International Conference on Mindfulness With Youth:

Daniel J. Siegel

Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine where he is also on the faculty of the Center for Culture, Brain, and Development and the Co-Director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. Dr. Siegel is the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute, an educational organization that focuses on how the development of mindsight in individuals, families and communities can be enhanced by examining the interface of human relationships and basic biological processes. He has published extensively for the professional audience, including his latest book, the Mindful Therapist. Dr. Siegel’s ability to make complicated concepts exciting as well as easy to understand has led him to be invited to address local, national, and international groups of educators, parents, public administrators, health care providers, policy-makers, clergy, and neuroscientists. Please visit his website at: www.DrDanSiegel.com. View Books By Dan.

Catherine L. Phillips

Catherine L. Phillips, MD, is a psychiatrist and Clinical Lecturer in Psychiatry with the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta, where she offers seminars on psychotherapy and mindfulness, is a psychotherapy supervisor, and offers an elective "Mindfulness in Psychiatry." In addition she consults to the Canadian Forces (CF), where she offers a mindfulness group therapy program (MBT-Military), as well as teaches an elective in military psychiatry and rotation in PTSD to CF family practice residents. Introduced to meditation in 1982, Catherine has run over 22 MBSR programs, and conducts workshops and seminars for a variety of professional and public populations. Currently she is collaborating on a RCT on MBSR with teens, and anticipates the release of her audio CD "From Monkey Mind to Peace of Mind: Mindfulness Meditations" this spring. Catherine is dedicated to bringing the invaluable practice and benefits of mindfulness meditation into the areas of education, health care, and society at large. For further information, please see www.mindfulnessinstitute.ca.

Gina M. Biegel

Gina M. Biegel, MA, LMFT, is a California-based psychotherapist currently in private practice in the Bay Area. She adapted the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program typically for adults for an adolescent population, and is the founder and creator of Stressed Teens, a program using the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for Teens (MBSR-T) program. MBSR-T has proven to be an efficacious and evidence-based program for adolescents as demonstrated through her research published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology in 2009 and in Psychological Assessment in 2011. She conducts trainings, workshops and conferences on MBSR/MBSR-T with a variety of populations including professionals, teachers, parents, and teens in the U.S. and internationally. A more recent area of work is in bringing mindfulness into the California Elementary School system through her role as a member of the Research Advisory Board for Mindful Schools and assessed the effectiveness of such a program. She is also exploring brain-imaging work at Stanford University with adolescents who practice MBSR-T.  Ms. Biegel is interested in expanding MBSR-T into other teen populations in a variety of settings while assessing potential efficacy, and dispensing the MBSR-T curriculum so that professionals trained in MBSR-T can utilize this intervention in their own work. Through MBSR-T, it is intended that adolescents will reduce their pain and suffering and improve their overall functioning and quality of life. Ms. Biegel participates on the Board of a number of related organizations: Mind Body Awareness Project (MBA), Association for Mindfulness in Education (AME), Mindfulness in Education Network (MiEN), Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (iBme). Her first book, a workbook, entitled, The Stress Reduction Workbook for Teens: Mindfulness Skills to Help You Deal With Stress, is currently available as well as her audio CD, Being. Please visit her website, www.stressedteens.com, www.facebook.com/stressedteens, and follow her on Twitter @stressedteens.  Enjoy her blog on Mindful.org On Teen Life and her work on Sharecare.com as a Sharecare expert.

Randye J. Semple

Randye J. Semple, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of clinical psychiatry at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California. Dr. Semple provides teaching and clinical supervision to psychiatry residents and psychology students. Her research interests focus on the development and integration of mindfulness-based interventions in psychiatric clinics and school settings. She has presented at national conventions and published scientific papers and book chapters on this topic. Dr. Semple is Associate Editor of Mindfulness, a journal that disseminates advances in mindfulness theory, research, and clinical practice. She is past-president of the Mindfulness and Acceptance special interest group of the Association for Behavior and Cognitive Therapies. Dr. Semple is a clinical psychologist, a graduate of Columbia University, where she developed Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Children (MBCT-C), a 12-session group psychotherapy for children with anxiety disorders. Her path toward the development of MBCT-C began in 1990 with her own personal practices of mindfulness and studies of Buddhist psychology. She has studied with Buddhist teachers and scholars Ken McLeod, Dr. Robert Thurman, and Thanissaro Bhikkhu, has undergone intensive mindfulness training with Drs. Jon Kabat-Zinn and Zindel Segal, and learned cognitive therapy under the tutelage of Dr. Robert Leahy at the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy. The treatment manual describing Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Anxious Children is being published by New Harbinger Publications (Semple & Lee, 2011).
View Books By Randye

