Local Teachers

Rachael Cheang

Rachael Cheang has been meditating since 1997 and has studying with many different spiritual groups and Buddhist teachers. She first joined Shambhala in 2014 and is currently a trustee of the London Shambhala Meditation Centre. In 2016, she did an MSc. in Mindfulness and Compassion and is now doing a PhD researching the effects of mindfulness for people with alexithymia and autism. In 2019, she had a systematic review published about the effects of mindfulness on empathy and compassion in children and adolescents. She is a British Association of Mindfulness-Based Approaches (BAMBA) registered teacher, qualified to teach the 8-week Mindfulness Based Living Course and Compassion Based Living Course. She also began practicing Tai Chi in 2009 has been a qualified instructor since 2013. She lives in Northampton with her husband and their four teenagers, where she runs her own meditation group, offering classes, short courses, workshops and retreats.

Peter Conradi

Professor Peter Conradi is a free-lance writer and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL). His books include Iris Murdoch : A Life, Going Buddhist, At the Bright Hem of God, A Very English Hero, Family Business : a Memoir, and A Dictionary of Interesting and Important Dogs. In the late 1970’s Peter lived in the US as an Exchange Professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder. It was there he first encountered meditation.

In 1990-92 Peter moved to Krakow in Poland, where he was Professor of English at the Jagiellonian University ,and helped facilitate the pioneer Shambhala Training Levels there. In 1997 he took early retirement to write. It also allows him to travel the world leading and teaching Shambhala practice retreats. He has led many Dathuns and half-Dathuns in DCL, Poland, and Wales.

Merlin Cox

Merlin Cox held the post of Shastri or senior teacher from 2017-2022. He first encountered the writings of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (the founder of Shambhala) in 1977, and attended teachings given in London by Trungpa Rinpoche in 1981 and 1986. He attended Vajradhatu Seminary in 1988. He served as Co-Director and Director of the London Shambhala Centre from 2004 to 2011. He is a software engineer and has worked for organisations including Amnesty International and the BBC. He is married with one adult son.

Richard Danum

Richard read law at Cambridge University and qualified as a lawyer at Magic Circle firm Linklaters.  He has since changed career, working as a professional actor, starring in British independent film and on television.  Alongside this, over the last decade, he has specialised as an executive coach and facilitator working with a number of high-profile clients around the world.  Richard first came to the London Shambhala Meditation Centre in 2010, he is now one of our Meditation Instructors and also beginning his journey as a Dharma Teacher.  Richard is founder of The Mindful Group, bringing Mind Training and Mindfulness to businesses, and is also a qualified Co-Active Coach.

 

David Hope

David Hope has been a student of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche for the past 40 years. He helped establish the London Shambhala Centre in the early 1980’s. He set up Shambhala Training in Britain in 1983 and organised it for many years. Since then he has taught widely in Europe and other countries worldwide, including Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. He has been involved with Dechen Chöling, our residential practice centre in France, since its beginnings in 1995, as one of the first co-directors, and in many other ways. In 2005 he was appointed as Acharya or senior teacher for the Shambhala community, an official position from which he resigned in the June 2020. He continues to teach throughout the Shambhala Community, presently through Zoom events.

Jane Hope

Jane has been teaching since 1981 in the UK, North America and Europe. Born on the edge of the Pennines in the North East of England, Jane studied fine art and, like many of her generation became fascinated by Eastern religions and art. In the late 60’s, while living and working with an experimental theatre group and commune, the Exploding Galaxy, she started to hear rumours about an “interesting and outrageous young lama” who was living somewhere in UK. This was Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Jane worked for 15 years as a Bereavement Counsellor working with parents whose baby had died from SIDS (Sudden Infant death Syndrome). She has three published books, including “The Beginners Guide to Buddhism”.

Vinita Joseph

Vinita Joseph has been involved with Shambhala for over thirty years. She has enjoyed careers both as a family lawyer and as an academic in creative writing and brings this experience to her teaching within Shambhala. She has run meditation groups and courses for many years and currently works as a coach helping professionals lead more balanced lives. She lives with her wife in Whitstable.

