About Alison

I currently live with my partner Kavi, a fellow goofball who loves to meditate, on the unceded lands of the Piscataway and Susquehannock peoples, also known as Baltimore, Maryland, USA. A few times a month, I make the hourlong trek to my hometown of Washington, D.C., to teach and catch up with family and friends.

In past chapters, I've lived in Brooklyn, NY; Ghana, West Africa (Accra & the Volta Region); Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Oakland, California.

As a teenager, I found myself navigating strong waves of anxiety, shame, and harsh internal criticism. In my senior year of college, despite never having meditated before, I showed up at a Zen meditation group that a teacher from a local meditation center was offering on campus. Almost every time she invited us to close our eyes and settle in, strong emotions would well up, and I would find myself crying throughout the meditation practice. 

Those sessions planted a seed: Emotions are energy in motion, and they’re meant to move through us. Maybe it was possible to more frequently recognize what I was feeling when I was feeling it, not judge it as a problem, and then have time-tested ways of meeting emotional visitors with equanimity, self-compassion, and skill so that I could experience a more easeful inner landscape–and show up to life as a rooted tree instead of as a leaf being blown around by ever-shifting winds. 

There’s more to the story. Growing up in Washington, D.C. in a socially progressive Jewish family, I spent years attending predominantly BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) DC public schools, in a body that our racialized society perceives as white. Day in and day out, I witnessed educational inequality and the cradle-to-prison pipeline. These experiences, and the fierce compassion, heartbreak, and anger that accompanied them, ultimately led to my decision to become an educator.

After spending a year after college working in Ghana, West Africa, I started teaching high school English as a New Language (ENL) and literacy in a New York City public school. As an empath struggling with a tumultuous inner world, teaching woke me up to the realization that I was going to burn out if nothing changed. 

I was already seeing a therapist, and one of my colleagues, a veteran educator and meditator, suggested that I develop a mindfulness meditation practice by going on a retreat. Desperate, I took his advice, which is how I ended up at Spirit Rock, lovingly accompanied by my childhood friend Nell. The insights that arose on that retreat would lead me to start a high school mindfulness program.

As Jon Kabat-Zinn puts it, “We can’t stop the waves but we can learn how to surf.” 

And so I keep going on retreat, taking classes, practicing daily, and engaging in communal practice whenever I can. Practicing together is an act of compassionate co-regulation: in doing so, we ground and buoy ourselves while simultaneously grounding and buoying each other, cultivating greater courage for showing up to life with the two wings of wisdom and care.

No, though I still occasionally coach teachers and principals, as I did for eight years after leaving the classroom.

That being said, it’s hard (nearly impossible?) for me to resist working with educational organizations, especially in the realms of educational equity, high-quality literacy instruction, and culturally relevant pedagogy. Since 2021, I’ve provided Diversity-Equity-Inclusion (DEI) consulting to the literacy nonprofit Quill.org, and it’s been such a joy!

And when I’m not teaching mindfulness and compassion cultivation practices under the auspices of Two Wings Mindfulness, I mentor meditation teachers in training who are enrolled in Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield’s two-year Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program (MMTCP). Can’t believe it’s year six!

Theologian and social justice activist Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote, “The teacher is either a witness or a stranger. To guide a pupil…, the teacher must have been there themselves. When asking themselves: Do I stand for what I teach? Do I believe what I say?, the teacher must be able to answer in the affirmative.”

In this spirit, one of the ways I’ve committed to answering in the affirmative is by learning from a wide range of teachers, such as Thich Nhat Hanh, Megan Cowan, Chris McKenna, Ruth King, Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, Rabbi Diane Elliot, Jeff Ng, Rob Burbea, Rachel Naomi Remen, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, and Rabbi James Jacobsen-Maisels. 

I’ve completed training in teaching mindfulness, compassion cultivation, and mindful communication via Mindful Schools and the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Teacher Training Pathway. I'm also passionate about trauma-sensitive mindfulness thanks to the work of Dr. David Treleaven.

