Contemplative Studies

Afton Muir

(She/Her)

Instructor

Afton Muir, RYT 500 fell in love with yoga and Buddhist meditation in 2003, and has nurtured sincere curiosity and devotion ever since. She holds a Bachelor's degree from the Evergreen State College, with an emphasis in east asian philosophy and consciousness studies. 

She is a mindfulness coach for women specializing in nervous system fluency and self-compassion. Afton is working towards an MS in clinical counseling with an emphasis in somatic psychotherapy. 

Afton is a meditation practitioner with roots in the Theravada (Insight) tradition and an enduring love for non-dual philosophy. Afton is deeply grateful to her teachers, including El Wells and Justin Michelson, for their precious guidance. 

Elise Bennett

(She/Her)

CSI Collaborative Assistant

Elizabeth Nguyen

(She/Her)

CSI Collaborative Assistant

Elizabeth is an undergraduate double majoring in Philosophy and Education with a keen interest in Literature. She was born and raised in the Roman Catholic faith, which piqued in her a curiosity about the nature of the universe, existence, and humanity– and led her to the pursuit of authentic, or “good” life through the study of Philosophy. A student of Stoicism, she studies the tradition along with the philosophies of death, leisure, faith connection, and education. In 2023 she founded the Death and Dying Club at Oregon State, sits on the council of the Philosophy Club, and is a PRAx 23’-24’ Art-Sci Fellow.

Beyond her contemplative work, Elizabeth supports students as an Academic Coach with the ASC and as a Peer Mentor for the Education Program. In her personal time, she is an illustrator on commission and enjoys games, reading, and good coffee.

Geoff Barstow

(He/Him)

Instructor

Hemant Bhanoo

(He/Him)

Instructor

Hemant is a father, meditator, engineer, investor, and founder. Hemant began meditating over 30 years ago; He sat his first 10-day-silent retreat in the Goenka/Vipassana tradition in 2007, continues to sit in that tradition, and goes on retreat whenever he builds up the courage to ask his wife for 10 days away.

He facilitated “Search Inside Yourself” (SIY), a mindfulness and leadership class developed at Google while he was an engineer there. Hemant then taught SIY to executives at organizations (governments, corporations, non-profits) worldwide. He also helped train mindfulness teachers and was an executive at SIYLI.org, a non-profit that makes the SIY curriculum available outside of Google. His current startup brings meditators together every day. The Bhanoo family moved to Corvallis in June 2022

Jessica Mylan

(She/Her)

 Instructor & Collaborative Assistant

Jessica, RYT 200, has over four years of teaching experience. She has been practicing yoga and meditation for about 10 years. Her classes invite playfulness and intuitive movement; they also provide opportunities to deepen a philosophical and somatic appreciation of yoga. 

She is a recent graduate of the Applied Ethics masters program at Oregon State University, where she centered her research on contemplative ethical frameworks in support of eco-conscious tourism. She also provides administrative support for the Contemplative Studies Initiative in addition to teaching at Marigold. Alongside these academic and professional pursuits, Jessica appreciates sustainable travel, discovering waterfalls, taming houseplants, and networking with wonderful people.

Joseph Bailey

(He/Him)

Instructor

Joseph Bailey’s wisdom traditions inquiry spans over 50 years. It began in the early 1960’s as a child living in Japan as a secular Christian within a military culture. Retreats in India in the early 80’s deepened his practice. The last 30 years’ primary focus has been in the Buddhist tantric and dozoghcen traditions (Tibetan and Indian). He completed a variety of foundational practices and long individual retreats within the Tibetan Buddhist Nyingma and Dzogchen paths.
Somatically his path includes a variety of hatha yoga, pranayama and other Indian and contemporary movement practices. The mid-80s found him teaching hatha yoga in the Iyengar and Ashtanga traditions. He has been a student of a variety of somatic practices and lately with Continuum and Imaginal and Ecstatic Movement. Through the 80s and 90s he was a mountain, river, and wilderness guide. 
Over the last 5 years he has studied nada yoga (sound practice within the Tibetan and Indian traditions).
Currently he is interested in the tantric and dzogchen wisdom traditions, ancient and contemporary somatic and sounding practices, and mythopoetic inquiries that help people thrive in concert with the more-than-human-world. 

Julie Masters

(She/Her)

Instructor

Julie's offerings are based in her experience and devotion to discovery of the Self, pursuit of insight, healing, beauty, and joy. She has training in holistic health, feminist spirituality, various healing modalities, and has participated in many workshops, retreats, yoga classes, and personal growth sessions and programs. 

