Biet Simkin

Biet Simkin is a New York meditation teacher, musician and author. Brought up in New York City by a shamanic practitioner, she signed a record deal with Sony as a teenage singer-songwriter and went on to DJ in the city's fashion and art scene. After a period of great personal loss she returned to the meditation she had studied since childhood, and has now spent some thirty years exploring contemplative traditions, which she presents in a frank, funny and thoroughly modern voice.

She first became known for Guided By Biet, large group meditations set to her own music and held in galleries, hotels, festivals and fashion events, including MoMA, the Sundance Film Festival and a residency with 1 Hotels. Her approach, sometimes called Center of the Cyclone, mixes breath practice, guided meditation and self-inquiry with music and art, and treats daily life, work, love and money as the real ground of practice. Her book Don't Just Sit There! sets out forty-four short teachings for meditating in the middle of a busy life, and a companion card deck offers thirty breathing exercises. Today she teaches through The Source, an online membership with daily practices, through private mentoring, speaking and hotel wellness programmes, and through a ten-day breathwork and meditation course on Commune.