Shaila Catherine has been practicing meditation since 1980, with more than eight years of accumulated silent retreat experience. She has taught retreats since 1996 in the USA, and internationally. Shaila has dedicated several years to studying with masters in India, Nepal and Thailand, completed a one year intensive meditation retreat with the focus on concentration and jhana, and authored Focused and Fearless: A Meditator’s Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity. Shaila Catherine practiced under the guidance of Venerable Pa-Auk Sayadaw for eight years, and authored Wisdom Wide and Deep: A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhana and Vipassana to help make this traditional approach to meditative training accessible to western practitioners. She is the founder of Insight Meditation South Bay, a Buddhist meditation center in Silicon Valley (www.imsb.org) where she leads sitting groups in Mountain View and Saratoga. She also founded Bodhi Courses, an online Buddhist Classroom where she offers two online courses each year on topics related to concentration and insight meditation (www.bodhicourses.org).

Shaila Catherine has been practicing meditation since 1980, with more than eight years of accumulated silent retreat experience. She has taught retreats since 1996 in the USA, and internationally....Read more