Trainers, Supervisors, and Mentors
Welcome to the Trainers, Supervisors, and Mentors Page. Here you will find profiles for our iRest Trainers, Certification Supervisors, and IRI Mentors. If you wish to contact anyone, please click on the link in their profile which gives you a way to leave a message. |
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Gemma Adams Gemma is originally from Dublin, Ireland where she visits regularly. In 2018 she managed the first Level I Training to be offered in Ireland in 2018 and hopes to continue expanding iRest offerings in her homeland. |
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Paul Collins Paul founded Thrive Inside to deliver iRest courses in prisons. |
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Jennifer Cabanero In her spare time she runs wild with her two nieces, enjoys cooking (she used to be a pastry chef!) and spending as much time out of doors as possible. Through iRest, Jennifer has become aware of a deep sense of wholeness that has always been present and with this wholeness, an ability to fully welcome life with all of its ups and downs. What a gift it is to be working for the Institute! |
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Robin Carnes From 2006-2012 Robin was a yoga and iRest® meditation instructor for a Defense Department acute PTSD treatment program at Walter Reed Medical Center. Out of this work, she co-founded Warriors at Ease (WAE), which has trained over 700 yoga teachers to teach safely and effectively in military communities. Robin has a private practice focused on trauma, anxiety and other mental health concerns. She has many best-selling recorded practices which are widely available. Her work has been featured in the Washington Post, Woman’s Day Magazine, Huffington Post, and Army Magazine, as well as the award-winning documentary, Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue America’s Healthcare. |
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Barbara Eastham She is currently offering iRest to groups and individuals and working within a cancer wellness facility. She loves to offer the nondual practices of bodysensing, pranayama, meditation and personal inquiry in small group gatherings where participants share and learn from one another. Barbara lives in Calgary, Canada with her husband and has two, brightly shining, grown children. |
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Clearlight Gerald, MA, C-IAYT, E-RYT500, RPYT Since Clearlight first met her teachers and mentors Joan Ruvinsky and Richard Miller in 2004, she has been immersed in the study of nondual teachings and practices that inform iRest Meditation. She passionately shares these teachings and associated practices in classes, workshops and trainings, and supports students to reconnect to their deepest authenticity and wellbeing. For more information visit www.clearlight.ca Clearlight is also an iRest Certification Supervisor and Mentor, a role in which she has engaged with joy since the inception of the iRest teacher training program. She brings warmth, insight and skillfulness to support new teachers in deepening wisdom and fully developing their potential. Clearlight lives with her husband and children in the Montreal area in Canada. And, in case you are wondering... she was indeed named Clearlight at birth! |
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Kirsten Guest Kirsten teaches yoga and meditation classes and works with her local physiotherapy clinic supporting individuals in their healing in her home town of Kimberley, B.C., and travels to lead iRest retreats and workshops throughout the U.S. and Canada. Kirsten loves to stay active in the outdoors in the Canadian mountain town where she lives, and can often be found on the bike and ski trails, or floating on local lakes and rivers. |
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Ross Guest |
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Larissa Haramis After living in a Zen Buddhist Monastery 25 years ago, Larissa began her search for a meditation practice that specifically helped people integrate their messy emotions, beliefs, and everyday stresses with peace and oneness; allowing them to flourish in their relationships and work. iRest is that practice. Larissa uses iRest in her Therapeutic Yoga practice, as well as in hospitals with terminally ill people, those suffering from challenging mental health, drug and alcohol addictions, and Chronic Pain. It is her mission to support Clinical Caregivers to nurture themselves, so they can continue to be a sustainable wellspring for those they care for. Larissa lives in the bushy outskirts of Melbourne, Australia, with her husband and two beautifully boisterous tween and teenage boys. She can often be found slipping into the forest with her dog for some peace and quiet. |
