Karen Teipel (KT) Waters, M.A., Ed.D. has worked for many years as a counselor in various mental health, social service, and educational settings. Kt has explored meditation, along with other paths of personal and spiritual growth, throughout her life/career. She found a home with Reflective Meditation where she continues this exploration and development that nurtures her…
Jane is currently retired. She started her career working in the field of affordable housing in Boston, Massachusetts, working for one of the original large owners of affordable housing. She moved back to her hometown of Portland in 1975 and continued her interest in providing much-needed housing in North and Northeast Portland. Jane became committed…
Charlotte August happily returned to Portland following forty-six years away after retiring in 2018 from a university job counseling and advising students. She became interested in meditation as a teenager after reading Paramahansa Yogananda’s book Autobiography of a Yogi, and soon thereafter experienced her first retreat and meditation instruction in 1969. A renegade practitioner and dabbler in…
Pam Crow, LCSW, is a psychotherapist in private practice and a published poet. She has been a meditator with the Pine Street Sangha since 2005, using meditation both in her therapy work and as a practice of self-care. Pam has taught workshops both locally and nationally for the past 30 years to mental health professionals. She…
Moline Whitson has owned and operated Harmony Yoga in the Hollywood neighborhood of Portland since 2004. She teaches several yoga classes weekly. Along with her Yoga Certification she is a TRE® (Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises) Provider and long-time martial artist, holding a 3rd Degree Black Belt in Mo Duk Pai Kung Fu. 2010 was…
Penny Ruff is a mother and grandmother, a social justice activist, a labor and community organizer and an artist. She has lived, labored and loved in Portland, Oregon for longer than she can claim to have done anywhere else. Drawn to meditation and the Dharma since early adulthood, Penny had become certain she could not…
Nelly Kaufer, LPC is the founder and lead teacher at Pine Street Sangha. Nelly was introduced to Vipassana (Mindfulness) meditation in 1978 on retreats taught by Ruth Denison and began teaching women meditation soon thereafter, as there were no female teachers in her community at that time. She co-authored A Woman’s Guide to Spiritual Renewal…
Generosity of spirit is something I admire in the people around me. Openness, creativity and bright energy seem to accompany those individuals who embody generosity. Some people have difficulty being generous with their money because they believe personal finances are separate from their life energy. This belief intrigues me … how can anything be separate…
Pam Crow is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who works in a private practice and as a consultant to the CARES NW program in Portland. Pam met Nelly Kaufer in 2005 when both attended a conference on Buddhism and Psychotherapy and she has been studying with Nelly ever since. Writing poems, making quilts and traveling are…
Carol Kast practiced clinical social work in Corvallis for 30 years, first working for Benton County and then in private practice. Upon moving to Portland, she wanted to expand her learning about Buddhist meditation, and to find a sangha. On the advice of a friend, she took an introductory class with Nelly in 2011, and…