About Ken Siegmann

I'm an optimist. I believe we all have the capacity for peace and healing.

And I believe Mindfulness and Self Compassion are important to that process.

I discovered meditation when I was 18 and my best friend gave me a copy of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki and The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts. Those books opened me to an entire new way of thinking – that it’s possible to be okay in the midst of chaos, that there is something sacred and healing available in the universe.

Growing up in a chaotic, alcoholic household, meditation and early exposure to Buddha’s teachings - the Dharma - anchored me.

I attended my first Zen sitting when I was 19. A friend took me to see Korean Zen Master Seng Sahn Seonsanim. It was my first Dharma talk, in a small walk-up apartment in a dingy neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY, converted to a Zendo. I clearly remember him talking about the “don’t know mind,” and to approach life like a cat: “Cat no say ‘who am I? I am cat.’ Cat just say ‘meow,’” he said.

In other words, just look around in the present moment, know you’re ok, and don’t think so  much.

That’s how it began.

I meditated off and on for a few years, but eventually drifted away from it. Still, the Dharma continued to inform my life.

I meditated some in college, but was mostly focused on college radio which led to a career in journalism for 20 years. Along the way I found an interest in Tibetan Buddhism.

Then everything changed. My father’s cancer came back and he was dying. That forced me to face the issues from my childhood trauma and my addictions. I went to my first Twelve Step meeting three weeks before he died the day before Valentines Day in 1991.

With the spiritual nudge of recovery, I returned to meditation in earnest and have been practicing Vipassana Meditation steadily since then. Sitting meditation every day again gave me an anchor, and helped me weather the storm of early sobriety and my recovery from my unnerving childhood.

With the Twelve Step spiritual awakening, my life as a journalist no longer made sense. So I went back to school to get my therapist license. I met Gil Fronsdal, founder of the Insight Meditation Center, when he came to teach Vipassana Meditation at my grad school, and I got involved in his Sangha.

I was fortunate to travel to India with a Tibetan Buddhist teacher in 2001. On return, I went to see Gil. I felt like I was falling in love with the Dharma, but I was craving something simpler than Tibetan Buddhism. I found a home in the beautiful simplicity of the Insight Meditation tradition that Gil taught. I told him I was feeling drawn to a monastic experience in the monastaries in Bhutan, where they would ordain you or 6 months or a year.

“Before you sell everything and move to Bhutan,” he said, “why don’t you try a ten-day retreat.”

So I started doing silent meditation retreats with Gil and at Spirit Rock between 3-4 days and two weeks once or twice a year. I’ve done retreats every year since, except in 2020 because of the pandemic.

I encountered Kristin Neff’s work on Self Compassion at a Mindfulness and Psychotherapy Conference in 2006. It was a profound awakening. I came to believe that Self Compassion was the missing link in Western culture with its fixation on achievement and self esteem.

Self Compassion became a focus of my therapy practice. And as I continued my deep dive into meditation and the Dharma, I came to see Self Compassion itself as a path to awakening. After all, compassion is a powerful healing force and a core principle in Buddhist teaching.

Meditation has become core to my life. It’s the glue that holds me together. So it only made sense for me to join the two-year Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach in 2019. When it came time to choose a mentor in that program, I signed up to work with Kevin Griffin, author of One Breath at a Time – about the intersection of Recovery and the Dharma.

I retired from therapy in December 2020, just before I graduated from the meditation training program. Now I’m feeling drawn to the path of teaching meditation and Dharma practice. I’m excited to see where it leads.