VIMC teachers offer the opportunity for one-on-one practice meetings with sangha members. These meetings are usually scheduled for 30 minutes and are available to students with specific questions about their meditation practice or those who are interested in deepening their practice through meetings with a spiritual friend.
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Susan Dreyer Leon completed Vermont Insight’s first teacher training program in 2018. She has been practicing meditation in the Insight tradition since 1999, first at New York Insight Meditation Center and then at VIMC. Susan has served on the VIMC Board of Directors since 2014 and is currently serving as the board president.
Susan is the director of the Mindfulness for Educators program at Antioch University New England, where she has been co-teaching with Claire Stanley and Jack Millet since 2011. Her courses include Awareness of Body, Mind, Heart and Brain: Pathways to Change, and Using Buddhist Frameworks in Teaching and Learning. Susan is a full-time faculty member at Antioch University New England and her other areas of responsibility include coordinating the principal certification program. She is currently serving as Chair of the Education Department. Susan lives in Springfield, Vermont with her family.
Paul Rodrigue completed VT Insight’s first teacher training program in 2018. He has been a psychotherapist in southern Vermont for the past 20 years. He first practiced meditation in the form of centering prayer, starting in 1985. Regular practice with VT Insight began in 2007, and he sat his first-week long residential retreat in 2011. He served on the Board of Directors of VIMC for 6 years, including time as president. He has been active in developing new programs at VT Insight, including book groups, the Family program and the Beginner’s group.
Paul values diversity, inclusion, environmental ethics, respect, and reciprocity. In addition to Insight Meditation, his practice includes Qi Gong and the study of Chinese poetry.
Claire Stanley, Vermont Insight’s first Guiding Teacher until she retired from that role in 2018 and a former Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics, teaches meditation and reflective inquiry in the context of Buddhism at Vermont Insight and throughout New England. A long-time practitioner, Claire attended her first seven-day meditation retreat in 1986 at Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. After fifteen years of practice, she received training through the Community Dharma Leader program in the teaching of meditation and scholarly inquiry. That three-year program took place at Spirit Rock Meditation Center with Jack Kornfield and her mentor was Gil Fronsdal. Her main teachers have been Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Carol Wilson, the Venerable Sayadaw U Janaka, and the Venerable Tsoknyi Rinpoche.
In 2001 and 2002, Claire traveled extensively in Asia and ordained as a nun for three months in Burma. In 2004, Claire completed six months of intensive silent meditation practice at The Forest Refuge program of Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. She co-founded Vermont Insight Mediation Center in 2005. Claire is passionate about the development of kindness of heart and its role in all aspects of daily life through the investigation of non-harming and non-violence in thought, word and action. She holds a Ph.D. in Educational Studies with a specialization in reflectivity.
Cheryl Wilfong retired from teaching at Vermont Insight on June 2, 2024 after nearly twenty years of offering Dharma teachings to the Sangha through and extensive service to the community. Cheryl’s first 10-day retreat at Insight Meditation Society was in 1977. Other trainings include the Community Dharma Leader program at Spirit Rock and the Integrated Study and Practice Program at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and continued studies with Matt Flickstein, Shinzen Young and Leigh Brasington.
Cheryl has a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from Antioch New England, with a concentration in Mindfulness and completed an internship with Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program.
Cheryl is a devoted gardener and has written several books, The Meditative Gardener: Cultivating Mindfulness of Body, Feelings, and Mind–winner of 9 book awards–and Following the Nez Perce Trail: a Guide to the Nee-Me-Poo National Historic Trail with Eye-Witness Accounts, 2nd edition, Mindfulness Meets Breast Cancer was the 2019 Independent Publishers of New England Book of the Year.
Cheryl’s award-winning blog, www.themeditativegardener.blogspot.com is one of the “Top 52 Meditation Blogs You Have to Follow in 2017,” according to LoveMeditating.com
Jack Millett’s retirement from VIMC was celebrated on May 30, 2021, after teaching and guiding students since the Center’s inception in 2005. Jack has been a student of Buddhist meditation since 1990. He began his studies at SN Goenka’s center in Shelburne Falls, MA, and then continued studies at Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA. His main teachers have been Carol Wilson, Steve Armstrong, Joseph Goldstein, the Venerable Sayadaw U Janaka and the Venerable Tsoknyi Rinpoche.
In 2001-2002 Jack traveled extensively in Asia completing a three-month retreat in Burma, a pilgrimage to major sites of the Buddha with Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and a one-month retreat at Tsoknyi Rinpoche’s monastery in Katmandu, Nepal. In 2004, Jack sat a six-month silent meditation retreat at the Forest Refuge in Barre, MA. Before co-founding Vermont Insight Meditation Center, he was an Associate Professor in the Master of Arts in Teaching Program at the School for International Training.
