Presence Collective is a growing community dedicated to personal transformation, social justice and collective liberation. We are a collective of practitioners and teachers from diverse wisdom traditions and backgrounds. We are passionate about embodied and engaged contemplative practice.
All the teachers listed here are available for private consultation and support for deepening your practice. To make an appointment with a teacher, see the contact information in their bio.
Presence Collective exists as a way to uplift and support fellow teachers committed to our Vision and does not financially profit off the private consultations offered by these teachers.
Stay tuned for other potential collaborations to come!
Presence Collective Teachers
Michael Bode (he/him) is a meditation teacher and dedicated Presence Collective Sangha member who has studied extensively with Caverly Morgan since 2014. First inspired and trained in the Zen tradition, Bode has come to love a variety of orientations to meditation and spiritual practice, including working with the chakras and energy system, tea ceremony, and immersion in the natural world. He is passionate about spiritual practice being accessible to all, and has experience as a mindfulness instructor for Peace in Schools, a teen retreat mentor though Inward Bound Mindfulness Education, and a teacher and practitioner with countless Presence Collective events.
Bode offers individual practice consults through Presence Collective for both beginning meditators and those looking to deepen their practice.
Bode is inspired by the freedom that comes through examining and releasing patterns of suffering and separation, both personally and collectively. He has particular interest in the intersection of spiritual practice and the expression of masculinity and internalized patriarchy. As a white, cis-gender, male-identified practitioner, Bode is committed to the continual practice of uncovering and dismantling systems of oppression, internally and societally. Some of his notable influences are Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron, Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Rupert Spira, Lau Tzu, and Shunryu Suzuki.
Contact bode:
Suniti Dernovsek (she/her) is a movement educator, meditation teacher, somatic intuitive, artist and craniosacral therapist. She has been a student of dance, yoga and Vajrayana Buddhism for 20 years. She offers retreats, workshops, teacher trainings, weekly classes, online courses and private sessions.
Through years of study and practice, Suniti has developed an expansive tool kit to assist individuals in their personal practice. Each session is tailored to meet your individual needs and often include a combination of movement, breath work, gentle listening touch, meditation and therapeutic somatic dialoging. Suniti holds a container for you to access a heightened state of awareness and to be in a unique conversation with your body. The work that unfolds together brings you into an experience of being at home in yourself. You are the teacher; the expert and we allow the wisdom of the body to guide us. Through deep somatic inquiry students are guided towards a feeling of wholeness, integration and presence. We feel into new pathways and possibilities while unlocking habits that may not be serving us anymore.
Suniti’s main teachers are Lama Padma Drimed Norbu, Todd Jackson, Wendy Hambidge, Deborah Merkle and Carol Gray. She collaborates with many amazing teachers and has had the honor of working alongside Caverly Morgan on several retreats.
Contact suniti:
Dr. Claudelle Glasgow (Dr., Sir, all pronouns respectfully) is a Queer, first-generation West Indian/Haitian female-bodied human. Dr. G is a minister, teacher, protector, and student in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition. She discovered the dharma at 7 years old, began studying meditation through yoga at 19. This Human began more formal practice in 2004 in the Zen tradition within the Jodo Shinshu tradition in Chicago, IL, and later in 2007 with the Shambhala tradition, where they entered the vajrayana path under Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, began teaching in 2012, and was fully authorized to teach in 2015. She teaches the dharma in any space of need, at its intersections of mental health, trauma, embodiment, and race. Dr. G is also a practitioner of several contemplative arts including writing, storytelling, kyudo (Jap. "The Way of the Bow") in the HEKI RYU BISHU CHIKURIN-HA style with teacher Shibtata Sensei XXI, and yoga.
Professionally, Dr. G is trained as a clinical psychologist. She is in private practice in Seattle, WA where their work centers the healing and liberation of BIPOC through narrative, somatic healing, and ritual.
When working with Dr. G, you can expect that they are holding the view of your innate wisdom and its ability to co-construct the space as well as transform any obstacles you may be experiencing on your path. The space often includes some centering practice, a question of curiosity posed by the mentee, and some discussion integrating the dharma, humor, and its meeting with everyday life. Sessions are typically about 55 minutes. At the end of our time together, with hopes you leave with more spaces of curiosity, empowered, and some direction of how to explore it further until our next meeting. Cheers!
Contact Dr. G:
JoAnna Hardy (she/they) is an insight meditation (Vipassanā) practitioner and teacher; Founding member of the Meditation Coalition, www.meditationcoalition.com a teacher's council member at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, visiting retreat teacher at Insight Meditation Society, Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center and collaborator on many online meditation programs.
