About
Keith Wakefield is Manager for CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) Programs at UCLA Health in Los Angeles. An ACPE Certified Educator, he completed his training at the University of Colorado Hospital. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Theology from Southern Adventist University (2004) and a Master of Divinity from Andrews University (2012). He earned a Postgraduate Certificate in Research Methods in Health Practice from the University of Bath in 2023. Previously, he worked as a CPE Educator at Johns Hopkins and Stanford Health Care. An Ordained Elder in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, he has chaplaincy experience in medical intensive care, burn, surgical-trauma, cardiology, psychiatry, and oncology units. He has taught classes on chaplaincy and spirituality in health at Loma Linda University and Andrews University.
Teaching focus
Wakefield's core teaching draws on mindfulness of breathing, open awareness, loving-kindness. The frame is the Western Insight Meditation movement that grew out of Burmese and Thai Theravada lineages, but the language stays plain. Wakefield doesn't lecture from height. The talks tend to think alongside whatever's actually present in the room. Recurring themes include mindfulness, loving-kindness, and equanimity. 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, Wakefield teaches in online, 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
Keith Wakefield is Manager for CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) Programs at UCLA Health in Los Angeles. An ACPE Certified Educator, he completed his training at the University of Colorado Hospital. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Theology from Southern Adventist University (2004) and a Master of Divinity from Andrews University (2012). He earned a Postgraduate Certificate in Research Methods in Health Practice from the University of Bath in 2023. Previously, he worked as a CPE Educator at Johns Hopkins and Stanford Health Care. An Ordained Elder in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, he has chaplaincy experience in medical intensive care, burn, surgical-trauma, cardiology, psychiatry, and oncology units. He has taught classes on chaplaincy and spirituality in health at Loma Linda University and Andrews University. Keith Wakefield is currently the Manager for CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) Programs at UCLA Health in Los Angeles, California. An ACPE Certified Educator, he completed his ACPE Certified Educator training at the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Theology from Southern Adventist University (2004) and a Master of Divinity from the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University (2012). In 2023, he earned his Postgraduate Certificate in Research Methods in Health Practice from the University of Bath. Prior to coming to UCLA Health, he was a CPE Educator at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and at Stanford Health Care in Palo Alto. Keith has chaplaincy experience in medical intensive care, burn, surgical-trauma, cardiology, psychiatry, oncology, and other general-medicine units. An Ordained Elder in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, he’s taught classes on chaplaincy and spirituality in health at Loma Linda University and Andrews University. Wakefield teaches across several communities, including Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. That work sits within the Western Insight Meditation movement that grew out of Burmese and Thai Theravada lineages, and the recurring concerns of Wakefield'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 Wakefield'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
Wakefield teaches within the Western Insight Meditation movement that grew out of Burmese and Thai Theravada lineages. Current affiliations include Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. The lineage shows up less in titles than in the way Wakefield 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 Wakefield, you can expect grounded instruction in mindfulness of breathing, with space to ask questions and bring whatever's actually showing up in your practice. Online sessions tend to keep the same shape, shorter sits, a talk, and time for Q&A, in a format that's accessible from home. The teaching voice is steady. Wakefield 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.
