About
Michelle Cassandra Johnson is a yoga teacher, clinical social worker, and anti-racism consultant with over two decades of experience in both clinical practice and social justice work. She is affiliated with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington. Her teaching focuses on trauma healing, addressing individual and collective trauma, and integrating anti-racism work with contemplative practice.
Teaching focus
Michelle Cassandra Johnson'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 Michelle Cassandra Johnson'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
Michelle Cassandra Johnson is a yoga teacher, clinical social worker, and anti-racism consultant with over two decades of experience in both clinical practice and social justice work. She is affiliated with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington. Her teaching focuses on trauma healing, addressing individual and collective trauma, and integrating anti-racism work with contemplative practice. None at this time Michelle Cassandra Johnson Michelle Cassandra Johnson is an activist, social justice warrior, author, anti-racism consultant and trainer, intuitive healer, and yoga teacher and practitioner. She has led dismantling racism work in many settings for over two decades and has a background and two decades of practice as a clinical social worker. Michelle’s work centers on healing from individual and collective trauma, coming back into wholeness and aligning the mind, body, spirit, and heart. Michelle Cassandra Johnson is an activist, social justice warrior, author, anti-racism consultant and trainer, intuitive healer, and yoga teacher and practitioner. She has led dismantling racism work in many settings for over two decades and has a background and two decades of practice as a clinical social worker. Michelle’s work centers on healing from individual and collective trauma, coming back into wholeness and aligning the mind, body, spirit, and heart. Michelle Cassandra Johnson'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. The voice in Michelle Cassandra Johnson'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 Michelle Cassandra Johnson'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 Michelle Cassandra Johnson'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 Michelle Cassandra Johnson'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 Michelle Cassandra Johnson'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
Michelle Cassandra Johnson teaches within the Insight Meditation lineage that grew from Burmese vipassana through teachers like Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and Jack Kornfield. Michelle Cassandra Johnson Michelle Cassandra Johnson is an activist, social justice warrior, author, anti-racism consultant and trainer, intuitive healer, and yoga teacher and practitioner. None at this time Michelle Cassandra Johnson Michelle Cassandra Johnson is an activist, social justice warrior, author, anti-racism consultant and trainer, intuitive healer, and yoga teacher and practitioner. Current affiliation runs through Insight Meditation Community of Washington. Michelle Cassandra Johnson 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.
What to expect
In Michelle Cassandra Johnson'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.
