Relational Mindfulness Retreat - Panama

Anthony "T" Maes was born and raised in the East Bay. He has practiced Buddhist meditation since 2003, including long retreats and practicing in a forest monastery in Thailand. He is a teacher at East Bay Meditation Center, Spirit Rock, and Insight Meditation Center, and Inward Bound Mindfulness Education, where he teaches retreats, multiracial liberation, and relational mindfulness.

"T" graduated from UC Berkeley in 2004, completed the yearlong Commit2Dharma program at EBMC in 2011, and the 2017 Facilitator-1 training with his mentor JoAnna Hardy and Vinny Ferraro. In 2018, he completed the 3-year Organic Intelligence practitioner training in post-traumatic nervous system resilience.

Devon is a queer woman who cares deeply about the power of mindfulness practice as a tool to heal and liberate. She has practiced meditation since 1997 and has been formally teaching mindfulness since 2010. Devon is committed to making mindfulness accessible to all, specifically people who have a experienced trauma, are recovering from addiction, and historically marginalized populations, including people of color, trans and LGBQ folks, people of size and different body abilities. She offers classes with the homie T Maes on trauma informed mindfulness. Devon is also passionate about using mindfulness to support white people in waking up to whiteness, power and privilege. She offers classes as well as individual support for white people who are interested in this work.

Mark Wax -(He/they) Has been a sincere practitioner of meditation and many different movement arts for over 20 years.  He is a certified mindfulness teacher through iBme where he currently works and wears a lot of hats.  He is a 500-hour certified Yoga teacher (through the Himalayan Institute and Spirit Rock Meditation Center) and loves to incorporate a multitude of yoga styles, martial arts, qi gong, and dance into his facilitation.  He lives in Santa Fe and his website is markwax.com

Makeda Gershenson is the Founder of Mosaics in the Making. Her key areas of expertise include Coaching & Education, Social Emotional Learning and Emotional Intelligence.

Makeda is certified as an emotional intelligence educator, academic coach for teens and a digital behavioral coach. 

Her collaboration with Milwaukie High School’s after-school program was awarded the 2016 Changemakers Award from Yale’s Center for Emotional Intelligence. Makeda supports New York City schools as a staff developer for Morningside Center. In working with Makeda to implement and sustain restorative practices onsite, one school site reported an 80% decrease in Level 4 and 5 incidents and a 66.7% decrease in suspensions. She has been a leading Mindfulness coach on habit formation platform, Coach.me, for 5 years, individually coaching over 400 clients from 32 states and 37 countries. 

Makeda is also a professional performer, having traveled internationally to perform both music and dance. Some of her New York musical venues include the Delacorte Theatre and Carnegie Hall. Makeda received dual degrees from Stanford University as well as a Masters in Education from the Stanford Graduate School of Education.