About
Jill Satterfield founded and directed the School for Compassionate Action, a training and service organization based in New York City. The organization operated for over ten years, offering mindfulness and somatic practices in hospitals and at-risk facilities. Her work focused on chronic pain, illness, and post-9/11 trauma. Satterfield has contributed to publications including Tricycle, Lion's Roar, and the New York Times.
Teaching focus
Jill Satterfield'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. For practitioners with persistent physical difficulty, the instruction is built so that practice doesn't depend on a body that can sit still for an hour. Pain is approached as practice material, with care. Working with stress isn't treated as the entry-level version of the dharma. It's where most practitioners actually start, and the teaching takes that starting point seriously. Across the body of work, the consistent thread in Jill Satterfield'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.
Background
Jill Satterfield founded and directed the School for Compassionate Action, a training and service organization based in New York City. The organization operated for over ten years, offering mindfulness and somatic practices in hospitals and at-risk facilities. Her work focused on chronic pain, illness, and post-9/11 trauma. Satterfield has contributed to publications including Tricycle, Lion's Roar, and the New York Times. 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 chronic pain, trauma, stress. A growing archive of recorded talks is available on Dharma Seed. Retreat teaching is part of the ongoing schedule, with 3 retreats logged through the public archives so far. The voice in Jill Satterfield'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. Practitioners drawn to Jill Satterfield's teaching tend to be people who've already noticed that practice is a long arc, not a quick fix, and who want a teacher who treats it that way. Practitioners drawn to Jill Satterfield's teaching tend to be people who've already noticed that practice is a long arc, not a quick fix, and who want a teacher who treats it that way. Practitioners drawn to Jill Satterfield's teaching tend to be people who've already noticed that practice is a long arc, not a quick fix, and who want a teacher who treats it that way. Practitioners drawn to Jill Satterfield's teaching tend to be people who've already noticed that practice is a long arc, not a quick fix, and who want a teacher who treats it that way. Practitioners drawn to Jill Satterfield's teaching tend to be people who've already noticed that practice is a long arc, not a quick fix, and who want a teacher who treats it that way. Practitioners drawn to Jill Satterfield's teaching tend to be people who've already noticed that practice is a long arc, not a quick fix, and who want a teacher who treats it that way. Practitioners drawn to Jill Satterfield's teaching tend to be people who've already noticed that practice is a long arc, not a quick fix, and who want a teacher who treats it that way.
Lineage
Jill Satterfield teaches within the Insight Meditation lineage that grew from Burmese vipassana through teachers like Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and Jack Kornfield. Jill Satterfield teaches as a lay practitioner rather than from a monastic role. The lineage shapes the form of the teaching, not just its content. Practitioners encountering it find a transmission line still actively developing. The lineage shapes the form of the teaching, not just its content. Practitioners encountering it find a transmission line still actively developing. The lineage shapes the form of the teaching, not just its content. Practitioners encountering it find a transmission line still actively developing.
What to expect
On retreat with Jill Satterfield you'll get long sits, walking practice, and dharma talks that build on each other across days. The container is silent or near-silent, which gives the teaching room to land in a way that single classes can't quite reach. 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.
