About
Kimber Simpkins-Nuccio is a mindfulness and yoga teacher based in the San Francisco Bay area. She completed the Dedicated Practitioner's Program at Spirit Rock and training through the Mindfulness Training Institute, Holistic Resistance, and the East Bay Meditation Center. She is a visiting teacher at Spirit Rock, EBMC, and Insight Santa Cruz. Simpkins-Nuccio is currently completing the Dharmapala training in the Kwan Yin dharmas and is a member of Braided Wisdom's Original Medicine program. Her teaching integrates mindfulness practice with perspectives on body acceptance and social justice.
Teaching focus
Kimber Simpkins-Nuccio'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. The space is structured for queer and trans practitioners as a real part of the room rather than an accommodation, with attention to the particular shapes practice takes inside lives the dominant culture has worked to discipline. Across the body of work, the consistent thread in Kimber Simpkins-Nuccio'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.
Background
Kimber Simpkins-Nuccio is a mindfulness and yoga teacher based in the San Francisco Bay area. She completed the Dedicated Practitioner's Program at Spirit Rock and training through the Mindfulness Training Institute, Holistic Resistance, and the East Bay Meditation Center. She is a visiting teacher at Spirit Rock, EBMC, and Insight Santa Cruz. Simpkins-Nuccio is currently completing the Dharmapala training in the Kwan Yin dharmas and is a member of Braided Wisdom's Original Medicine program. Her teaching integrates mindfulness practice with perspectives on body acceptance and social justice. As a practitioner, Kimber values the intersection of compassion, self-knowledge, and decreased reactivity within Buddhist practice and appreciates how these skills help us increase our resilience. She has witnessed first hand how the practice of mindfulness has brought more compassion, connection, and joy to her relationships and her life. Kimber Simpkins-Nuccio's teaching is anchored at Spirit Rock. 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 relationships, LGBTQ+. The voice in Kimber Simpkins-Nuccio'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 Kimber Simpkins-Nuccio'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 Kimber Simpkins-Nuccio'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 Kimber Simpkins-Nuccio'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 Kimber Simpkins-Nuccio'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 Kimber Simpkins-Nuccio'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 Kimber Simpkins-Nuccio'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
Kimber Simpkins-Nuccio teaches within the Insight Meditation lineage that grew from Burmese vipassana through teachers like Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and Jack Kornfield. Kimber Simpkins-Nuccio (she/they) is a white, cis, queer mom and writer who taught yoga and mindfulness in the San Francisco Bay area for more than twenty years, bringing a body love and social justice perspective to her teaching and learning. She is currently learning the Kwan Yin dharmas in the 2 year Dharmapala training and is a member of the 2024 cohort of Braided Wisdom’s Original Medicine program. Current affiliation runs through Spirit Rock. Kimber Simpkins-Nuccio teaches as a lay practitioner rather than from a monastic role.
What to expect
On retreat with Kimber Simpkins-Nuccio 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. 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.