JoAnna was born into a Catholic family and has early memories of being drawn toward contemplation, quietness and inner reflection. All the while externally rebelling and pushing up against societal norms that keep many oppressed, marginalized and excluded.
Her inner turmoil led to causing external pain for herself and others. To help lessen the suffering she went on a search for some kind of peace. For years at a time she visited many different spiritual traditions, eventually finding a home in Buddhism and Vipassanā meditation. JoAnna is a lineage holder and empowered in the Theravada lineage through the Ajahn Chah and Mahasi Sayadaw schools. She graduated with seven years of teacher training through Spirit Rock, Insight Meditation Society (IMS) and Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society.
JoAnna teaches; silent meditation retreats, social justice based meditation classes and workshops, youth work, online courses and works with private students.
Her greatest passion is to teach meditation in communities that are dedicated to seeing the truth of how racism, gender inequality, and oppression go hand in hand with the compassionate action teachings in Buddhism and related perspectives to social and racial justice.
JoAnna works privately with students to deepen and tailor their meditation and eightfold path dharma practice. JoAnna is not a therapist.
contact JoAnna:
Michelle Johnson (she/her) is a social justice warrior, author, dismantling racism trainer, empath, yoga teacher and practitioner, and an intuitive healer. With over 20 years of experience leading dismantling racism work and working with clients as a licensed clinical social worker, she has a deep understanding of how trauma impacts the mind, body, spirit, and heart. Her awareness of the world through her own experience as a black woman allows her to know, first-hand, how privilege and power operate.
Michelle has a Bachelors of Arts degree from the College of William and Mary and a Masters degree in Social Work from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 500hr RYT. She has worked in several non-profits and served as an elected official and on many non-profit boards of directors. She has worked with large corporations, small non-profits, and community groups, including the ACLU-WA, Duke University, Google, This American Life, The Center for Equity and Inclusion, Eno River Unitarian Universalist Church, Lululemon, and many others. Michelle published Skill in Action: Radicalizing Your Yoga Practice to Create a Just World in 2017; she teaches workshops in yoga studios and community spaces nationwide. She is on the faculty of Off the Mat Into the World, and she serves as the Co-Director of 18 Springs Healing Center in Winston-Salem, NC. Michelle was a Tedx speaker at Wake Forest University in 2019, and she has been interviewed on several podcasts in which she explores the premise and foundation of Skill in Action, along with creating ritual in justice spaces, our divine connection with nature and Spirit, and how we as a culture can heal.
Michelle leads courageously from the heart with compassion and a commitment to address the heartbreak dominant culture causes for many because of the harm it creates. She inspires change that allows people to stand in their humanity and wholeness in a world that fragments most of us. Whether in an anti-oppression training, yoga space, individual or group intuitive healing session, the heart, healing and wholeness are at the center of how she approaches all of her work in the world.
Areas of intersection within Michelle’s work include social justice and yoga, and an understanding of how traumatic white supremacy and oppression are in this culture. I have come to describe my work as grief work. Most of it has to do with us unearthing what has been buried and is causing us harm. I make space for grieving in my facilitation. I am also a licensed clinical social worker.
What someone might expect from a consult with Michelle:
For more than 19 years, I worked with Dismantling Racism Works as a lead trainer training organizations and communities about personal, institutional and cultural racism. Now, I am working as an independent consultant with various trainers from all over the country. I design processes for organizations that focus on deepening your understanding of our shared history, relative to oppression and privilege.
All forms of oppression intersect and we cannot achieve equity in one arena without creating justice in all. I include mindfulness practice in race equity training to allow people to begin to understand and feel the impact of white supremacy and racism on the physical body, mind, heart and spirit. Mindfulness is about being fully present in the moment, the here and now. It is about being connected to what is going on inside of us and around us. It enables us to arrive in a grounded place with centered awareness, where we are able to be responsive instead of reactive and where we can engage in social change in a courageous way. Mindfulness skills allow us to begin to deepen our understanding of identity and intersectionality, how we approach our organizational and organizing work, how we frame a social change issue and who we involve in defining a path forward to address inequity and injustice.
I work independently and with co-trainers on race equity contracts.
Contact Michelle:
Website
Email
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Instagram: @mysticcassandra and @skillinaction
Dr. Sará King M.A., Ph.D. (she/her/they) is a UCLA-trained political and learning scientist, neuroscientist, social-entrepreneur, public speaker, and yoga and meditation instructor. She has over 20 years of experience as a research scientist, and specializes in the study of the relationship between mindfulness, community healing/medicine, and social justice.
