Matthew Brensilver, MSW, PhD teaches retreats at the Insight Retreat Center, Spirit Rock and Insight Meditation Society. He was previously program director for Mindful Schools and for more than a decade, was a core teacher at Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society. Matthew worked as a clinical social worker, serving severely and persistently mentally ill adults and adolescents. He subsequently earned a PhD from the Dworak-Peck School of Social Work at USC where his dissertation examined the mechanisms of risk and resilience among maltreated adolescents in South Los Angeles. Before committing to teach meditation full-time, he spent years doing research on addiction pharmacotherapy at the UCLA Center for Behavioral and Addiction Medicine. Each summer, he returns to UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center, teaching on the intersections between mindfulness, science and psychotherapy and conceptualizing dukkha as an interdisciplinary problem. He serves on the Board of Directors at Spirit Rock and is the co-author of two books about meditation during adolescence.