Jess Stein

Jess offers retreats that combine mindfulness, nature connection and creativity. She has been facilitating mindfulness spaces since 2012, initially as part of the Plum Village tradition and for the last six years at Sharpham Barn, House and Woodland. 

Reverence for nature informs all that Jess does. Initially trained as a yoga teacher all that she teaches takes its inspiration from the organic shapes of the human body and the forms and patterns of the natural world. She offers practices that awaken each person's unique capacity for awareness, creativity and connection. The spaces she holds are welcoming, intuitive and gently transformative.

Alongside retreats, Jess is a palliative care nurse and holds a degree in English Literature. Eternally curious, she has completed training in Dru Yoga, Scaravelli Inspired Yoga, Creative Writing and meditation, Embodied Anatomy, Nature Connection and Cultural Repair, Qi Gong, Adaptive Yoga, Yoga for Women’s Health and much more

Jo Gosling

Jo has over 30 years’ experience in the NHS, initially as a Macmillan nurse in cancer care then, as a Clinical Psychologist. She has a longstanding mindfulness practice and has undergone extensive training with teachers from Bangor and Exeter Universities.

She has regular mentoring and attends silent meditation retreats to deepen her practice. As a freelance mindfulness teacher she has delivered numerous MBCT groups for people with recurrent depression at the Mood Disorders Centre, University of Exeter and been supervisor to trainee mindfulness teachers.

A personal health crisis, combined with training to teach Mindful Self-Compassion (with Chris Germer and Kristin Neff) led to a change of direction in life and she has completed an MA in Fine Art. A natural follow-on was to combine the two areas of mindfulness and creativity, in the form of retreats and workshops.

Jo is an Ecstatic Dance Facilitator and is embarking on further training in ‘Visual Medicine’ for therapeutic practice.

Nadia Abdel-Karim

Nadia Abdel-Karim has practised mindfulness and meditation since 2015, influenced primarily by Insight Meditation and Mahayana Buddhist traditions.

As a freelance mental health worker, she spent several years facilitating support groups and offering one-to-one crisis support across London for the mental health charity Mind.

After training as a Mindfulness Practitioner in 2019, she began co-facilitating 8-week Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction courses specifically for people experiencing depression and anxiety.

Nadia relocated to Devon to live at The Barn Retreat Centre, where she spent almost two years co-leading meditation retreats. Alongside leading retreats for Sharpham, she works as a Focusing Practitioner and facilitates spaces for people to connect with their grief.

Her journey continues to be guided by her love for exploring and understanding spiritual traditions and practices.

Emma Thom

Emma has worked in mental health for over 20 years. She has a Post Graduate Diploma in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (University of Exeter). She works at the AccEPT clinic in Exeter teaching mindfulness courses to adults with depression and health and social care staff. She also teaches mindfulness to adoptive parents, teenagers, and families with learning difficulties. Emma’s life has benefitted in many ways from mindfulness. She first discovered mindfulness during an extensive period of ill-health and has no doubt that mindfulness gave her what she needed to recover.  Emma loves sharing what she has learned with others and is particularly interested in the ways that mindfulness supports wellbeing and flourishing along with increasing capacity to manage stress and ill-health.  Emma especially enjoys practicing mindfulness in movement, through yoga and walking.

Ramiro Ortega

Ramiro is a mindfulness teacher and a retreat leader, and also a philosophical counsellor in training. He started practising in Spain in 2005 in the Soto Zen tradition, moving later to the UK to finish his studies in philosophy, where he came into contact with other different schools of meditation practice. 

Finally Ramiro made his home in the UK and after spending two years living in Gaia House, a Buddhist meditation retreat centre in the Insight Meditation tradition in Devon, he trained to teach mindfulness with the University of Bangor and with the University of Exeter. He is also participating in the teacher training programme with the Bodhi College.

Ollie Frame

Ollie Frame works as an integrative therapist, trained mindfulness teacher (MBSR) and retreat leader. He is a co-leader on the Mindful in Nature programme at Sharpham, for which he has written and recorded a large range of meditations and resources. He is passionate about how mindfulness can help us connect more deeply with the natural world, for the sake of our own wellbeing as well as that of the planet.

In addition to leading mindfulness courses in various settings, he is also trained to teach compassion-based approaches (Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living), and is especially enthusiastic about self-compassion, Metta meditation and other heart-based approaches to meditation practice. As an integrative therapist, Ollie has a particular interest in Psychosynthesis, inner journeying and the therapeutic use of meditation and the imagination. He loves the woodlands, rivers and coasts of Devon, and takes every opportunity he can to be by or in the River Dart.

Lucy Chan

Steve Banks

Steve trained as a mindfulness teacher with Mindfulness UK. He started practising meditation in 1990 within the Buddhist tradition, and has attended retreats, mostly at Gaia house, with many different teachers. Steve is a qualified Psychosynthesis counsellor and has engaged in many forms of menswork over three decades, including co-leading transformative Rites Of Passages retreats for men. He leads workshops on Ken Wilber’s ‘Integral’ model and has presented seminars on sacred music, ‘The Power Of Music’, at many events, including the Integral European Conference, the foremost global gathering of Integral thinkers and practitioners. Steve has attended the one-week Mindful Self-Compassion retreat with Chris Germer and Kristin Neff. He is passionate about passing on the gift of mindfulness and meditation.

Ethan Pollock

Ethan has been supporting retreats and mindfulness groups for over a decade. He spent five years training at Plum Village with the internationally recognised Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and currently offers retreats and classes on mindfulness and buddhism at meditation centers and local groups around the UK. His teaching helps people touch more calm and ease in their everyday lives by bringing awareness and appreciation to simple daily activities, retreatants especially love his guided meditations!

Lynette Robinson

Lynette Robinson is a qualified Breathworks mindfulness teacher and accredited life coach. She teaches mindfulness to a diverse range of groups, such as seniors living in residential complexes, men in prison and women’s groups.  During 2020 lockdowns this diversity expanded to teaching online mindful-working courses for home-workers. Her freely given Zoom group ‘Stop The Week & Rest to Calm' supported the mental and emotional well-being of attendees from four different countries.  Author of the book 'Reclaimed', and' Mindfulness Mediations for Modern Day Women' CD, Lynette lives life with passion, following the energies of creativity and contribution. In 2016 she volunteered as Retreat Coordinator for three summers, at The Barn.

Rupert Marques

Rupert has practiced in the insight meditation tradition for nearly 25 years in Europe, America and Asia. His primary teachers have been Christina Feldman and Joseph Goldstein. The work of Toni Packer and John Tarrant have also been influential in his practice and teaching. He teaches at various retreat centres in Europe and beyond. For the past 4 years Rupert has lived and worked at Ecodharma, a contemplative retreat community in the Spanish Pyrenees dedicated to exploring the role of the Dharma in the movements for social justice and ecological sustainability. At Ecodharma he directed the Nature based Practice strand of their work that marries contemplative practice with a range of approaches within the field of experiential ecopsychology in a wilderness setting.

Will Evans

Will has been meditating in various Buddhist and Non-Dual traditions for a decade, guided by a spirit of exploration and experimentation and a sense of wonder and possibility. He mostly finds his home in the Insight Meditation tradition. In 2019 he trained as a mindfulness teacher with the Mindfulness Training Institute under Martin Aylward and Mark Coleman, and in 2020 he joined the team at the Barn Retreat, where he spent over a year facilitating both online and in-person retreats. He has a passion for helping people find approaches and relationships to meditation that work for them, with the view that meditation practice is not a fixed path but a vast landscape to explore.