Laurie Grossman

Laurie Grossman received a BA in Spanish from the University of California, Berkeley, and spent the next 17 years in social service agencies running programs and fundraising for a variety of organizations serving low-income adults and their children. Laurie joined Park Day School as their Capital Campaign Coordinator in 1992 and launched the Community Outreach Program at that time. She created and found funding for the community outreach coordinator position that she now holds. Because of Laurie’s leadership, Park Day School now sponsors one of the largest public/private partnership programs in the country. Laurie’s most recent endeavor was launching Mindful Schools, a program to teach mindfulness in schools. Due to the success of the program, Laurie has been asked to speak about the program at a wide variety of educational conferences from coast to coast. Visit her organization at: www.mindfulschools.org

Amy Saltzman

Dr. Amy Saltzman is a holistic physician, mindfulness teacher, scientist, wife, mother, and devoted student of transformation. Her passion is supporting people of all ages in enhancing their well being, and discovering the Still Quiet Place within. She is recognized by her peers as a visionary and pioneer in the fields of holistic medicine and mindfulness in K-12 education. Dr. Saltzman is the founder and director of the Association for Mindfulness in Education, and a founding member of the Northern California Advisory Committee on Mindfulness. She has conducted research studies evaluating the benefits of teaching mindfulness to child-parent pairs, and to children in low-income elementary schools. She offers presentations and courses for young children, teens, parents, educators, and health care professionals. Dr. Saltzman also has a private practice in Menlo Park, CA , where she provides holistic medical care and individual mindfulness instruction to children, teens and adults. www.stillquietplace.com
View CDs by Amy

Wynne Kinder

Wynne teaches an average of 15 Wellness Works classes each week, reaching 125 - 150 youth (in predominantly special education settings). She focuses on bringing mindful awareness practices into schools, guiding behavior, increasing self-regulation and resiliency in students and teachers, planning and implementing teacher training, as well as developing K-12 curricula. To promote sustainability and support teachers, Wellness Works: Classroom Integration Teacher Trainings continue in all contracted districts as well as for pre-service teachers at Millersville University. Wynne has 16 years of classroom (public and private) teaching experience, is a PA certified teacher (K-6) and holds a bachelor’s degree from Alma College (MI). She is trained in Responsive Classroom, Mindful Yoga, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Boys Town: Social Skills for Youth, Yoga Ed., and Social Action Teacher Training – the Lineage Project. www.wellnessworksinschools.com

Jennifer Cohen Harper

Jennifer Cohen Harper is the founder and director of Little Flower Yoga, an organization providing yoga and mindfulness practices to children in New York City schools. Little Flower helps children overcome physical, mental, and emotional barriers to learning; empowers them to make healthy choices; offers them a space for experiencing joy; and gives parents, educators, counselors and social workers support and strategies to reinforce those tools.  Jennifer holds a Masters Degree in Education and Youth Development from the Gallatin School at NYU.  She is a certified Yoga Instructor, active member of the International Association of Yoga Therapy, and founding member of the Yoga Service Council, designed to help individuals and organizations empower their communities through yoga and mindfulness practices. Jennifer's inner child lies just beyond the surface, and her teaching is both intentional and playful. www.littlefloweryoga.com

Nimrod Sheinman

Nimrod Sheinman N.D. is a Holistic Naturopathic Physician, co-founder of the Israel Center for Mind-Body Medicine and director of the mind-body unit, Integrative Medicine Department, Rabin Medical Center, Israel.

He is known for his integration of mind-body, imagery and mindfulness principles within the context of 'Vis Medicatrix Naturae' - 'Healing Powers of Nature'. Over the last twenty five years he has taught Mind-Body Medicine, Imagery-based Therapy and Mindfulness Perspectives in Clinical Practice in hospitals, universities, centers and international conferences in USA, Europe, Australia and Israel.

In 2000, with support from the Israel Ministry of Education, he initiated the Mind-Body & Mindfulness for Schools Project ['Sfat Hakeshev' (in Hebrew) - 'The Mindful Language']. In the last ten years, the program has touched and influenced over 10,000 kids, teachers, educators and parents.

Nimrod Sheinman is the author of Food for Thought (1989, in Hebrew), and The Imagery Workbook for Clinical Practice (1991, in Hebrew), and is the co-editor of Potentiating Health and the Crisis of the Immune System (Plenum Press, 1997).

