Mindfulness for Beginners: 3-night Sharpham House Retreat

Dene Donalds

Dene is a lay Ordained Dharma Teacher in the Zen Buddhist Tradition of Zen Master and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh.

Dene offers Buddhist and mindfulness retreats across the UK and Europe, with a focus on engaged Buddhism and social action.  He has been a student of Zen Buddhism since the mid-nineties and joined The Order of Interbeing in 2007.

He is based in the North of England where his work includes offering Buddhist chaplaincy within Prisons and Mental Health Hospitals.

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.

Ethan Pollock

Ethan has been facilitating mindfulness groups and retreats for over a decade.

He spent five years training at Plum Village with the internationally-recognised mindfulness teacher & Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.

He is a qualified Mindful Self-Compassion teacher. He facilitates and teaches around the UK, including at the Sharpham Trust, Schumacher College, The Royal Drawing School and local meditation groups.

Lynette Robinson

Lynette is a qualified Breathworks teacher and accredited life coach who has been practicing meditation for over 20 years. She teaches mindfulness in a diverse range of settings that include residential complexes for elder’s, prisons and residential retreats in both Devon and Yorkshire.  With a previous career in the public sector, Lynette is a mother and grandmother who lives the second half of her own life as a space to explore new possibilities, creativity, and self-discovery. She is the author of ‘Reclaimed- turning an uneventful life into an adventure’ and re-located, at 56, to live at the Barn Retreat Centre as a Co-ordinator (initially for a year) and liked Devon so much she stayed!  Lynette facilitates mindfulness retreats in Sharpham House and also a Totnes group for over 55’s – established 5 years ago, for residents to learn and practice mindfulness and meditation; as they age mindfully - a theme very close to Lynette’s own heart and practice, as she enters her 64th year.

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.

Nina Jankelson - retreat leader

Nina began practising mindfulness in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, attending retreat in Northern India and Nepal and later drawing inspiration from the Insight Meditation tradition and the teachings of Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

A former residential coordinator at Sharpham's Barn Retreat, Nina has been facilitating meditations, ceremony and retreats for the past five years. Her practice is grounded in a connection to the land and in contacting moments of ordinary beauty and grace in the every day.

She is interested in exploring how contemplative practices can open up our experience of the world and is passionate about creating opportunities for others to do the same. 

Ollie Frame

Ollie Frame works as an integrative therapist, mindfulness teacher and retreat leader. He is a co-leader on the Mindful in Nature programme at Sharpham, for which he has produced a large range of meditations and resources. He teaches the eight-week course in various settings, including to the general public, to teachers and students in schools and colleges, and to various other client groups on behalf of Devon County Council. Also trained to teach the Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living (MBCL) course, he is especially enthusiastic about self-compassion, Metta meditation and other heart-based approaches within the world of mindfulness. As an integrative therapist, Ollie has a particular interest in Psychosynthesis, depth psychology, inner journeying and the therapeutic use of meditation and the imagination. 

Ramiro Ortega

Ramiro started practising meditation in 2005 in the Soto Zen tradition, continuing his practice at Gaia House when he moved to the UK in 2008.

He trained to teach mindfulness at the University of Bangor and at the University of Exeter, and later he completed the Dharma Teacher Training Programme at Bodhi College.

Ramiro has a background in philosophy, which he considers as a way of life. He is also a trained counsellor and has a counselling practice.

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. He first came to Sharpham in 1997 for a Barn retreat, and fell in love with the beautiful setting, with the Dart winding its way through the green hills. Steve is a qualified Psychosynthesis counsellor and has engaged in many forms of personal development and menswork, including co-leading transformative Rites Of Passages retreats for men. He is a musician and composer - his sacred choral work, ‘Blue Pearl: A One World Oratorio’, had its world premiere in 2022 (the film is on YouTube). He has attended the one-week Mindful Self-Compassion retreat with Chris Germer and Kristin Neff. Steve lives just down the river from Sharpham, and loves boating and swimming in the Dart, and hiking and camping in the beautiful Devon hills and coast. Steve is passionate about passing on the gifts of mindfulness, meditation, and deepening our connection with nature.

Uz Afzal

Uz is a mindfulness teacher, trainer and author. She is known for her enthusiastic and welcoming approach and has enjoyed leading a range of mindfulness courses including retreats, eight-week MBSR courses, sessions at the Women of the World Festival and popular walking meditations at the V&A Museum. 

She first discovered the transformative powers of meditation while at university in the1990s and has been practising mindfulness and meditation in one form or another ever since.

She is a lead trainer at the national mental health charity, Mind, where she was part of a team that developed a ground-breaking Radical Self-Care course. She is particularly interested in welcoming all the intersecting aspects of people’s identities into mindfulness courses. 

Viren Jeram

Viren found mindfulness and meditation practice in 2015 and has practiced in a range of Buddhist traditions, primarily Insight meditation. Viren is spending the year up to September 2025 facilitating retreats at the Barn Retreat Centre, part of Sharpham Trust, supporting retreatants in their exploration of mindfulness and Buddhism. He co-leads Sharpham’s retreats for people of colour. Viren has spent the last decade in the NHS, in senior leadership positions and training staff in group coaching and facilitation, including guiding meditations for staff. He is passionate about sharing mindfulness and Buddhist teachings, focusing on how we can meet the fullness of our own experience and enrich our lives.