She is also the founder of MindHeart Consulting, offering up workshops, seminars, and evidence-based research projects based on the framework she developed called the "Science of Social Justice" - a way of both studying (researching), teaching (facilitating), and healing individuals and communities from the dis-ease of othering - informed by an interdisciplinary framework that merges medical and cultural anthropology, political science, ethnic studies, feminist and queer studies, interpersonal neurobiology, cognitive and affective neuroscience, psychology, socio-linguistics, and public health.
As a life-long athlete and lover of movement and dance as expressions of her personal spiritual practice, Dr. King has been an avid student-practitioner of vinyasa and hatha yoga, as well as a student of Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism for 15+ years.
Dr. King's passion for studying contemplative practices and yoga led her to complete the 200 hr. Awakened Heart, Embodied Mind yoga teacher training at Exhale Yoga with Julian Walker and Hala Khouri. Afterwards, she completed a 6-week training in the neuroscience and psychiatry of mindfulness meditation at U.C.L.A. through their Mindful Awareness Research Center. Afterwards, she completed a 5-day Yoga, Purpose and Action Leadership Intensive with Off The Mat Into the World, with Hala Khouri, Seane Corn, and Susan Sterling where she deepened her understanding about the relationship between social justice practices and yoga.
She has also completed a year long 500 hr. Advanced Mindfulness, Yoga, and Meditation Teacher training at Spirit Rock in Marin, CA. In total, she has completed 77+ days of vipassana/silent meditation retreat practice in the Buddhist/Insight Meditation lineage, and will begin training as a dharma teacher in the Theravada tradition at Spirit Rock this November through their Community Dharma Leader training program.
Through MindHeart Consulting, she teaches workshops on the relationship between social justice, yoga, and mindfulness meditation, most notably in the past at U.C.L.A., at Green Tree Yoga and Meditation in South Los Angeles, and as an invited lecturer/teacher with Meditation Coalition, The Yoga and Body Image Coalition, the Interpersonal Neurobiology Conference, the "Being and Doing Summit" and the Science and Non-Duality Conference, among many others. Her writing has been featured in LA Yoga as well as Voyage LA Magazine.
She is available for private mindfulness consultations (in person in Portland, OR as well as via Zoom), public speaking engagements, as well as seminars and workshops for groups and organizations.
Contact dr. king:
Janice Martellucci (she/her) is a white, female-identified, cis-gender, queer, able-bodied, mother, teacher, and student. Her contemplative roots started with her Catholic upbringing and expanded during her years working as a naturalist in the redwoods. Janice’s formal training in awareness practice began in 2010. She’s spent the last decade training in retreat settings and studying intensively with Caverly Morgan. Janice’s teachings have also been influenced by Rainer Maria Rilke, Wangari Maathai, St. Francis of Assisi, Rupert Spira, Cheri Huber, Rev. angel Kyodo williams, and Rachel Carson, to name a few. Janice has 5 years of experience teaching mindfulness to teens and adults through Peace in Schools. Through Presence Collective, she offers workshops and consultations that focus on what it means to embody and integrate the teachings into daily life. Janice brings extensive experience working with a variety of tools and contemplative technologies the practice offers. Her passion is supporting herself and others in ending suffering and realizing the love and possibility inherent in us all. She loves working with those brand new to practice and those who have been practicing for years. Areas of intersection for Janice include marriage and relationships, the enneagram, environment and climate, sexuality, parenting, loss, adolescence, young adulthood, and religion. Janice lives with her wife, son, and small cat just outside of Philadelphia. She’s available for video consultations by appointment.
Contact Janice:
David Perrin (he/him) is a meditation teacher and mentor. Meditation, the contemplative path, and service have been at the crux of my life since my youth. Born in Rochester NY, raised in Connecticut, I attended public and private schools, and a Reform Judaism synagogue. I currently identify as white, heterosexual, able-bodied, with financial and educational privileges, using he/him/his pronouns.
For over two decades I have practiced and studied in the Shambhala tradition. In addition to teaching in Shambhala, I have served as MNDFL Lead Teacher and Director of MNDFL Teacher Training, as well as cofounder of MNDFL ED schools-based program. I have taught at the Institute for Compassionate Leadership, the 200hr Teaching Mindfulness Teacher Training with Shanté Smalls and Ethan Nichtern, and throughout New York City at schools, corporations, and nonprofits.
