JAYA SHARMA

Jaya was born in the US, and spent much of her adult life in India learning and cultivating art, Dharma, and meditation. She is a gentle revolutionary whose meditation teaching incorporates Buddhism, Christianity, yoga, Advaita (non-duality) and Hindu mysticism, along with ecology, embodied movement, and the Japanese art of Jin Shin Jyutsu. Jaya started practicing meditation in 1985, when she also began her studies of religion and art at Harvard. An authorized Dharma teacher since 1998, she has taught over 250 meditation retreats to thousands of people. A pioneer, she teaches meditation through deep rest to contact life beyond ideas. In the 2000s, she founded the international nonprofit Open Dharma and co-founded the eco-hermitage of Dharmaloca to help people from dozens of countries discover and flourish on their own original paths. After offering Dharma “off the grid” at Dharmaloca for a decade, Jaya now teaches experiential Dharma primarily online—bringing alive ancient texts and modern poetry, traditional techniques and spontaneous insights.