Martin Aylward

Martin has been practicing meditation intensively for 30 years and has been teaching dharma and guiding people in their practice since 1999. Aged 19, Martin left for India with a one-way ticket and no luggage. He spent most of the next four years in Asian monasteries, retreat centres and Ashrams where he developed a formal meditation practice based on Vipassana / Insight Meditation, while also exploring many different teachings and practice forms. He spent several months with Ajahn Buddhadasa at Wat Suan Mokkh in Thailand and sat annual month-long retreats all through the 1990s at the Thai Monastery in Bodh Gaya with Christopher Titmuss. After ten years of practice, Christopher encouraged him to begin teaching. He has also studied and practiced with various Buddhist teachers and traditions, including the Vajrayana practices of Mahamudra and Dzogchen. Martin spent two years living with Sukhanta Giri Babaji, a Hindu sadhu, at his hermitage near Dharamsala and has lived and practiced with various other Indian sadhus and Himalayan hermits. He was also a student of the Diamond Approach of A.H. Almaas for 13 years. Since 1995, Martin has lived with his family in Southwest France. With his wife Gail and their associate Ian Davidson, Martin co-founded Moulin de Chaves in 2005, a residential retreat centre where he lives and teaches, and where their children grew up. They also co-founded the Dharma Yatra pilgrimages through France, with more than 200 people walking in silence for several weeks, sharing teachings and practices and camping together along the way. He has led wilderness retreats in France and the USA, and with Gail, occasionally takes small groups of Dharma students to practice in India and Bhutan at the various places associated with the Buddha’s life. Martin is a pioneer in offering online Dharma and meditation teachings, and today teaches online through a number of different platforms. He created Work Sex Money Dharma in 2011, running courses to support people in integrating transformational practices and meditative insight into daily life. He is also a founder and guiding teacher of Worldwide Insight which offers weekly free, live, and interactive dharma teachings online, and a director of Realize Media, where he runs regular in-depth, month-long courses, as part of a faculty of internationally renowned teachers. He also has a meditation app in French, called MIND. Martin is co-founder, with Mark Coleman, of the Mindfulness Training Institute They run year-long professional Mindfulness teacher trainings in Europe and the US, and the Institute now has more than 200 certified teachers around the world. He is also visiting faculty on the MSc in Mindfulness-Based Interventions at UCD, Ireland.