Anne Cushman

As a writer and teacher of yoga and Buddhist meditation, Anne Cushman explores the poignant intersection between the inspirational ideals of spiritual practice and the gritty, comical, chaotic, and heartbreaking details of ordinary life.

Anne has been investigating the relationship between Eastern spiritual traditions and contemporary Western life for more than 25 years. She graduated from Princeton University with a BA in comparative religion in 1984, and her work includes the NEH-funded documentary Zen Center: Portrait of an American Zen Community (1986); the nonfiction “spiritual India” guidebook From Here to Nirvana (1998); and the novel Enlightenment for Idiots (2008), which was named by Booklist as one of the “Top Ten First Novels” of the year. Her book Moving Into Meditation: A 12-Week Mindfulness Program for Yoga Practitioners will be published by Shambhala in 2014.

Anne is a longtime contributor and former editor at both Yoga Journal and Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Her personal essays have also appeared in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, O: The Oprah Magazine, Salon.com, New Woman, and the Shambhala Sun. Her work has been anthologized in Best Buddhist Writing 2004 and 2006; Best Women’s Spiritual Travel Writing; Traveling Souls: Contemporary Pilgrimage Tales; and other books.

Anne’s yoga and meditation background includes extensive training across multiple schools of yoga since 1985, including Iyengar, Ashtanga, Kripalu, Insight Yoga, and many other styles. She has practiced Buddhist meditation since 1983 in both the Zen and vipassana traditions, and is the co-director of the Mindfulness Yoga and Meditation Training Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California, where she is also a graduate of the Community Dharma Leader program.

Anne teaches yoga as a support for and an expression of embodied meditative presence. Through sensitive, flowing practice, she invites her students to relax and enliven their bodies, open their hearts, and unwind the physical and energetic obstacles that prevent them from touching their true nature—in the midst of their ordinary and miraculous human lives.

She lives in Fairfax, California, with her twelve-year-old son, Skye Hawthorne.