He lives in Israel with his wife and two kids, and can be reached at nimush@zahav.net.il

Chris McKenna

Chris McKenna is the Executive Director of the Mind Body Awareness Project, an Oakland-based nonprofit that has pioneered the development and research of mindfulness-based interventions for at-risk & incarcerated youth. He directly supervises and manages the delivery of mindfulness-based rehabilitation programs to at-risk youth in six different juvenile detention facilities and two aftercare sites in four different counties in California. In collaboration with Children’s Hospital Research Center Oakland, he is currently implementing a program at the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center which utilizes MBA’s mindfulness training program as a formal medical prescription for anxiety and insomnia for incarcerated youth. He is also working with Stanford Medical School to measure the effects of retreat-style mindfulness practice for youth in long-term detention. Chris has spent over a decade working with diverse communities suffering from high incidents of trauma and violence, first with two Amnesty International-sponsored projects that provided legal, medical, and psychosocial services to victims of torture and war crimes from over 20 countries, and then as Executive Director of Tibet Justice Center, an organization dedicated to providing assistance to Tibetan refugees, including many adolescent torture survivors. Chris has a fifteen-year history with mindfulness meditation and has taught mindfulness practices to refugees with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorder and other severe mental health conditions. He is on the Advisory Council of “Honoring the Path of the Warrior” – a project of the San Francisco Zen Center which teaches mindfulness and somatic awareness techniques to U.S. soldiers returning home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has a degree in Religion and Asian Studies from Columbia University and has had the good fortune to study with several excellent teachers in the Chan/Zen, Daoist and Vajrayana Buddhist traditions. He is also a lifelong student of Daoist Yoga, Qigong and the Chinese Internal Martial Arts.

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  Sam Himelstein

  Sam Himelstein, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of Engaging The Moment, LLC. He provides individual, group, and family psychotherapy to high-risk and incarcerated adolescents at a non-profit organization in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. He is currently the Research Director at the Mind Body Awareness (MBA) Project, where he completed his doctoral dissertation titled, "A Mixed Methods Study of a Mindfulness-Based Intervention with Incarcerated Youth." He is also adjunct faculty at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology where he teaches classes on research methodology, incorporating mindfulness into psychotherapy. Sam facilitates workshops, trainings, and consultations related to mindfulness, working with at-risk youth, and research in non-profit agencies, government agencies, and academic institutions.

Betsy Rose

Betsy Rose is a singer, songwriter, and educator. Her musical programs for children, families and educators focusing on mindfulness practice, mind/body awareness, and deeper connection to the earth and each other .She holds a Masters Degree in Creativity and Culture from the Institute in Culture and Creation Centered Spirituality, in Oakland, CA.

She is a founding teacher in the Family Practice Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center (Woodacre, CA), where she has developed songs, stories and activities for all ages which teach core qualities of kindness, compassion, honesty, and peace. She offers Mindful Music assemblies and classroom programs for Pre-school- Grade 5, and trainings for teachers in using music to enhance classroom stability, cohesion, cultural inclusion, and mindfulness. Her music is often included in the Mindful Schools elementary age programs, and in their adult trainings. She is the creator of Gardensong, a musical companion program for schools and community gardening projects, with songs that enhance the lessons of sustainability, healthy nutrition and earth care. Betsy is also a music specialist at Cornell School in Albany, CA, and a frequent presenter at regional and national Early Childhood Education conferences. Betsy many recordings include Calm Down Boogie, mindfulness songs for children and families; Motherlight, songs of the journey of parenting; and Heart of a Child, featuring music from her parenting and educator workshops.

Betsy Rose lives in Berkeley California with her partner David Stark, and 19 year-old son Matthew. www.betsyrosemusic.org View CD’s by Betsy Rose

Margaret Jones Callahan

Margaret is a Vancouver-based artist and coach, experienced meditation practitioner, clinical counselor, art therapist, and professional trainer who specializes in Mindfulness Based Education programs. To her training programs, she brings 39 years experience in innovative treatment approaches in the fields of art therapy and education, trauma and addictions, career and identity issues, leadership and coaching. Margaret has participated in a traditional three year meditation retreat at Gampo Abbey, and is a certified senior mindfulness-awareness teacher. With 30 years experience teaching mindfulness awareness meditation she has developed MBAT (Mindfulness Based Art Therapy), leads dharma art retreats, and offers a new program called Creative Paths To Leadership. Margaret is known for her warmth and humor and the accessibility and depth of her teaching.