Tara Brach

Tara Brach is a psychologist, author, and one of the most beloved meditation teachers in the Western world — a voice that hundreds of thousands of people turn to each week for comfort, clarity, and a path back to their own hearts. Born in New Jersey in 1953, she discovered meditation while studying psychology, and spent her early adult years living in an ashram before training in Buddhist meditation and earning her PhD in clinical psychology. In 1998 she founded the Insight Meditation Community of Washington (IMCW), which has grown into one of the largest meditation communities in the United States, and she has taught at renowned centres including Spirit Rock, Kripalu, and the Omega Institute.

Brach's great gift is the marriage of Western psychology and Eastern spiritual practice — bringing mindfulness and compassion directly to the places we hurt most. Her international bestseller Radical Acceptance opens with the "trance of unworthiness" — the deep, tenacious belief that something is wrong with us — and offers a path out of it, while True Refuge, Radical Compassion, and Trusting the Gold deepen that medicine. She is especially known for the RAIN practice (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture), a simple four-step meditation for meeting difficult emotions with mindfulness and self-compassion that has become a touchstone for therapists, teachers, and practitioners worldwide.

Each week, millions encounter her teachings through her podcast — downloaded some three million times a month — and her long-running Wednesday night talks and guided meditations, shared freely online. With Jack Kornfield, she co-founded the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training Program, which has trained practitioners from more than 74 countries, and she has been active in bringing meditation into schools, prisons, and underserved communities. Warm, wise, and quietly funny, Tara Brach's invitation is as healing as it is simple: that we can stop being at war with ourselves, trust our innate goodness, and meet this life — exactly as it is — with an awake and compassionate heart.