Research Micro-Residencies

William Mushkin - Active Series - November 12-20, 2026

William Mushkin is a Level 2 authorized teacher of Ashtanga Yoga, authorized in Mysore, India, by his teacher R. Sharath Jois, lineage holder of Ashtanga Yoga. In 2025 he trained in the Active Series with Shraddha Jois and Andrew Hillam and is authorized by the Sharath Yoga Centre to teach it. First introduced to Ashtanga in 1987, he later co-founded Ashtanga Yoga Denver, a shala offering Mysore-style practice, led classes, pranayama, and meditation. He studied philosophy at Bowdoin College, earned an MFA at the University of Colorado Boulder, and has taught at CU Boulder and Metropolitan State College of Denver. In earlier portions of his life, he traded options on the American Stock Exchange and founded both Mushkin.com and Name.com. He lives in Boulder, CO. For more, see ayd.yoga.

Nature of the residency: A two-week micro-residency at the Contemplative Sciences Center teaching the Active Series, the sequence Sharath Jois introduced in 2024 and left as his parting gift, held in the weeks around the anniversary of his passing on November 11.

Elizabeth Van Genderen - Active Series - November 9-20, 2026

Elizabeth has taken multiple trips since 2011 to Mysore, India to study at the Shri K. Pattabhi Jois Yoga Institute and has received Level 2 Authorization and Sharath Jois’ blessing to teach the Full Intermediate Series. She completed Richard Freeman’s month-long Intensive, his Advanced Intensive, and Tim Miller’s Primary and Intermediate Series Teacher Trainings. She is deeply humbled by her teachers’ dedication to the Ashtanga lineage, devotion to Guruji, and love for their students. A veteran of 5 marathons (including Boston), Elizabeth has undergone multiple knee surgeries, and is amazed and humbled by the body’s intelligence and ability to heal. She credits Ashtanga for the increased range of motion, flexibility, and confidence that she has found since practicing the 8 limbs.

Adam Lobel - March 16-20, 2026

Adam Lobel, Ph.D, practices at the threshold of ecologies, Buddhist-inspired meditation and philosophy, contemplative education, and psycho-social political change. His work in the world weaves these practices together. Adam is a scholar-practitioner of philosophy and religion, focusing on Dzogchen Tibetan Buddhism and contemporary theory. A professor of Ecopsychology and a Focusing professional, he is curious about cultural therapeutics. He teaches in the Ecosattva Training, is a Guiding Teacher for One Earth Sangha, a GreenFaith fellow, and is active in ecological justice movements. He is currently working on co-editing a volume on Giorgio Agamben and Buddhism and developing what he calls Four Fields. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his partner and two kids where he protects lands from the petrochemical industry. For more on Adam’s practices: www.releasement.org.

David Glowacki - June 9-13, 2025

David Glowacki, PhD, MA is a cross-disciplinary researcher, artist, and author whose interests span computer science, nanoscience, aesthetics, cultural theory, and neuroscience. He has worked extensively in scientific simulation, and more recently in the use of Virtual Reality to interactively visualize real-time simulations. He is the Founder and Director of the ‘Intangible Realities Laboratory’ a research group based in Northern Spain. He is also a co-founder of ‘aNUma’, which has developed the technology to support numadelic experiences which dissolve our conventional representation of self into light. Learn more about David.

Michael Lifshitz - November 11-15, 2024

Michael Lifshitz is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University and the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. He did his PhD in Neuroscience at McGill and then a postdoctoral fellowship in Anthropology at Stanford. His work combines phenomenology, neuroscience and ethnography to shed light on the plasticity of consciousness. He studies practices that aim to transform subjective experience—from meditation and hypnosis to placebos, prayer, and psychedelics. He is particularly interested in how these practices can modulate feelings of agency, so that thoughts, actions and sensations can come to feel like they are emerging from a source beyond the self.

Donata Schoeller - November 4-8, 2024

Donata Schoeller is a professor of philosophy in Germany and Iceland. Together with Christiane Geiser she has translated A Process Model into German. She is principal investigator of the international research project Embodied Critical Thinking (ect.hi.is) and Academic Director of TECT (trainingect.com). Among her recent publications are Close Talking: Erleben zu Sprache bringen, Saying What We Mean, ed. with Ed Casey, and Thinking Thinking, ed. with Vera Saller. Her PhD on Meister Eckhart and Jakob Boehme was published in 2nd edition in 2009. She is a Focusing trainer and teaches Thinking-at-the-Edge at institutes, academies and universities in Europe, the US and Israel. She has three grown up daughters. donataschoeller.com