About
Patricia Genoud-Feldman is a meditation teacher in the Meditation tradition.
Teaching focus
Her teaching follows the four foundations of mindfulness in French, German, and English, reflecting the multilingual character of European insight teaching. The Vimalakirti programs serve practitioners across French and German-speaking Europe. The work draws on the Insight Meditation lay-teacher lineage as the foundational framework, taught with care for the textures of present experience rather than as abstract doctrine. The four foundations of mindfulness, breath, body, feeling tone, and mental states, organize the formal practice, with lovingkindness woven through as supporting work. Sitting and walking are the standard formal forms, paired with daily-life mindfulness as the integration practice. Lovingkindness gets serious time on retreat, treated as central practice rather than supplemental, and the broader brahmavihara framework offers additional ground for the slower work of equanimity and forgiveness. Daily-life integration runs through the recorded teaching as a steady concern. The same awareness that opens during a sit is the awareness that meets traffic, family, and work, and the teaching keeps coming back to that continuity rather than treating retreat as a separate world. Across the recorded teaching runs a steady commitment to the actual work of practice, the slow unfolding that doesn't always make for inspirational soundbites but that carries the path forward across years of sitting. The teaching also addresses the relational and ethical dimensions of practice in concrete ways, with attention to how meditation actually shows up in conversations, conflicts, and the small choices that make up a working life. The cushion isn't the only site of dharma.
Background
Patricia Genoud-Feldman is an established teacher in the Insight Meditation tradition descended from the Burmese and Thai vipassana lineages as carried into the West. Patricia Genoud-Feldman is a senior European Insight Meditation teacher based in Switzerland. She's the founder of Vimalakirti Meditation Center in Geneva and has been a long-time presence in the European insight community. The recorded archive holds about 46 talks. The Dharma Seed archive at dharmaseed.org/teacher/137 currently holds about 46 talks across 13 recorded retreats, a focused body of work that rewards careful listening. Established teachers occupy a useful middle position in the directory, with enough recorded teaching to give students a sustained body of work to study, and enough ongoing practice to keep developing. Listeners describe a steady, unhurried voice and a willingness to be specific about practice rather than abstract. Like many teachers in the wider Insight community, this teacher's path includes time on long silent retreat, ongoing study with senior teachers, and gradual integration of teaching responsibility through co-teaching and small local programs before stepping into broader retreat work. That apprenticeship model shapes the careful pacing of the teaching. Students who follow a single teacher's archive over time tend to pick up not only practice instructions but a quality of attention, the way the teacher meets restlessness, doubt, or sudden opening, and that transmission across recordings is part of what makes a sustained body of recorded work valuable for practice over years rather than weeks.
Lineage
Genoud-Feldman trained as an Insight Meditation teacher through the broader Western lay-teacher community and founded Vimalakirti, the Geneva insight center, as a long-running European dharma home. The teacher works as a layperson, in keeping with the broader Western lay-teacher form of the tradition. She founded Vimalakirti Meditation Center at vimalakirti.org in Geneva.
What to expect
Programs at Vimalakirti and at retreat centers across Europe follow standard Insight format. Multilingual offerings are available depending on the venue. Retreats follow standard Insight format: sittings, walking, dharma talks, and meetings with the teachers, with lovingkindness practice woven through and daily-life integration treated as serious work rather than an afterthought. The atmosphere is warm and committed rather than performance-oriented, with serious dharma underneath an accessible surface. Students new to the teacher's work often find it useful to start with a shorter program or a recorded talk before committing to a longer residential retreat, both to get a feel for the teaching voice and to clarify whether the format suits their practice at this stage.