Stephan Pende Wormland

Stephan Pende Wormland is a German-born meditation teacher living in Copenhagen who joins Tibetan Buddhist practice with Western psychology. He was an ordained monk in the Tibetan tradition for eleven years, about five of them in group and solitary retreat, and for a period directed Nalanda Monastery in the south of France. Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who died in 2023, was his principal teacher and authorised him to teach, and he has also learned from Alan Wallace, Rob Preece, Pema Chödrön and others. He holds an MA in clinical psychology, trained in Gestalt therapy and spent six years working in a psychiatric hospital. Since 2009 he has studied Peter Fenner's Radiant Mind approach to nondual awareness.

He has taught in Buddhist centres since 2001 and was for many years the resident teacher of a Copenhagen centre for wisdom and compassion. These days he leads drop-in evenings and practice afternoons in Copenhagen, city weekends and week-long silent retreats in Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Italy, some of them with his wife Kristina, and sessions on Zoom. His teaching ranges from classic texts and methods such as Shantideva, the Lam Rim, Mahamudra and lojong to simple invitations to rest in awareness, offered with warmth and a fair amount of humour. Hundreds of his recorded talks and meditations are free to hear online.