Richard Hansell Knott

Richard is an actor and artist and has been a member of the London centre for over 20 years, completing several intensive retreats. Currently he is training as a teacher in this tradition, and is a meditation instructor.. He lives in a village near Canterbury.

David Morris

David Morris lives in London where he works as a chaplain in healthcare, with responsibility for staff wellbeing at a hospital. He writes, records and performs songs under his own name and with bands, and spends a lot of time fantasising about living somewhere more rural and rugged, like Cornwall, where he grew up. He has studied religions academically (at the School of Oriental and African Studies) and has been on a Buddhist journey since his teens, mainly with Shambhala for the last decade. He spent 9 months on retreat as a monastic at Gampo Abbey in 2018/19, and looks to Pema Chodron as a teacher alongside Anam Thubten. David is a Trustee of the London Shambhala Meditation Centre and has held various volunteer roles there in the past before becoming a teacher and meditation instructor.

 

Rachel O’Dowd

Rachel O’Dowd lives in Manchester, where she has run meditation groups and retreats, and visits London regularly to lead and participate in both Shambhala and Buddhist courses and events. She discovered Shambhala teachings while living in California in the 1990s. Her professional background is in graphic design and in adult education. Rachel is involved in climate activism and Active Hope (in the tradition of Joanna Macy) and has creative practices which relates to the Five Wisdom Energies and to Shamatha-Vipassana meditation.

 

Jim O’Neill

Jim O’Neill has been practicing and studying Psychoanalysis for as many years as he has been practicing Buddhism. He teaches at The Philadelphia Association and The Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, of which he a member. He is also a member of the College of Psychoanalysts and a training supervisor, supervising other practitioners’ and trainee therapists’ clinical work. His psychotherapy teaching has often focused on the relationships and the useful links between Psychoanalysis/Psychotherapy and Buddhist studies and practice. Jim started teaching Shambhala Training and Buddhist studies in 1994 and has taught extensively throughout Europe.

 

Jez Taylor

Jez Taylor first discovered Shambhala in 2004 and has been an active member of the community since 2008, holding numerous volunteer roles within the organisation, including Way of Shambhala Coordinator and Meditation Instructor. He has also held the part-time paid role of Centre Manager since 2014. He first became interested in Buddhism and Daoism in 1996 while working at a market research placement year in London as part of his degree in maths, finance, and management at the University of Portsmouth. His varied work life includes database administration, hypnotherapy, various management positions, clothing import, design, and merchandising. He recently qualified with a Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling and works with a counselling agency.

 

Llew Watkins

Llew has been practising Buddhism for 20 years with Shambhala, as well as with teachers from the Tibetan Kagyu tradition. In his twenties he spent two and a half years in solitary meditation retreats in India and Wales. He now lives in Putney and is a writer, visual artist and academic, with an interest in the meeting point between Buddhism and science-fiction. In 2022 he co-founded Black Mountain Meditation with Jesse Watkins and Cailin Burney-O’Dowd with the mission to create accessible meditation retreats in the Black Mountains, Wales.

Tessa Watt

Tessa Watt has been practising meditation with the London Shambhala Centre for 30 years, and was appointed as a senior teacher in 2017. Tessa has had a varied career: she was a Research Fellow in History at Cambridge University, and then for 16 years she was a Producer with BBC Radio, making documentary features. Since 2009 she’s been a full-time mindfulness teacher, offering courses for the general public and in workplaces, including many leading global companies. She teaches MPs and staff in the Houses of Parliament, and she led an inquiry into ‘Mindfulness in the Workplace’ for the All-party Parliamentary Group for Mindfulness. Tessa is an Associate of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre and has taught at SOAS, University of London on their MA in Traditions of Yoga and Meditation. She is the author of A Practical Guide to Mindfulness and Mindful London. She lives in Balham and has two daughters.