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 forty years. He studied with a wide
range of dharma teachers, has spent over two
years in silent retreats and has taken
dharma teaching roles since the mid 1990s.
Victor has an interest helping people
understand the varieties of meditation so
that they're in a position to choose what
works for them. He has had a long term focus
on environmental ethics, he spent two
decades helping manage a small overseas aid
organisation and worked for many years as a
counsellor.
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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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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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