Aishah Shahidah Simmons

Aishah Shahidah Simmons (she/her) is a Black feminist lesbian survivor-healer, Theravādin Buddhist, and trauma-informed, certified Mindfulness meditation teacher. She's been studying and practicing vipassanā meditation since 2002 and has more than one year of cumulative silent retreat practice in the United States and India. Aishah practiced vipassanā meditation exclusively in the S.N. Goenka tradition for 17 years. After leaving that tradition, she began practicing in the Insight tradition. Her primary Dharma teachers are Tuere Sala and DaRa Williams. She also studied in the Vajrayana lineage with Dr. Shanté Paradigm Smalls for two years.

Aishah is also an internationally-acclaimed filmmaker, author, and lecturer whose award-winning work, "NO! The Rape Documentary" and "love WITH accountability®" break silences around childhood and adult sexual violence, offer healing paths for trauma, and provide distinct visions for humanely disrupting the inhumane epidemic of sexual violence.

Since June 1995, Aishah has screened her work, guest lectured, and facilitated over 400 workshops and dialogues at colleges and universities, high schools, conferences, international film festivals, rape crisis centers, battered women shelters, community centers, juvenile correctional facilities, and government-sponsored events across the North American continent and in several countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. Additionally, Aishah has been an Artist-in-Residence and served on the guest faculties of the University of Chicago, Temple University, Scripps College, Spelman College, Williams College, the University of Pennsylvania, the Collegeville Institute, the Weekly Dharma Gathering, Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, Elm Community Insight: An Engaged Meditation Society, Morgan State University, Insight Meditation Community of Western Massachusetts, Sounds True, and the Highlander Research and Education Center.