Our Team
Barbara Märtens, Director of Faculty Europe
Barbara Märtens is an authorized senior buddhist teacher for more than 20 years (Acharya in the Shambhala-Buddhist Tradition) with fundamental practice and experience in meditation and comtemplation techniques; she teaches in Europe. She is an authorized Karuna teacher in the team for many years, responsible for the curriculum and teacher training. Her emphasis is on the teachings of maitri space awareness, the development of (self)compassion and personal transformation. She lives in Hamburg.
Melissa Moore PhD, Co-Founder of Karuna Training and Director of Faculty North America
Melissa Moore is currently the faculty director of Karuna Training Northern California. She is a Buddhist practitioner, meditation teacher and founding faculty director of Karuna training in Europe since 1996 and she continues to return and teach in Europe twice yearly. In addition Melissa is empowered as an Acharya (Senior Teacher and Preceptor) in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition and a long time student of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche and Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche since 1979.
Melissa is currently a Senior Executive of Family Service Agency of San Francisco and is the Founding Director of Felton Research and Training since 2005. The Felton Institute is is dedicated to research and training in best practices that help providers in mental health service to raise the bar for the most marginalized populations suffering from severe and chronic mental illness. Melissa has her MA in Contemplative and Western Psychology from Naropa University and her PhD in Psychological Anthropology from California Institute of Integral Studies.
Karuna Training is training in how to evoke the innate health of the present moment. Confidence in our intrinsic health requires the ability to let go of our interpretations of the world, and learn to relate to phenomena directly, openly and clearly. This takes a lot of training and a compassionate community to ripen our innate wisdom within.
We are very happy to have an experienced and international teacher team on board:
Elisabeth Fey, Beate Kirchhof-Schlage, Sabine Fabach, Susan Chapman, Jim O’Neill, Paul Cashman, Petra Drummer, Dr. An van Bolhuis.
Teachers are mostly authorized Buddhist teachers (Kagyu/Nyingma/Shambhala) as well as practicing psychotherapists or with backgrounds in social or educational work.
Management
Christopher Tamdjidi, Managing Director of Upaya Limited
As a Physicist with an MBA, Chris Tamdjidi was a business consultant for several years, until becoming self-employed. He is now the director of several companies including: Kalapa Academy, Kalapa Hotels, and Upaya. Chris has trained in and practiced meditation and mindfulness for over 18 years. He has guided courses and trainings in meditation, contemplation and leadership for over nine years. Chris is also involved in a research project with the University of Munich (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) on the theme of meditation at the workplace—impact on stress reduction and resilience.