Julie is retired from a career as a lawyer, where she wrote administrative law appeals in Oregon. So she has navigated the workaday world and also explored the inner worlds where subjective experience is valued. 

Julie has spent time doing inquiry into deep aspects of her experience, guided by intuition and respect, gratitude, kindness, and humility. With these allies, we can relax our defenses and tensions, sinking back into the beautiful background of spaciousness, finding natural rooted strength and unconditional support. The practice of inquiry is a free-form exploration of the present moment experience, following one's own resonance to discover what is true. In either inquiry or we-space practice we can restore our natural knowing that we are valid, inwardly connected, mysterious and alive. 

Kate Gallagher

(She/Her)

Marigold Director & Instructor

Kate met contemplative practices through postural yoga as a sophomore in college. It took a few years to develop an interest in the quieter, more still practices of meditation -- and the importance and value of embodiment work remains a vital piece of her practice and teaching. Kate's pursuit of yoga teacher trainings across the U.S. in 2009 unexpectedly landed her in the good care of teachers in the Geluk and Nyingma lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. It is in these styles of study and practice, and in the rich lineage of Indian yoga, that she has since found a personal, contemplative home - although, she maintains a great love for contemplative and mystical perspectives from many traditions.

Kate earned a Master's degree at OSU in Applied Religious Ethics, completed and taught several advanced yoga teacher programs, trained in the secular, research-based curriculum of mindful self-compassion (MSC) and in 2018, had the immense privilege to spend a year in a solitary, largely silent meditation retreat centered on shamatha (calm abiding) and vipassana (inquiry/insight). Kate works as OSU's Contemplative Studies Initiative coordinator, teaches courses in REL and PSY, and oversees the Marigold Center. Kate's approach to postural yoga, embodiment, and relaxation is dynamic, intuitive, and biomechanically mindful; her approach to meditation is systematic and relatively traditional, yet welcoming.

Lisa Wells

(Any)

Instructor

Lisa has been teaching yoga and dance for over 20 years. Lisa revels in the exploration of movement and the adaptation of yoga to bodies of different shapes, sizes, proportions, abilities, and histories.

Lisa has studied with many contemplative teachers most importantly Thich Nhat Hanh, Martin Prechtel, Sister Antoinette (Shalom Center), and Sheik Nazim (Cyprus). Their personal philosophy is grounded in a sense of rapture and intimate relationship with the natural world. Lisa's contemplative practice includes dance, yoga, meditation, hiking, walking, and playing her junkyard gamelan.

Lisa’s Contemplative Dance Practice is founded on the work of Barbara Dilley who developed the practice at Naropa University combining Improvisational Dance with Buddhist meditation. Lisa has studied with many postmodern dance innovators including Barbara Dilley, Deborah Hay, Keith Hennessey, Steve Paxton, Alito Alessi, Gabrielle Roth, Vincent Martinez Grieco among others.

In Lisa's first career, she was an Academic Geologist and Geographer, earning her PhD at Stanford University and then holding Assistant Professor positions at The University of California Berkeley and Vanderbilt University. In her dance/yoga life she incorporates this appreciation and understanding of place and ecology, working to break the conceptual barriers we have constructed between the human and natural worlds.

Sofia Gregson

(She/Her)

CSI Intern

Tiffany Bailey

(She/Her)

Instructor

Zoe Rosenblum

(she/they)

Instructor

Zoe’s yoga classes, inspired by Ashtanga and Dharma yoga, guide students on a journey through effort and ease. Following our breath through challenging postures on the yoga mat, we learn to return to our breath through challenging situations in life. Zoe’s classes are welcoming, meditative, and strength-building.

Zoe’s contemplative practices grew from a deep curiosity for the natural world. She learned meditation techniques in 2009 from Dzambling Cho Tab Khen which cultivated a deeper love for the world around her. As a gymnast, yoga asanas came naturally to Zoe and the spiritual dimensions of yoga deepened her mind-body-spirit connection. She completed 200-hour yoga teacher trainings in Ashtanga yoga with Marie Belle Perez Rivera and Hatha yoga with Alyson Shade. She brings 10 years of experience teaching gymnastics, as well as experience teaching yoga at Realignment Studio (Washington, DC), the University of Maryland, and the University for Peace (Costa Rica).