Trudy Goodman, PhD
InsightLA is a non-profit meditation community providing high-quality mindfulness and compassion practices. For close to 20 years, InsightLA has offered classes, retreats, and special events that cater to both beginning meditators and those looking to deepen and sustain their practice. InsightLA is the only organization of it’s kind offering secular, evidenced-based mindfulness training and traditional Buddhist teachings within the Vipassana or Insight tradition.
Insight in Action is InsightLA’s social action arm – a community outreach program partnering with other nonprofits and schools to provide free online mindfulness training to vulnerable populations, teachers, caregivers, and first responders.
We strive to make mindfulness practices accessible to all communities with the intention to be inclusive across race, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, gender identity, religion, body size, ability, age, and class. We hold a firm policy that no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
Mindfulness is an intentional connection with the present moment that changes how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world. A dedicated mindfulness practice cultivates compassion, inclining us to treat ourselves and one another with greater kindness. Mindfulness is similar to learning a musical skill, it brings joy and grows with daily practice. Emerging research demonstrates that mindfulness and compassion practice remodels the brain’s physical structure in ways that build resilience and support well-being.
Whether your motivations are reducing stress, cultivating self-compassion, or peace of mind, InsightLA is a community where you can learn to live mindfully and find calm.
InsightLA’s Insight in Action program brings free online mindfulness and meditation to marginalized communities that would otherwise not be able to afford or have access to these teachings.
Insight in Action serves under resourced schools, health care clinics, and non-profits serving high-risk youth and those experiencing poverty. Hundreds of students, teachers, healthcare workers, and families have benefited from these mindfulness teachings by learning healthy coping mechanisms for responding to stress.
Our teachers are selected based on their years and depth of personal mindfulness training and study. Many InsightLA instructors have studied for extended periods with the leading teachers of mindfulness in the West, and trained as dedicated lay practitioners and monastics in all three branches of the Buddhist tradition in the US and abroad. Many of these same teachers are also successful doctors, therapists, social workers, educators, lawyers, media professionals, and business persons – and have unparalleled direct experience of applying the lessons of their practice to busy personal and professional lives.
