Julian Daizan Skinner

Julian Daizan Skinner is a Zen teacher based in London and the founder of Zenways, a lay Zen community and training body he set up in 2007. He gave up a career in the pharmaceutical industry to enter monastic life, trained for many years in Japan and in the West, and holds Dharma transmission in both the Rinzai and Soto lines. In 2007 his teacher, Shinzan Miyamae Roshi, gave him inka, and he is described as the first Englishman to be recognised as a Rinzai roshi. He also trained with Lawrence Noyes in the enlightenment intensive method, which shapes the dyad work used on his retreats.

Daizan's teaching joins seated meditation with movement and energy practice, drawing on the Japanese masters Hakuin and Bankei and on decades of yoga. He leads Sunday sittings and talks at the Zenways dojo in Camberwell and online, residential sesshin, and three-day Breakthrough to Zen retreats in North Wales, and he wrote the curriculum for the Zenways yoga and mindfulness teacher trainings. His books include Practical Zen: Meditation and Beyond and Practical Zen for Health, Wealth and Mindfulness, co-written with Sarah Bladen. On returning from Japan he walked the length of Britain living on alms, from the Isle of Wight to the far north of Scotland.