Karen Redding, LCSW, PhD

Karen facilitates a community sitting-group in Laguna Beach as an ‘outpost’ of InsightLA in Laguna Beach, and presently serves on the InsightLA Teacher’s Council. She has several decades of experience as a dedicated practitioner at InsightLA with residential retreat experience under the primary guidance of Trudy Goodman and Jack Kornfield. Karen completed the Dedicated Practitioner’s Program at Spirit Rock as well as the Facilitator’s Training Program at InsightLA and has been involved in the Teacher’s Development Group at ILA for more than a decade.

For over 30 years, Karen has been in private practice as a clinical social worker and psychoanalyst, bringing a mindfulness-informed relational psychodynamic approach to both her psychotherapy and mindfulness based contemplative groups. She brings an integrated approach to the understanding of human suffering, trauma, & awakening to her work as a psychotherapist and dharma teacher.

Her photographic work, Travels Through Humanity with a social documentary focus on both contemplative themes and indigenous people throughout the world, has received attention in several art exhibits in Southern California. Her recent book publication, Ten Ways to Awaken the Wise Heart: A Photographic Journey, a dharma art book is organized around the 10 Paramis, with a foreword by Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman. This book combines her experience as a world traveler to the domain of being a deep listener with an attentive heart to the world at large as well as the world within. Find out more about Karen on her website: www.karenredding.com