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Kathleen Knipp Profoundly influenced by the non-dual teachings of Jean Klein as offered through Joan Ruvinsky, Éric Baret and Richard Miller, Kathleen Knipp shares her love of Pathless Yoga body and breath sensing, the texts of Kashmir Shaivism and iRest® Yoga Nidra in Montreal and elsewhere in Canada and in the US. Having assisted in the development of the iRest® Yoga Nidra teacher training curriculum, she acts as a supervisor for its certification candidates and maintains a private practice blending her background in developmental psychology with iRest to offer dyadic yoga nidra. Co-translator of the Pratyabhijñahrdayam, a primary text of Kashmir Shaivism, Kathleen is responsible for the publication of the book, “The Recognition of Our Own Heart,” after the death of its commentator, Joan Ruvinsky. A former resident of Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, an E-RYT500 yoga teacher and co-founder and former director of Global Yoga Journeys, Kathleen has been fully absorbed in the study and practice of yoga for most of her adult life. She pursues her bliss by chanting, hiking and back-packing, preferring wandering in the woods and exploring the meditations from the Vijñâna Bhairava over most sorts of formal practice. She is rumoured to have good organization skills as evidenced by her alphabetized spice cabinet. |
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Sam Loe Combining the welcoming aspect of iRest along with functional, therapeutic, and restorative yoga, Sam has found an incredible framework and ground of Wholeness upon which to meet both personal challenges as well as orient students and clients to their own resources. The non-secular approach of iRest has filtered into all of her yoga teaching as she has become more and more passionate about empowering people to find a sense of agency through providing safe learning environments, invitational, and choice based practices and ultimately supporting people to develop their own self-practice. Sam’s practice and teaching come from a somatic place of listening deeply within and she shares this understanding through classes, events, and retreats both in New Zealand and abroad. For nearly 20 years, Sam has been orienting people to Wellbeing through yoga within many different environments and situations -- including schools and colleges, hospitals, mental health communities, those living with health challenges (including cancer, anxiety and depression), as well as specialising in working with prenatal women. She now brings all of this experience as a faculty member on the New Zealand Contemporary Yoga Teacher Training as well as offering mentoring as an iRest Certification Supervisor. Sam resides in Nelson, NZ where she shares an adventurous life with her lively 2 boys and supportive husband. |
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Stephanie Lopez, LISW-S |
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Beate Maaß Beate is offering iRest to groups and individuals alike. As a supervisor, she supports both German-speaking and English-speaking students through their certification process. Beate's first groundbreaking contact with non-dual wisdom teachings was in 1997. Following that, she studied and practiced meditation in the Karma Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Later, she completed her training as a yoga teacher BDY/EYU and GGF under Leopoldo Chariarse in the non-dual tradition of Kashmir Shaivism after Jean Klein. With iRest Yoga Nidra, Beate has found the thread that unites all the essential ideas that she appreciates and loves from non-dualism, yoga, and Buddhism. Beate lives with her husband in a small town in the Teutoburg Forest in North Rhine-Westphalia / Germany and has three wonderful grown up sons. |
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Ford Peck After years of exploration in nondual traditions such as Tibetan Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, and with teachers both in the US and in India, he found himself drawn to the depth and practicality of the teachings of iRest. He is a Senior iRest Trainer as well as an iRest Mentor and Supervisor. His passion is supporting students to find peace with their human experience and a true sense of being at Home in their non dual ground of Being.
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James Reeves James has been a practicing yoga teacher since 2005 and was qualified as a Structural Yoga Therapist after completing his training with Mukunda Stiles in 2006. From his clinic in Oxford James works with clients who are recovering from birth trauma, PTSD, sexual abuse and depression, as well as injury and other physical ailments. He teaches Yoga Nidra at TriYoga London and regularly guest-teaches elsewhere -- such as at the Khiron House trauma centre. He also runs his own regular yoga classes, workshops, and retreats. His work is focused on helping us to live the essence of our true nature: welcoming, open, spacious and free from judgment and conditioning. |
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Rachelle Rice Rachelle discovered Richard Miller and iRest in 2014 and immediately began the path to Certification. She has been teaching weekly group iRest classes for six years and assisted at multiple Level I and II teacher trainings. A teacher in one form or another for twenty years, there is nothing Rachelle would rather share now than the gift of welcoming ourselves in the nondual tradition. Rachelle’s deepest desire is to live fully alive as Presence in the beautiful, hard, infinitely mysterious moments that make up Life. She currently resides in her native country of West Texas and gardening, Paleo baking and being outdoors are what she calls fun. However, her greatest delight presently is her journey as foster-to-adopt mama to precious 18 month old James, who has also become her number one teacher. |
