Esther Chang, B.S., M.A., Advanced Certified Jivamukti

Will share: Yoga & Meditation

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Esther's yoga exploration began in the heart of NYC at the former Jivamukti Yoga School auspiciously landing her in the jewel of the Middle East at her teacher's home city of Beirut. What was to be a 3-month teaching residency in 2019 continues to be a journey in the growth of the yoga community in Lebanon and of herself. After a deadly blast in 2020 that nearly destroyed the studio and much of the nation's capital, and amidst the height of COVID, Esther remained steadily in place raising funds and helping rebuild the shala and the students she serves.

The ground on which she stands is where Esther meets all practitioners on their own trek through life's peaks and valleys. Her personal practice of meditation, asana, and karma yoga inform her classes and retreats, offering students a rooted and uplifting quality for personal and collective transformation. Along with an Advanced Certification in Jivamukti Yoga, Esther is certified in Trauma Informed Yoga, Restorative Yoga, Sivananda Yoga, and Yoga + Mindfulness for youth.
 Esther's 14 years as a volunteer camp counselor for children/teens living with and/or affected by HIV/AIDS and her time as a hospice volunteer have deeply shaped her understanding of interconnectedness. While teaching internationally, Esther maintains a steady karma yoga practice offering free weekly yoga sessions to young girls living in an orphanage in Beirut. Esther is immensely grateful for the teachings of yoga and meditation, and the continued guidance of her teachers Rima Rabbath, Deepak Chopra, and most beloved Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.

Vivi Letsou, M.A., Abhaya Yoga Creator, Zen Rocks Director

Will share: Yoga & Meditation

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A visionary and activist for positive change, Vivi returned to her homeland, Greece, from San Francisco, with her beloved husband, Eraj, in 2004 with a strong impetus to create and participate in enlightening communities. In her life and work she has been trying to integrate Yoga, Zen, and Tantric Philosophy, the spiritual paths she has sought to combine for over 20 years, while a filmmaker in California.  These practices have helped her to survive the arduous rollercoaster of working in the film & advertising world for two decades.  

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In the last 20 years, through her journey of teaching and practicing Yoga and Meditation, Vivi has been able to find a way of practice that makes us strong in all levels and helps us to triumph even in challenging circumstances.  Amidst the Greek economic crises, Vivi in loving partnership with Eraj, have managed to create successfully: NYSY Academy for Yoga and Pilates, and Avocado Vegetarian Café—two bright centers in the heart of Athens.  They are still creating another life-long dream, building Zen Rocks, a stunningly beautiful retreat center in Mani/Southern Greece, dedicated to maximizing our human potential through the healing practices of Zen, Yoga, Tantric meditation, Pilates, Fitness, Art, nutrition, permaculture, and restorative living.

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Vivi’s greatest joy is to welcome beings into an ever widening circle of friendship. Echoing the words of her beloved Zen teacher, Reb Anderson: “Enlightenment is the way we support one another.”

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Read more about Vivi here.

Jo Confino

Will facilitate: Circles of Sharing

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Jo Confino is a leadership coach, facilitator, journalist, sustainability expert and Zen mindfulness practitioner. He works at the intersection of personal transformation and systems change; working with several organizations including Leaders’ Quest and Future Stewards. His coaching practice focuses on supporting leaders within the climate movement. He is on the board of advisors for The Climate School and Force of Nature, a youth climate activist organization. Jo has worked closely for the past 16 years with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and his buddhist monastic community in Plum Village.

He is co-founder and co-presenter of the acclaimed podcast series ‘The Way Out Is In’ and is chair of the board of Parallax Press, which publishes books on mindfulness in daily life. Besides facilitating events and conferences all over the world for the past 20 years, he also runs smaller workshops and roundtables. Until recently, he was executive editor, Impact & Innovation and Editorial Director of What’s Working at the HuffPost in New York. During his five years there, he developed long-term editorial projects based on social, environmental and economic justice and was a member of the senior leadership team.

Jo also created and managed the sustainability vision and strategy for the Guardian and its parent company Guardian Media Group. He is a fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce and completed an MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice at the University of Bath.

