About
Yasmina Porter has practiced mindfulness meditation since 2002. She completed certification in mindfulness-based prenatal and postpartum yoga at Dominican Hospital. From 2013 onward, she taught mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) through UMass Memorial Health Care Center for Mindfulness, following authorization after a decade of practice and annual retreats with Bob Stahl, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Mary Grace Orr. She taught MBSR in the Academy for College Excellence. In 2017, she formed a People of Color Sitting Group at Insight Santa Cruz.
Teaching focus
Porter'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. Porter 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 real care for beginners in Porter's teaching. Instructions get repeated, jargon gets translated, and people new to sitting aren't asked to pretend they know what samadhi feels like. Format-wise, Porter teaches in in-person, group, 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
Yasmina Porter has practiced mindfulness meditation since 2002. She completed certification in mindfulness-based prenatal and postpartum yoga at Dominican Hospital. From 2013 onward, she taught mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) through UMass Memorial Health Care Center for Mindfulness, following authorization after a decade of practice and annual retreats with Bob Stahl, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Mary Grace Orr. She taught MBSR in the Academy for College Excellence. In 2017, she formed a People of Color Sitting Group at Insight Santa Cruz. Yasmina Porter has been practicing mindfulness meditation since 2002 at which time she was certified at Dominican Hospital to teach Mindfulness-based Prenatal and Postpartum Yoga. In 2013, after a decade of practice and annual residential retreats with Bob Stahl, Jon Kabot-Zinn, and Mary Grace Orr, Yasmina was authorized to teach Mindfulness-based stress reduction through UMass Memorial Health Care Center for Mindfulness. She has taught MBSR in the Academy for College Excellence. Yasmina formed a People of Color Sitting Group at Insight Santa Cruz in 2017. Porter 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 Porter'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 Porter'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
Porter teaches within the Western Insight Meditation movement that grew out of Burmese and Thai Theravada lineages. Source notes mention training with Bob Stahl. Current affiliations include Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. The lineage shows up less in titles than in the way Porter 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 Porter, 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. Group settings have a community feel without becoming social. People sit, listen, and check in. The teaching voice is steady. Porter 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.
