People
Teachers
Jaya Ashmore has taught meditation and awakening to thousands of people in a dozen countries since 1999. Teacher, artist, eco-phile and mother, she revolutionized silent retreats by introducing deep rest meditation from the early 2000s on.
Her teachings integrate her deep experience in the Indian spiritual traditions of Buddhism, Yoga, Advaita (non-duality), and Hindu mysticism, as well as her early-life experience in Christianity. A pioneer, Jaya also weaves her teachings with her decades of study and experience in visual art, poetry, ecology, embodied movement, Christianity, and the Japanese healing art of Jin Shin Jyutsu. She was also early to bring Dharma online in 2010.
Born in the U.S., where she studied religion and art at Harvard, Jaya began practicing meditation in 1985. She lived much of her adult life in India with her teachers, and in 1998, Christopher Titmuss authorized her to teach Dharma.
In her early 30s Jaya co-founded the innovative US nonprofit Open Dharma to make transformative teachings accessible to many. She also co-founded Open Dharma in Catalonia, where she now lives, and where she co-created an eco-hermitage from 2008-2016.
In 2022, she published Already Here, a book of her Dharma art; she contributed art and writing to the Open Dharma anthology, Out of Nowhere (2022), and in 2024 compiled decades of essays, images and reflections in the e-book Just Wondering.
Gemma Polo Pujol offers Deep Rest meditation retreats around the world, pilgrimages in nature and spiritual guidance since 2002.
Theologian, pilgrim, poet and mother, she lived in India for a decade, co-founded Open Dharma in Europe and created a pioneering eco-retreat center in Spain. With a wealth of experience of spiritual practices as diverse as contemplation, Zen, Advaita, various forms of devotion and a deep connection to the ancient, nature-based, wisdom traditions; Gemma accompanies and guides each person genuinely to listen to the whispers of their own heart. As a death doula, she also offers a wide range of services and guidance to embrace, support and honour the end of life.
Together with Sophia Style, Gemma has co-created and offers the Facilitator and Ritual Guide training, and the online course Medicine Woman: a journey to your center among other offerings related to the feminine wisdom.
Gemma’s first book There is Light and only Light, teachings to illuminate your inner journey that gathers what she has shared in dozens of retreats around the world, has been published in English by Watkins publishing.
