Zen Practitioner and Somatic Therapist

Jessica has practiced Zen Buddhism since 2011 under the guidance of Roshi Flint Sparks and Peg Syverson. A senior student within her Zen community, she has served as head student and has offered dharma talks, facilitated practice experiences, and supported retreats and community life for many years.

Her approach is grounded in embodied awareness, compassionate inquiry, and the transformative power of practice in community. She brings together the wisdom of Zen with Hakomi, yoga, and more than twenty years of experience in the healing arts, inviting people to meet their experience with curiosity and kindness and to reconnect with their innate wisdom.

Jessica is a Certified Hakomi Practitioner and instructor through the Hakomi Education Network. She completed a 320-hour professional training with the Hakomi Institute, followed by advanced study and teacher development. She is also a massage therapist, yoga teacher, mother, and community builder.

Entrusted Zen Teacher and Nurse

Kim is a newly entrusted teacher in the Soto Zen lineage. She received entrustment in the Spring of 2025 from Roshi Flint Sparks and her sangha sister and teacher, Suzanne Kilkus. Kim has been studying with Flint since 2004 and is deeply grateful for the endless blessings of this path.  

Zen Practitioner, Psychologist, and Writer

Ryan has studied Zen with Flint Sparks since 2014 and practices with Awakening Together Zen Community in Minnesota. He received the Precepts in 2024 and entered as Head Student (Shuso) in 2025. Over more than a decade of practice with Flint, Ryan has become increasingly interested in the ways spiritual practice invites us into a more intimate relationship with ourselves, one another, and the life unfolding around us.

Ryan is a psychologist whose work has centered on trauma, resilience, and the ways human beings learn to protect themselves in response to suffering. His professional formation includes certification and advanced training in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, mindfulness and psychotherapy, and compassionate approaches to grief and bereavement. These traditions have deepened his appreciation for the wisdom of the body, the importance of relationship, and the possibility of meeting difficult experience with curiosity, compassion, and care.

Ryan has long been drawn to creating spaces where people can learn and practice together. He founded the Minnesota Trauma Project and has developed and facilitated groups, retreats, trainings, and learning communities exploring the conditions that support human wellbeing and flourishing.

More recently, writing has become another expression of Ryan's practice. Through essays and poetry, he explores the places where contemplative practice meets psychology, relationship, leadership, art, nature, and the ordinary experiences of being human.

Across these different parts of his life, Ryan returns to a shared question: how might we meet ourselves, one another, and the world with greater presence, compassion, freedom, and care? He is grateful for the friendship and practice that have grown through his years of studying with Flint and for the opportunity to widen that circle of spiritual friendship.

Zen Practitioner, Nurse, and Somatics Practitioner

Shelley Winton, RN, BScN, MPS, has been a Registered Nurse for over 35 years. Her deep curiosity about the wisdom of the human body led her to become a yoga teacher, a certified Hakomi therapist and teacher, and a collaborator in the development of Psoma. Her practice is also inspired by shamanic healing, Zen, and the principles of change management.

The thesis for Shelley’s Master’s degree in Psychotherapy and Spirituality explored the efficacy of Psoma as a therapeutic approach.

Entrusted Zen Teacher and Psychotherapist

From an early age Trudy was trying to find answers to her sense of suffering and ‘not rightness’. In the early 70’s she studied with a Hindu guru, deepening the connection and commitment to this by becoming a trainee Hindu nun aged 19 at a Temple in Wales. She didn’t take the vows and left that community. In the mid 70’s, with her husband Josh, she connected with another meditation group and subsequently set up a cohousing and meditation centre in Sussex before selling up and spending time traveling with the guru in America.

In the 80’s having and rearing children was her practice path. In the 90’s she created a women’s group exploring the Divine feminine, and other embodied practices, which met together for over 20 years.

She has been a psychotherapist for over 35 years, training in Person Centred, Hakomi, and IFS. As well as having a private practice she initially taught Person Centred Practice to Trainee Counsellors as well as in 2011 become a Hakomi Trainer.

She began studying with Flint Sparks in 2011 and with her husband Josh, co-created the Lancaster Sangha, Nothing Missing in 2012. Trudy was Head Student in 2019-2020. Trudy received Lay Teacher Entrustment from Flint Sparks in October 2023.

Now as a mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, and having worked for decades in the field of human suffering and resilience, she hopes to support others to find the ways in which we might not ‘make things worse’ but might also find ways to live and be lived for the benefit of all beings, connecting with our innate freedom and joy.