How I Teach

I offer Vipassana (insight meditation) practice, rooted in the four foundations of mindfulness: awareness of the body, emotions, the mind, and the qualities that shape the nature of our experience. Together, these practices help us learn how to bring compassionate presence to our lives.

The Body

Mindfulness practice invites us to notice where experience shows up in our bodies. Does it have a texture? A temperature? Is it stationary or moving? Is it pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant? Noticing this flow of experience can be a portal to intuition.  

Importantly, for some, including the roughly one in four of us who’ve experienced trauma, the body may not feel like a safe place. Reconnecting with it takes gentleness, patience, and agency. My teaching honors this and moves at a pace that supports safety and trust.

Mindfulness isn’t about fixing ourselves. It’s about learning how to be here, with compassion.

Emotions

Emotions are biologically wired into us to help us meet our needs. They help us know how to retreat for protection, expand into curiosity, seek belonging, grieve losses, and much more. And while it’s human nature to cling to pleasant emotions and avoid difficult ones, they all have something to communicate. Through practice, we learn how to stay present with our emotional experience, widening our capacity to live fully and respond wisely.

Thoughts

Early in my meditation practice, I hoped for a day when my mind would finally be quiet and calm. Over time, I learned that the goal isn’t to stop our thoughts. It’s to notice them. When we do, we begin to see that not all thoughts are facts. Some of them are helpful, others are old habits that no longer serve us.  

My own mind is a good worker, but a terrible boss. By naming thoughts and noticing their patterns, our relationship to them shifts. We discover that we are not our thoughts or the stories they tell us about who we are.

Qualities

The fourth foundation of mindfulness points us toward discernment and wise action. It’s rooted in becoming a compassionate observer of ourselves and the conditions shaping our experience.

As we practice, we can begin to recognize the habits and conditioning we’ve inherited. We grow more attuned to qualities like kindness, patience, and integrity. We become more interested in reducing harm, to ourselves and others. And we begin to become more aware of impermanence.

My teaching is experiential, relational, and grounded in lived practice. I don’t offer answers so much as tools for listening—so that your own wisdom can emerge.

*You can find detailed definitions of these on Spirit Rock’s website.

Explore my offerings

  • “Beth's non-judgemental presence, her humble nature, and her gentle guidance have changed how I see myself and the world around me in the best possible way. She has created a safe community where everyone's thoughts are valued and celebrated, allowing us all to also feel valued and celebrated as individuals on our unique journeys.”

    —  Sarah, Group meditation participant in the Boston area

  • "I practice 1:1 with Beth and she guides me to the depths of my soul, where immense healing and transformation take place."

    —  Beth, Minneapolis

  • "I look forward to Beth’s sessions each week. Her meditations are meaningful on so many levels. Through her calm instruction, I’ve gained new and very practical techniques that I can use when meditating on my own.”

    — Windy, Group meditation participant in Phoenix

  • "I used to mistakenly assume that mindfulness was indifference, but Beth's compassionate, thoughtful, approach continues to help me re-center in the present, welcome and move through all the things. Far from indifferent, my life, and those of my family are much richer in the hard times, the good, the quiet, and the rapidly shifting. Thanks Beth!"

    — Dan, Group meditation participant in New York City

  • "I feel welcomed to come as I am. I leave every session more grounded, more balanced, and more peaceful. My practice is expanding, and I am expanding, through Beth's beautiful, guided meditations."

    — Maia, Group meditation participant in Boston

  • "Joining Beth Monaghan's meditation sessions is the kindest I've been to myself in years. She is a gentle and gifted guide through deep thinking, leading to places of peace. I also find her recorded shorter meditations very helpful during the crush of the week. Highly, highly recommended.

    — Carol, Group meditation participant in New York City

  • “These sessions are gifts I look forward to.”

    — Group meditation participant

  • Snow-capped mountains in the background with rolling brown and green hills in the foreground under a cloudy sky.

    “Beth has a beautiful way of bringing everyone into each class and creating an opportunity for openness and learning. She made mindfulness and meditation feel possible and rewarding for even the most time-pressed people.”

    — senior executive

  • “I love the mix of personal experiences, quotes from gurus, and the practical application for busy lives. She is a great teacher – warm, compassionate, generous – and was able to get people to not just participate, but to share and to want to build or deepen their own practices. Best meditation learning experience I've had.”

    — senior executive  

  • “Beth is so generous and compassionate and that comes across in every word. I long for more and am happy for all of the people who will have a chance to learn from you.”

     — senior executive

  • “The meditations led by Beth always provide me with a sense of peace and comfort. I often refer to them outside of these sessions.”

    — Group meditation participant 

  • “I love this weekly meet up beyond words and it has helped me and brought me so much joy.”

    — Group meditation participant