Embodiment of Wisdom

Your Guiding Teachers

Dr. Larry Ward

Larry Ward is a senior teacher in Buddhist Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village tradition, the author of the book America’s Racial Karma, and co-author with his wife, Peggy, of Love’s Garden: A Guide To Mindful Relationships.
Dr. Ward brings forty years of international experience in organizational change and local community renewal to his work at the Lotus Institute. He holds a PhD in Religious Studies with an emphasis on Buddhism and the neuroscience of meditation and has trained at the Trauma Resource Institute. Dr. Ward has taught courses at Claremont Graduate University and the University of the West. As a teacher, Dr. Ward interweaves insights with personal stories and resounding clarity that express his Dharma name, “True Great Sound.”

Dr. Peggy Rowe Ward

Peggy’s joyful spirit enables her students to discover and embody their most creative and authentic selves. She offers a path of deep insight through methods such as movement, writing, art and ritual.
Peggy has her EdD in Adult Education and her M.A. in Counseling Psychology and co-author with her husband, Larry, of Love’s Garden: A Guide To Mindful Relationships. She has taught in graduate schools of social work, psychology and counseling psychology. Her Doctoral research is in dreamwork. She has had a private therapy practice for many years and now offers consultations with a spiritual direction focus.

Marcus Young 楊墨

Marcus is a behavioral and social practice artist making work for the stage, museums, and the public realm, as well as within mindfulness and learning communities. His work invites everyone to try and use new artistic forms, expanding the repertoire of human behavior, what is social action, and the expressivity of how we gather. He is the founding artist for Don’t You Feel It Too?—a participatory street dance and public liberation practice. From 2006 to 2015, he was City Artist in St. Paul, where he transformed the city’s sidewalk maintenance program into a publishing entity for poetry. From 2020 to 2022 he was artist in residence for the Minnesota Department of Transportation. There, he created the Land Acknowledgment Confluence Room, re-making a top-floor conference room in the State Transportation Building into a space of broadening awareness, healing, and change. Currently, he is Stage Director for Ananya Dance Theatre, and he teaches “Art+Life” at the University of Minnesota, and in the Creative Leadership MA program at Minneapolis College of Art & Design. He is a member of Clouds in Water Zen Center in St. Paul.

Meredith W. Watts

Meredith Watts is a retired university professor now active as a photographer, yoga teacher, and researcher (on folk culture in Northeast Brazil, with his wife and research partner Simone Ferro). He practiced Aikido for some years and is a certified Iyengar Yoga Teacher. He and his wife and research partner have an ongoing on folk culture and women leaders in the Northeast of Brazil. He has been a member of the Milwaukee Mindfulness Community for some twenty years. He teaches classes in yoga asana (postures), pranayama (breath work), adaptive yoga for mature bodies and mindful movement for meditators.

Simone L. Ferro

A native of São Paulo, Brazil, Simone Ferro is a choreographer, movement practitioner, somatic researcher, and Fulbright scholar. She joined the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Department of Dance in 2001 and retired in 2022 after decades serving as MFA program director and department chair. After a professional career as soloist with dance companies in Brazil and Switzerland, she completed her graduate work at the University of Iowa, a Laban Movement Analysis Certification by the Columbia College of Chicago and a Certificate as Fascia Trainer. Simone collaborates extensively with local dance, theater and opera community, as well as visual artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers. Her project Milwaukee Through Embodied Research has engaged research students addressing social and environmental justice and community resilience through oral histories in the central city community of Milwaukee. Simone works with movement for mindfulness, as well as classical dance technique with an applied somatic vision in which she uses concepts of movement analysis, kinesiology, anatomy, biomechanics, fascia studies and the body as a home for empathy and nourishment. Since 2007, she travels to Brazil to research popular culture in Maranhão with her research partner and life companion Dr. Meredith W. Watts.

Paul Norton

Paul is a long-time practitioner in the Plum Village Tradition and one of the founders of the Mindfulness Community of Milwaukee. He is a member of the Order of Interbeing and his dharma name is True Boundless Radiance.