About
Ana Santoyo is a translator and interpreter of Buddhist teachings affiliated with Tergar International. She initially worked as a lawyer before traveling to Bodhgaya, India, where she began studying Buddhism. She has practiced with several teachers and identifies Mingyur Rinpoche as her primary teacher, beginning her study at Tergar Puebla in Mexico. Santoyo coordinates the Translation Unit for Tergar International, working with Buddhist texts and teachings.
Teaching focus
Santoyo's core teaching draws on shamatha, analytical meditation, deity practice. The frame is the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition with its layered approach to sutra and tantra, but the language stays plain. Santoyo doesn't lecture from height. The talks tend to think alongside whatever's actually present in the room. Recurring themes include bodhicitta, emptiness, and tonglen. None of those get presented as abstract ideas. They're worked into the body, into ethics, into how a practitioner shows up in family life or at work, so that the dharma stops feeling like a separate compartment. There's a steady invitation in the talks to keep practice human-sized. Sit when you can, return when you've drifted, and trust that small consistent attention does more over the years than dramatic breakthroughs. Format-wise, Santoyo teaches in a mix of in-person and online settings, and the tone moves easily between guided sittings, dharma talks, and Q&A. Questions tend to get answered the way they were asked, without being reframed into something cleaner. That alone tells you a lot about how the room feels.
Background
Ana Santoyo is a translator and interpreter of Buddhist teachings affiliated with Tergar International. She initially worked as a lawyer before traveling to Bodhgaya, India, where she began studying Buddhism. She has practiced with several teachers and identifies Mingyur Rinpoche as her primary teacher, beginning her study at Tergar Puebla in Mexico. Santoyo coordinates the Translation Unit for Tergar International, working with Buddhist texts and teachings. After becoming discouraged with everyday life as a lawyer, Ana begined on a life- and career-changing trip to Bodhgaya, India, that would lead her into the world of translating and interpreting Buddhist teachings. After studying with several teachers over the years, she found her main teacher in Mingyur Rinpoche after readingThe Joy of Living. She began her study and practice with Rinpoche at Tergar Puebla, Mexico, and has been a dedicated practitioner ever since. Ana now coordinates the Translation Unit for Tergar International. Santoyo's teaching home is Tergar, where the practice community shapes the rhythm of retreats, sittings, and dharma talks. That work sits within the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition with its layered approach to sutra and tantra, and the recurring concerns of Santoyo's teaching, ethical foundation, steady attention, and the slow softening of habitual reactivity, echo the older texts without sounding distant from a 21st-century practitioner's life. What stands out across Santoyo's talks isn't a single technique but a steadying tone. Practice is treated as something built slowly, in ordinary life, with care. There's room for the difficulties practitioners actually bring into the room, grief, restlessness, the body's complaints, family obligations, and the encouragement is consistent without being pushy.
Lineage
Santoyo teaches within the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition with its layered approach to sutra and tantra. Source notes mention training with Tergar International. Current affiliations include Tergar. The lineage shows up less in titles than in the way Santoyo talks about practice, with steady reference to the older Buddhist vocabulary while keeping the door open for people who've never read a sutra. Whether that framing lands as monastic or lay depends on the specific talk, but the consistent thread is care for the form without letting the form become the point.
What to expect
Sitting with Santoyo, you can expect grounded instruction in shamatha, with space to ask questions and bring whatever's actually showing up in your practice. The teaching voice is steady. Santoyo won't push you past your edge, and there's a clear preference for slow, sustainable practice over breakthrough chasing. Bring a notebook if you like, or don't. Either way, you'll be met where you are.