Everything I do in life relates to meditation and dharma. My householder life includes being a husband, and a father of three children. I have worked or participated in many diverse fields: from athletics to social justice activism, theatre, community gardening, social service, residential healthcare, philanthropy, woodworking and craft arts, environmental stewardship, education, psychotherapy and more. I am formally trained and licensed in NYS as creative arts therapist. I am also a trustee at the Perrin Foundation dedicated to supporting youth-directed social change in Connecticut and beyond. I am committed to anti-racism and anti-oppression in all spheres of life, particularly in meditation and spiritual communities.
I am available to mentor students who have experience with meditation and seek to deepen their practice and understanding.
Contact David:
La Sarmiento (they/them)
I am an immigrant, non-binary, Filipinx-American who grew up in a family that believed that assimilating into dominant culture was the way to survive in this country. That story played within me into my early adulthood. It was not until I found the Dharma that I began to sit with all the internalized oppression that informed how I lived my life, which was no longer working for me. I needed to realize who I truly was and to begin accepting the identities I had long rejected. In doing so I found a greater sense of inner strength and acceptance through the courage of my ancestors and of my own innate goodness.
I have practiced Vipassana meditation since 1998 and often refer to myself as an accidental Dharma teacher as it was not at all on my livelihood radar screen. I see teaching as a practice, one that calls me to constantly challenge my ego, surrender to the truth of what lives within me, and to share that generously with others.
I feel my vocation on this path of awakening is to unapologetically be fully who I am with as much grace, skill, compassion, and wisdom as I can. And with that, may I empower all who are healing from the beliefs that there is something innately wrong with them, that they are not enough, and that they do not deserve love. Especially for those of us who are oppressed and marginalized in this society.
As a young child, I never imagined my adult self ever saying, “I am so grateful to have been born in this incarnation of body, heart, and mind.” The transformation of the challenges and beliefs I carried for so long has led to an inner liberation that transcends all that the world around me wants to have me believe otherwise. That to me is true freedom.
I am a teacher with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, DC (IMCW) and the guiding teacher for the IMCW People of Color and LGBTQIA+ Sanghas. I teach LGBTQIA+ retreats for the Garrison Institute in NY and Young Adults Retreats at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in CA and various other retreats all around the US. I am a mentor for the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program (MMTCP) with Tara Brach & Jack Kornfield. I am a former lead teacher for the VA Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (iBme) teen retreats.
I recently retired from 30 years of practicing bodywork and Reiki and live a blessed life with my partner Wendy and our rescue pups Annabel and Bader in Towson, MD.
contact la:
Latifa Till (she/her)
“Your task is not to seek for Love, but rather to seek for and find all the barriers you have built within yourself against it.” —Jelaluddin Rumi, 13th c. Persian poet
I consider myself an explorer of the mysteries of the human heart. Love, ease, joy and beauty are our natural state, and I’ve found it useful to notice, and to be kind with, what gets in the way of these. This Rumi quote is a lovely reflection of my spiritual path.
I found myself drawn into the contemplative path 28 years ago through the Sufi doorway. I was pregnant, about to become a single mother, scared and hungry for some some thing that I couldn’t name nor understand. As I look back, I can now see that I was yearning for deep connection--with myself and others--as well as union with the all-embracing ever unfolding Source of Love. I found myself walking in the footsteps of ancient contemplatives who had gone before, and my life was forever altered, my awareness expanding to realize Love. Since that time, I’ve also found nourishment working with Zen, Vipassana and non-dual teachings.
As part of the Clergy Collective on August 11 and 12, 2017, I looked into the hundreds of faces during the torch march and riots here in Charlottesville, and I was profoundly struck by the fear and separation I saw. It was my clarion call for turning my attention to my own white privilege, white fragility and my relationship to social justice.
I’m a Sheikha (senior teacher) with the Sufi Ruhaniat International, a senior Dance Leader with the Dances of Universal Peace, a Semazan (whirling dervish), and I study Japanese Tea Ceremony. Making music is an important part of my tapestry.
I teach meditation at the local maximum-security women’s prison and have served as an online meditation mentor for thousands of practitioners from around the planet. I’ve also thoroughly enjoyed co-leading several retreats with Caverly over the last six years, weaving in Sufi practices and teachings.
I am most passionate about supporting seekers one-on-one to uncover what keeps them feeling separate--not good enough, isolated, unlovable--and help to guide them back to their own inner wisdom and connection. To remembering that no thing exists outside the reality of Love.