About
Carolyn Stachowski has practiced meditation with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington since 2006. She completed the Meditation Teacher Training Institute in 2013 and took the Eight Lifetime Precepts with Bhante Gunaratana in 2019. In 2009, she co-founded Insight on the Inside, which trains volunteers to teach meditation in prisons, homeless services, substance abuse treatment programs, mental health facilities, and reentry units. She also teaches young men ages 18 to 25. Stachowski leads drop-in classes that include dialogue with participants focused on applying the teachings.
Teaching focus
Carolyn Stachowski's teaching focus sits inside the Insight Meditation lineage that grew from Burmese vipassana through teachers like Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and Jack Kornfield, with insight meditation (vipassana) as the working ground. The Insight Meditation lineage carries forward the Burmese vipassana teaching as it took root in the West through teachers like Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and Jack Kornfield. That means mindfulness held at the center, with metta and the broader brahmaviharas as steady companions, and a household-friendly framing that doesn't require ordination or extreme retreat conditions. Trauma-informed teaching shows up as pacing, as explicit consent for difficult material, and as a willingness to abandon the schedule when a practitioner needs that more than the next instruction. Across the body of work, the consistent thread in Carolyn Stachowski's teaching is the refusal to let practice become abstract. The instruction asks for direct contact with what's actually arising, and the framing supports practitioners in giving it that. Recurring questions in the teaching include how to keep practice honest across years, how to hold difficulty without bypassing it, and how the dharma actually shows up in ordinary life rather than only on the cushion. Recurring questions in the teaching include how to keep practice honest across years, how to hold difficulty without bypassing it, and how the dharma actually shows up in ordinary life rather than only on the cushion.
Background
Carolyn Stachowski has practiced meditation with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington since 2006. She completed the Meditation Teacher Training Institute in 2013 and took the Eight Lifetime Precepts with Bhante Gunaratana in 2019. In 2009, she co-founded Insight on the Inside, which trains volunteers to teach meditation in prisons, homeless services, substance abuse treatment programs, mental health facilities, and reentry units. She also teaches young men ages 18 to 25. Stachowski leads drop-in classes that include dialogue with participants focused on applying the teachings. She graduated from the Meditation Teacher Training Institute in 2013. In 2019 she took the Eight Lifetime Precepts with Bhante Gunaratana. Carolyn teaches what the Buddha taught to the best of her understanding. In her drop-in classes, time is dedicated to dialogue with participants, with the emphasis on application of the teachings. Contact Carolyn. Read Carolyn's blog posts. Carolyn Stachowski's teaching is anchored at Insight Meditation Community of Washington. The teaching draws from the Insight Meditation lineage that grew from Burmese vipassana through teachers like Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and Jack Kornfield, with insight meditation (vipassana) as the working ground. Areas of particular focus include trauma, in-person. The voice in Carolyn Stachowski's teaching is recognizably in the Insight Meditation lineage, warm without being soft, and willing to sit with the difficult places practice opens. Mindfulness, loving-kindness, and the gradual accumulation of insight are the working vocabulary.
Lineage
Carolyn Stachowski teaches within the Insight Meditation lineage that grew from Burmese vipassana through teachers like Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and Jack Kornfield. In 2009, she helped to found Insight on the Inside, training volunteers to teach meditation to incarcerated people, people who have experienced homelessness, and has taught in substance abuse treatment, mental health, and reentry units, and young men 18 to 25. She graduated from the Meditation Teacher Training Institute in 2013. Carolyn teaches what the Buddha taught to the best of her understanding. Current affiliation runs through Insight Meditation Community of Washington. Carolyn Stachowski teaches as a lay practitioner rather than from a monastic role.
What to expect
In Carolyn Stachowski's classes and groups, expect guided sitting, dharma teaching held to a manageable length, and time for practitioners to ask the questions that are actually live for them. Sittings are conventional, mindfulness of breath and body, with metta and inquiry into difficult mind-states woven through. There's space for questions, and the answers don't get rushed. Pacing is trauma-informed, which means slow when slow is needed and explicit invitations to titrate intensity rather than push through. The atmosphere is grounded rather than performative, and practitioners tend to leave with practical ground to keep working from on their own. The atmosphere is grounded rather than performative, and practitioners tend to leave with practical ground to keep working from on their own.