Paz Perlman

Will involve us in:  Art Projects as Expression

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Paz Perlman is a visual artist who exhibits internationally and has taken a particular interest in how art can support our collective awakening on issues such as climate change and social inequality. Perlman grapples with feelings, urges, and memories within the unconscious, allowing them to surface through her art. Questions arise around identity and her relationship to impermanence, healing and transformation; issues that lie at the heart of her long-term study and practice of Zen Buddhism. After her graduation with a BA in Fine Arts from Central St Martins, University of Arts, London, she lived and worked from her New York studio, exhibiting in a number of galleries in the city.

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Nearly three years ago she moved to live next door to the Plum Village monastery of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.
Perlman last year created an art installation for a retreat of climate leaders’ at Plum Village and was recently commissioned to make large scale interactive art installations for a major symposium on the global commons at the Garrison Institute in New York.
Paz Perlman’s childhood was shaped by war, loss and migration. This has created an urge, through her works, to heal the space where time and events leave their traces and scars; a fragile and unfolding process of discovery.

Perlman began her career as a dancer and changed direction to become a sculptor. A decade ago, her personal healing journey inspired another radical change in her subject matter and process, resulting in works that express fragility and impermanence, represented in installations, collages, painting and prints using a broad range of mixed media and found objects.

Andrés Conteris

Human Rights Activist and Nonviolent Communication Trainer

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Andrés Thomas Conteris` family background is from North and South America. His uncle, Hiber Conteris, was a political prisoner for eight years under the military dictatorship in Uruguay beginning in 1976. Andrés organized a worldwide campaign on behalf of him and worked closely with organizations such as Amnesty International, Americas Watch, and the Committee to Protect Journalists.He graduated with honors with a B.A. in Peace and Global Studies from Earlham College in 1984 focusing on Gandhian nonviolence, human rights advocacy, and intentional faith-based communities of justice and peace. He was awarded the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to pursue the topic “Theology of Resistance”. He has an M.A. in religious studies from the Howard University.In 1985, Marcos Conteris, first cousin of Andrés, was gunned down by U.S.-backed contra rebels in Nicaragua. This led Andrés to dedicate much of his life to bring change to U.S. foreign policy in Central America. He participated in a nonviolent direct action in front of the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa in 1987 and the following year he initiated and organized an international nonviolent protest at U.S. embassies in Guatemala City and Tegucigalpa as well as the headquarters of the Pentagon´s Joint Task Force Bravo at the Palmerola Airbase in Honduras.Andrés lived and worked in Honduras from 1994-99 and worked as a Human Rights Advocate. He served as an active member of the Commission of Guarantors, assigned to monitor compliance of an accord signed between the Honduran President and leaders of indigenous peoples. For his efforts, Earlham College, honored him in 1997 with the Sesquicentennial Alumni Peacemaker Award.He is a Co-Producer of “Hidden in Plain Sight” (2003), an award-winning feature-length documentary film narrated by Martin Sheen that looks at U.S. Policy toward Latin America through the prism of the School of the Americas, the controversial military school that trains Latin American soldiers in the United States.Andrés has led a number of educational and action delegations throughout the Americas. He has been active with worldwide movements including the World Student Christian Federation, the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases, and the World Social Forum.Since initiating Democracy Now! en Español in 2005, Andrés has worked to build a network of over 500 radio stations throughout the Americas and Spain which air the headline news in Spanish of Democracy Now!´s War and Peace Report, a daily, grassroots, global, unembedded, international, independent news program.When the military coup expelled the president of Honduras on June 28, 2009, Andrés travelled there the following day to lead the first post-coup international fact-finding delegation. On September 21, 2009, he entered the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa to cover the return of President Manuel Zelaya to the country. For the next four months, Andrés filed stories from inside the embassy for dozens of independent media around the world and worked as a stringer photographer for Agence France Presse. By the time President Zelaya left the embassy on January 27, 2010, Andrés was the only member of the media left in Brazil´s diplomatic headquarters in Honduras. On that day, he was interviewed on Democracy Now! by Amy Goodman.Since 2006, Andrés has been part of the Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness program of the California Institute of Integral Studies. His passion for cosmology is something an elder traditional woman from the Oneida nation recognized when he was a child and granted him the name, “Shooting Star.” He is now working on a writing project which weaves the wisdom of the cosmos with the need for revolutionary change on planet earth.