In addition, retreat practice, including a monthlong retreat I participated in before COVID, continues to be an exceptional form of continuing education. The Buddhist lineage I feel most closely connected to is the Insight Meditation tradition, and most of the retreats I've attended have been in this tradition.

On the coaching and facilitation front, I’ve trained with Elena Aguilar’s Bright Morning Consulting group, the International Institute for Restorative Pathways, and Taproot’s Community Ritualist Training Program.

And in terms of more traditional educational pathways, I have an undergraduate degree in Sociology from Harvard College, a master’s degree in teaching from Fordham University’s Graduate School of Education, and a year of doctoral coursework in Adult Learning & Development from Lesley University’s Graduate School of Education.

Both sides of my family have been Jewish since the beginning of time, which is only slightly an exaggeration!

And, as the saying goes, there are many Judaisms. 

Here’s a taste of what Cohen family Judaism looked like when I was growing up as the oldest of four in the house my father grew up in. My parents incorporated many Jewish traditions into our lives, such as ringing in Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, by putting their hands on our heads while wishing us well-being and peace through the recitation of an ancient blessing. Mom and Dad also encouraged us to take social justice seriously as one key piece of Tikkun Olam, repairing the world, and they rarely if ever mentioned God: each of us could come to our own conclusions. Most importantly, we were taught that Judaism was not superior to other faith traditions, it was simply one of many paths.

Regardless of anyone’s declared belief system, what did matter was action: How did each of us treat other people and the Earth?

Jewish traditions, especially the tradition of taking a day off each week to close my computer, take a break from my phone, and enjoy Shabbat, continue to help me be the best version of myself while simultaneously connecting me to ancestry and family.

And I’ve also been deeply affected by Buddhist retreats, teachers, and practices. Right now I’m enjoying yet another Buddhist studies course, a yearlong dive into teacher Rob Burbea’s extraordinary book Seeing That Frees.

As Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt offers (this is a paraphrase based on memory): No tradition has a monopoly on the Truth. If you see a piece of Truth in another tradition, explore it, learn from it, allow it to help you heal, feel more alive, and be of greater service.

So that’s the BuJew/JewBu story! 

This is also why you’ll sometimes see in my newsletter that I’m teaching in Buddhist spaces or Jewish spaces, in addition to what might be called secular mindfulness spaces. Just know you’re welcome in any of them, however you identify.

It’s hard to choose, but here are a few:

We can practice being gentle with each other by being gentle with that piece of ourselves that is hardest to hold. 

~ Audre Lorde

Reclaiming ourselves usually means coming to recognize and accept that we have in us both sides of everything. We are capable of fear and courage, generosity and selfishness, vulnerability and strength. These things do not cancel each other out but offer us a full range of power and response to life. Life is as complex as we are. Sometimes our vulnerability is our strength, our fear develops our courage, and our woundedness is the road to our integrity. It is not an either/or world. It is a real world.

~ Rachel Naomi Remen

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

~ James Baldwin

Yes!

I wish! My father David has spent years honing his skills as a wildlife photographer and generously allowed me to select the photos you see on this site from the millions of photos he's taken. He posts many other beautiful images of the natural world at @davidcohenphotodc on Instagram.

In the summer of 2016, I was brought on board to teach an intensive mindfulness course called “Self-Awareness Training: Leading from the Inside Out” for aspiring school leaders enrolled in Columbia University Teachers College’s Summer Principals Academy. My colleague was someone I’d never met before, Cory Muscara, and teaching alongside him was exhilarating, learning-filled, and deeply rewarding. Those 5 weeks opened my eyes to the power of co-teaching mindfulness and compassion cultivation practices.

Every teacher brings different ideas, perspectives, and approaches, so learning from more than one teacher, especially teachers from a wide variety of lived experiences, keeps things interesting and prevents “guru-fication.”

And when teachers love and respect each other, their co-teaching can act as an uplifting model for how to communicate, lovingly navigate conflict, and cheer each other on.

For me, having a sangha (community) of fellow teacher-practitioners has been a priceless blessing. I learn so much and feel part of something larger than myself! 

Check out the photos below to “meet” several of my beloved friend-colleagues.