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Julie Seibt iRest forms the loving foundation of her work with groups and private clients as well as her personal life. Julie offers retreats internationally and has enjoyed the privilege of co-facilitating iRest retreats with Anne Douglas, as well as staff managing and assisting at iRest teacher trainings. Julie’s spiritual inquiry was heightened through practice at Vipassana retreats in Thailand, Burma and Hawaii. Since 2010, Julie has regularly contributed as a teaching assistant to Michele McDonald and Steven Smith of Vipassana Hawaii. Julie offers a deep bow of gratitude to Anne Douglas, Richard Miller, Michele McDonald and Steven Smith for pointing her home to a sense of ease, well-being and joyful, loving presence. |
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Sheila Singh Sheila loves being outdoors in nature, hiking and traveling, and especially spending time with her two teenage girls who carry her heart and continue to be her greatest guides. |
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Karen Soltes, LCSW, RYT, C-IAYT Karen taught iRest at the Washington DC VA Hospital as part of the Integrated Health and Wellness Program for 8 years. There, she observed iRest alleviating the symptoms of PTSD, Substance Abuse, Anxiety, Depression, and Chronic Pain. She is also a founding partner of Warriors at Ease, whose mission is to train yoga and meditation teachers to work in military communities. She currently resides in Durango, Colorado where she hikes, bikes, and savors the outdoors. One of her passions is taking the practices of yoga and meditation to populations that typically do not have access, including: the military, the homeless, and kids/adults with developmental challenges. Her hero is Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, who has the coolest pair of shoes around and discovers that what she was really seeking was there all along. |
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Fuyuko Toyota For the past 20 years she has been deeply committed to Awakening. She discovered iRest in 2006, and upon meeting Richard Miller in 2007, she recognised him as her true teacher. Her Dharma of living in Stillness has since become a reality. She currently serves as Director of IRI Australasia, with the aim of spreading iRest in the wider community of South East Asia, Japan, and New Zealand. Fuyuko lives in the spirit of Pronoia: the contagious joy and delight from Loving all and serving all. She is Japanese, lives with her Canadian husband Brian, three French Bichon Frises, and a cat named Tim Tam on the sunny Gold Coast of Australia. |
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Astrid van Wesenbeeck Besides the non-dual teachings of iRest, Astrid is inspired by the teachings of Moshé Feldenkrais and Thomas Hanna. In 2020 she will deepen her knowledge with a Somatic Exercise Coach training (with Lisa Petersen, IR). Currently Astrid teaches 4 iRest Yoga Nidra group classes a week, all of them combined with body sensing and somatic yoga exercises. Astrid's classes are unique and personal, organized to enable safe self-inquiry. Since the summer of 2019 Astrid left the city of Utrecht and moved with her partner to a tiny village in the middle of nature, just a couple of kilometers northern from the city of Utrecht. In her new home she has beautiful space to work one on one, including stunning surroundings for meditative walks through nature. Astrid combines her heart work as yoga and meditation teacher with a dynamic job at the Dutch National Library in The Hague, where she is an advisor for Open Science. In the academic atmosphere at her work, Astrid organizes two iRest meditation sessions a week for her beloved colleagues. |
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Sam Voolstra Sam's yoga and meditation journey started in Nepal. During the 12 years she lived in Nepal she was grateful to study with several yogic and Buddhist masters. She founded a yoga centre in Kathmandu and it grew into a beautiful community of Nepalese and international teachers and students with yoga classes and workshops in city studios and retreats in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. After moving to Australia to be with her partner Michael, Sam was diagnosed with PTSD due to experiencing natural disaster in Nepal. To heal she extended her yoga practice with iRest meditation. Not only did her PTSD symptoms disappear over time, she also felt more whole and present than ever before. The desire to share what healed her with others fuels her iRest studies with Fuyuko Toyota, Richard Miller and Leigh Blashki. Sam currently shares iRest Yoga Nidra and Trauma Sensitive Yoga at the Mental Health wards of Lismore Hospital, at a Drug and Alcohol Rehab Centre and at organisations that work with domestic violence, refugees and mental health. She also organises regular iRest courses, assists in iRest Teacher Trainings in Australia and works with trauma survivors in private practice. |
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Kathryn Willder Kathryn has been a student and advocate of meditation for most of her life. She trained in zen meditation whilst attending university and after completing an MA in Psychology, she facilitated the initial provision of yoga and meditation classes in prisons throughout the UK with the Prison Phoenix Trust in Oxford, England. Through many years as a Reception and Kindergarten Teacher, Kathryn has developed a playful approach to learning and aspires to infuse her teaching with aspects of stillness, imagination and a sense of adventure. “I love practising and teaching iRest because it provides a systematic way of combining the cognitions of insight and awareness with feelings of joy and ease to achieve lasting wellbeing.” |
