private practice and a Dharma teacher. He is
the author of Healing
the Heart and Mind with Mindfulness
Routledge, 2016. He designs and conducts
courses, workshops and silent
retreats. He has been teaching
mindfulness and the four heart qualities
(loving kindness, compassion, appreciative
joy and equanimity) to the general public,
clinical populations, therapists and other
professionals since 1991. As a psychologist
he is a teacher of MSC and CEB and trained
in a range of therapies including CFT. As a
meditator and meditation teacher he began
training in Buddhist meditation practices in
1975, living in Thailand as a Buddhist monk
in the forest tradition for two years in the
late 1970s. Though mostly within the
Theravada he has also practiced within
Tibetan Mahayana and Zen traditions.
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Will
James Will attended his first Insight
Meditation Retreat in the late 1970s with
Christopher Titmuss, this meeting kindled a
deep interest in meditation and a great love
for the Dharma teachings and practices. Will
is the guiding teacher at the Tallowwood
Sangha in Bellingen N.S.W, he regularly
leads retreats in Bellingen, Byron Bay and
annually in Bali. Will has taught at the
Dharma Gatherings in Australia and India,
taught the Australian Dharma Facilitators
Program and teaches Dharma Study and
Inquiry.Will's teaching lays great emphasis
on seeing into the ‘dependent arising' and
empty nature of all phenomena. This seeing
makes possible a deep understanding that
frees the mind and opens the heart.
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Patrick
Kearney is an independent
dharma teacher in the lineage of Mahasi
Sayadaw. He has trained extensively in the
Mahasi approach to insight meditation, where
his principal teachers were Panditarama
Sayadaw and John Hale. He has also trained
in the Diamond Sangha lineage of Zen
Buddhism, his principal teachers being
Robert Aitken Roshi and Paul Maloney Roshi.
Patrick has a particular interest in the
original teachings of the Buddha, before
Theravada or Mahayana were thought of. He
studies Pali, the language of the earliest
surviving Indian recension of the Buddha's
teachings, and seeks to bring his
understanding of the early texts to the
practice of dharma in the contemporary
world.
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Anna Markey was introduced
to Buddhist practice in India in 1983.
She took teachings from a variety of Tibetan
teachers and attended retreats with insight
teacher, Christopher Titmuss, the same
year. She has been studying the
Buddhadharma and practising insight
meditation ever since. Anna also
practised for a number of years with a Zen
group in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh
and in the Burmese Mahasi method of practice
with Patrick Kearney. Since 2007 she has
been studying with Jason Siff. She is
interested in the early teachings of the
Buddha and in using a gentle, receptive
approach to meditation to see into our
experience in order to bring about change
and liberation in our daily lives.
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NeLi
Martin practised meditation in the UK
for years, predominantly at Gaia House,
before starting to teach in the Western
Insight tradition in 2005. She was mentored
in the early period by Catherine McGee and
draws on the secular Buddhist perspective
developed by Stephen and Martine Batchelor.
Her teaching focuses on cultivating
awareness in body, mind and heart; exploring
embodied freedom. Neli has practising yoga
since 1992 and has taught yoga since 1998.
She also teaches other movement meditation
via dance and leads silent forest walks
(yatras). Neli is a registered psychologist
with a private practice in Brisbane and
Noosa.
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Radha
Nicholson teaches the
cultivation of wisdom and compassion through
insight. Her teachings focus on inquiry and
the non-dual nature of reality. Radha first
met Christopher Titmuss in India in 1975
where she participated in extended retreats.
She is a guiding teacher for Bay Insight in
Byron Bay. Radha teaches retreats in
Australia and regularly teaches with
Christopher in Sarnath, India, at the annual
Dharma Gathering. She is a Registered
Psychologist and member of the Australian
Psychological Society with a private
practice in Bangalow, in Northern NSW. Radha
is the mother of four children and also has
grandchildren.
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Carol
Perry has more than 40 years meditation
experience in the Insight tradition.
She is a senior teacher with Melbourne
Insight Meditation. In 1972 Carol co-founded
a rural community where she continues to
live. Carol is a long time social activist
on ecological issues and is passionate about
supporting cohesive and harmonious community
in all its forms. She has a
mindfulness-based (Hakomi) psychotherapy
practice in Lismore NSW and globally by
Skype. She teaches a dharma-based workshop
called Communicating Mindfully.
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Gawaine
Powell Davies has been interested in
Buddhism as a philosophy for more than fifty
years and has practised it for the past
twenty. He has learnt formally from many
Australian and overseas teachers including
Jason Siff, Stephen and Martine Batchelor,
Gregory Kramer, Patrick Kearney, Christopher
Ash, Winton Higgins, Jenny Taylor, Subhana
Barghazi and Victor von der Heyde, and
informally from numerous dharma buddies along
the way. He see dharma practice as a
path of relaxing and finally relinquishing our
sense of self, leading us to a world less
dominated by our desires and fears, with space
for curiousity, love and compassion. He
is interested in what the dharma can
contribute to the contemporary world and in
particular to rethinking social and
environmental issues. |

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Jenny Taylor has been a dharma
practitioner for 30 years, studying with a
range of teachers, initially in the Thai
forest tradition and the Mahasi tradition.
She began teaching 10 years ago and
participates in teacher training retreats
with Jason Siff. She lives in Alice Springs,
works as a visual artist and teaches art in
remote communities. She has a particular
interest in the affinity between
unstructured meditative experience and the
practice of creative arts.
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Lizzie
Turnbull has been engaged in Buddhist
practice since 1985, beginning in the Tibetan
tradition and later in Zen and Insight. The
approach Lizzie takes to teaching meditation
is open and non-sectarian, encouraging
embodied awareness, a compassionate and loving
heart and creative inquiry into the
possibilities of freedom. She has long been
interested in the integration of the Buddha
Dharma with the social sciences and
psychotherapy. She is a somatic
psychotherapist in private practice in Byron
Shire, Northern NSW.
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