Jess Huon
Meditation Teacher | Writer | Speaker
‘I stand for our capacity to find fresh responses to personal and collective situations, deeper than distraction or despair.
My Story
I collided with the Buddha’s teachings as a teenager - propelled on a path that began with a force I couldn’t turn away from, and still can’t.
My initial learning was years spent listening close to the ground across the globe, one side of my page filled with classical notes, the other for my own take - streams of consciousness and poetry. My notebooks still overspill like this.
Authorised to teach in the Insight and Open Dharma lineages, I stand independent yet back by tradition. I don’t wear a robe (metaphorically left it hanging on the back of the monastery door). I continue to practice, evolve and adjust, wrestling with the teachings.
I teach what I know and what I’ve felt.
I’m no stranger to aloneness or intense edges of human experience, and whilst the dharma has been a bedrock for me, other modalities have been indispensable - somatic experiencing, psychotherapy, movement practices. I believe in an integral waking up which includes all aspects of our lives.
I’ve spent an unusual amount of time with my eyes closed exploring this work. I take these methods both lightly and very seriously.
I currently live in inner-city Melbourne with my partner, around the corner from my mother.
My Approach
I have a focus on cultivating warmth and belonging through embodied practice.
I believe we need to lean into nourishment so that we can keep our eyes open, stay with what's hard - and beautiful - and take the necessary risks to deepen and enliven our practice, and our lives.
I want us all to know ourselves deeper and freer than the conditioning that binds - more room to move than we might have thought. Here, we can all breathe easier.
I want to protect a space of curious inquiry, deeper than the noise. Where we can settle beneath stress and ‘alarm,’ and soften our bodies whilst sharpening our tools of discernment.
Through practice we can restore what may have felt arid, like rain on dry lands. Our hearts and spirits can be renewed.
Deepen your practice with me
Teachings & Practices
Retreats & Courses
Individual Mentoring
Biography
Jess Huon is a writer and integral meditation teacher. She’s been teaching for the last seventeen years in Australia and internationally — running retreats, leading meditative walks in wild places (Yatras), writing study programs, delivering talks and accompanying thousands on their spiritual path.
Authorised to teach in the Insight Tradition and Open Dharma, and having spent extended periods in Buddhist monastic settings, she’s also informed by the Tibetan and Tantric traditions, the tutelage of Sofia Diaz, and long stretches of solitary forest practice.
Jess found many similarities in the Insight Tradition and the foundational teachings in Tibetan Buddhism and brings these together in her teachings.
Jess has taught regularly with Melbourne Insight Meditation since its inception, mentors emerging dharma teachers and sits on the advisory board for the Contemplative Studies Centre at the University of Melbourne.
In 2009 she was awarded a scholarship to study Buddhist texts at Spirit Rock, near San Francisco. She holds a bachelor of Creative Arts (VCA), and a postgraduate degree in Therapeutic Arts practice (RMIT), and is also a published author (The Dark Wet, Giramondo Publishing).
Informed by her collaborations with artists, activists, academics and community leaders, long walks on country, her own trail and error, Jess is passionate about bringing Dharma methods into different cultural spaces - including the Emerging Women conference in New York City, The Buxton Contemporary Art Museum, Rollercoaster Theatre Company, Nayri Niara Good Spirit Festival and more.
A natural orator, her talks have been described as ‘street language for the soul.’
