Sean Feit Oakes, PhD

He has studied in Theravāda, Zen, and Vajrāyāna Buddhist lineages, including training as a monk in Burma, and is authorized to teach Insight Meditation by Jack Kornfield. He completed the Dedicated Practitioner (DPP1), Mindfulness Meditation and Yoga (MYMT2), and Community Dharma Leader (CDL5) trainings at Spirit Rock. In addition to mentor Jack Kornfield, Dr. Oakes’ primary Buddhist teachers include Eugene Cash and Sylvia Boorstein, Anam Thubten, and Sayadaw U Janaka, with whom he ordained as a bhikkhu for a Rains Retreat in 2002. He studied Yoga with Alice Joanou, Rachel Shaw, Amanda Moran, and David Moreno, and taught mindfulness-based āsana and prāṇāyāma for 10 years. He trained in Somatic Experiencing (SE) and Organic Intelligence (OI) with Steven Hoskinson, and integrates the complex systems approach from OI in work toward a distinctively Buddhist approach to individual and collective trauma resolution. Sean teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and East Bay Meditation Center, and online with Insight Timer, Yoga International, Liberate Meditation, The Sutra Project, and other lovely orgs. He received his PhD in Performance Studies from UC Davis in 2016, writing on states of consciousness in Buddhist meditation and experimental dance, and lives in Northern California on the ancestral land of the Southern Pomo people with his family and beloved community.