Learning to meditate means trusting someone. You receive a mantra that is yours, you are taught one-on-one on the first day, and the support continues for the rest of your life. A relationship built that way should come with clear standards on both sides.
This is what I hold myself to, and what I ask of students in return.
Last updated August 2026
My Commitments as a Teacher
Honesty about what this is
- I describe what Vedic Meditation does accurately: deep rest for the body, the release of stored stress, capacity restored. I do not promise outcomes.
- I stay open about the limits of my knowledge and experience. Years of practice and teaching do not make anyone something other than a person with a personality and limitations.
- I teach the technique as I was taught it in the Shankaracharya tradition. I do not modify it, add to it, or invent variations.
- I respect other teachers, techniques, and traditions, and will work alongside another practitioner when that serves you.
- I take feedback and complaints seriously and treat them as information.
The relationship between us
- There is a built-in power imbalance between a teacher and a student. I know it is there and I do not use it.
- I will never pursue romance or sexual contact with a student. There is no version of this I would consider.
- I do not use a student’s trust to obtain money, free labor, or personal benefit of any kind.
- I do not accept the position of guru. I do not want to be put on a pedestal.
- Teaching you is not the same as being your friend. A friendship can develop, and if it does, both of us name it.
What I do not do
- I teach meditation. I am not a therapist, a doctor, or a crisis counselor, and I will not offer counsel in those areas.
- I will never advise you to stop or change medication, therapy, or medical treatment. Those decisions belong between you and the people qualified to make them with you.
- I do not give financial or relationship advice.
- When something falls outside what I am trained for, I say so and point you elsewhere.
Your practice belongs to you
Everything I teach is aimed at making you the authority on your own experience. You learn the technique in four days and it is yours after that. You do not need me in order to meditate, and you never will.
Lifetime support exists for a specific reason. Questions come up months and years into a practice, and I do not want the cost of asking to be the thing that stops you. That is a different arrangement from needing a teacher permanently. If our relationship ever starts producing dependence instead of self-sufficiency, that is a failure on my end, and I want to know about it.
Advanced techniques
The technique you learn in the four-day course is complete. You can practice it for the rest of your life and learn nothing else. Advanced techniques become available later, some only after a year of practice, and they are optional in the real sense of the word. I will not pressure you toward them, and choosing not to learn them changes nothing about how I teach or support you.
Confidentiality
- What is shared in a course, a private session, or a group meditation stays there. That binds me, and I ask it of every student.
- I do not share your personal information without your consent.
- If a group meditation is being recorded, I tell you before it starts.
- One limit: if I believe someone is in danger of serious harm, I will act on it.
Who is welcome
Everyone. Gender, age, ethnicity, physical ability, sexuality, political or religious affiliation, none of it changes whether you can learn this. If you have an access need, tell me and I will tell you honestly whether the space can meet it.
Student Guidelines
These exist to protect your independence inside this relationship, and to protect the people learning alongside you.
- Teachers and students are both human and both still growing. Growth does not have an endpoint.
- Bring concerns to me directly, or anonymously through the form below. Something said openly is worth more to both of us than something left unsaid.
- A meditation teacher has professional limits. Some things call for a psychologist, a physician, or another practitioner alongside your practice. Meditation works well next to that kind of care.
- Notice what you project onto me. Placing a teacher above yourself makes it harder to trust your own experience, which is the whole point of what you are learning.
- The course and the group meditations are not a place to look for a date. Sexual advances toward me or toward another student are not appropriate here.
- What other students share stays private.
- Your experience in meditation is not a grade. Comparing yours to someone else’s will tell you nothing useful, and neither will assessing theirs.
- Meditation is not a way around the parts of your life that need your attention. The practice gives you capacity. What you do with it is yours.
- If someone’s behavior is damaging to another student or to me, I will address it, and I will ask them to leave if it continues.
- You can leave a course or a group meditation at any time, without explanation.
- Question what I teach. Read, study, learn from other teachers. Practice discernment.
- Please do not dismiss or attack other traditions or teachers. Honest concern and destructive criticism are different things.
Raising a Concern
If something I do or say sits wrong with you, I want to hear it. I teach alone, which means there is no committee to route this through, and I know that makes speaking up harder rather than easier.
The form below is anonymous. You can use it without giving me your name, and I read everything that comes through it. Anonymous also means I have no way to reply, so if you want a response, use the contact page or leave your email in the form.