About
Tom Harshman is an ordained Christian minister, board-certified chaplain, and ACPE clinical educator. He has worked in spiritual care across hospital, hospice, higher education, and congregational settings, with specialized experience in substance use, HIV, and cancer care. Most recently he served as national spiritual care executive for CommonSpirit Health. Based in southern California, Harshman provides administrative support for clinical chaplaincy training programs and focuses on the mechanics of hope and experiences of awe.
Teaching focus
Harshman'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. Harshman 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. Harshman works comfortably with longer-term practitioners. Talks assume some familiarity with sitting, and the questions tend to circle around how to keep practice alive once the early enthusiasm has thinned out. Format-wise, Harshman teaches in online, in-person, 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
Tom Harshman is an ordained Christian minister, board-certified chaplain, and ACPE clinical educator. He has worked in spiritual care across hospital, hospice, higher education, and congregational settings, with specialized experience in substance use, HIV, and cancer care. Most recently he served as national spiritual care executive for CommonSpirit Health. Based in southern California, Harshman provides administrative support for clinical chaplaincy training programs and focuses on the mechanics of hope and experiences of awe. Tom Harshman has served in a variety of spiritual care roles in hospital, hospice, higher education, specialized ambulatory (substance use, HIV, cancer), and congregational settings. Ordained as a Christian minister, board certified as a chaplain, and certified as an ACPE clinical educator, Tom’s most recent work was as the national spiritual care executive for CommonSpirit Health. Currently living in southern California, Tom provides administrative support for clinical chaplaincy training programs, while he also explores the mechanics of hope and our experience of awe. Harshman 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 Harshman'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 Harshman'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
Harshman 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 Harshman 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 Harshman, 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. Harshman 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.
