Vikram Zutshi is a writer-producer-director based in Los Angeles. After several years in indie film and network TV production, then a stint as Creative Executive at 20th Century Fox and later as VP, International Sales/Acquisitions at Rogue Entertainment, he went solo and produced two feature films before transitioning into Directing. His debut feature was filmed at various points along the two thousand mile US-Mexico border and has since been globally broadcast.

He is a passionate Yogi and writes frequently on Buddhism, Shaivism, Sacred Art, Culture and Cinema. As a photojournalist, Vikram often travels on expeditions to SE Asia and Latin America and is involved with a number of charities that empower and educate street children in India, Brazil, Mexico, Vietnam and Indonesia.

He is currently prepping Urban Sutra - a TV series about the transformative effects of Yoga in strife-torn communities and Darshana: The Aesthetic Experience in Indian Art, a feature documentary on Hindu, Jain and Buddhist Art.

www.urbansutrafilm.com

Virochana Khalsa has taught Kriya, Tantra, and ways of working consciously in the earth for 35 years in a dozen countries. He is the author of 4 books including Eternal Yoga: Awakening into Buddhic Consciousness and Tantra of the Beloved, is a co-creator of Sacred Mountain Retreat, and has a software company Silver Earth.

From designing computer chips at Caltech, to working with street people; from years spent building a retreat in the mountains of Crestone, and a life of joyful Sadhana, Virochana immerses himself in everything he does. He lives primarily in Colorado and Maui, rides Arabian horses, and loves meditation.

Lea completed her IBDP in 1988 majoring in Studies in Language and Literature, Psychology, History of Art and Music, Sciences, Mathematics and Photography. She took up working as a political correspondent at Vjesnik, Croatia, before traveling to England in 1990. Here she discovered her passion for holistic healing methods, and took to studying Homeopathy and Naturopathy (CNM, CHE, CCH, LCH) graduating in 2009. Her love for movement which started at an early age (classical/contemporary ballet, yoga) led to her training intensively as a Dynamic Yoga Teacher with Godfrey Devereaux, and in Traditional Ayurvedic Massage, (Kusum Modak Method), Pune.

Her yoga teaching includes working in conjunction with Age UK holding classes for elderly with Alzheimer’s and Dementia, as well as her ongoing work with Touchstone Charity Positive Care Programme providing treatment and yoga classes for people with long term conditions and mental health issues and their caregivers.

Debashish Banerji is the Haridas Chaudhuri Professor of South Asian Philosophy and Culture and the Doshi Professor of Asian Art at the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco. Prior to this, he served as Professor of Indian Studies and Dean of Academics at the University of Philosophical Research, Los Angeles and has taught as adjunct faculty in Art History at the Pasadena City College, University of California, Los Angeles and University of California, Irvine. From 1992-2006, Banerji served as the president of the East-West Cultural Center, Los Angeles, an institution dedicated to academic research and presentation of Indian philosophy and culture in the US. He is presently the Executive Director of Nalanda International, based in Los Angeles.

Banerji has curated a number of exhibitions of Indian and Japanese art. He has edited a book on the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore and is the author of two books: The Alternate Nation of Abanindranath Tagore (Sage, 2010) and Seven Quartets of Becoming: A Transformational Yoga Psychology Based on the Diaries of Sri Aurobindo (DK Printworld and Nalanda International, 2012). Banerji’s articles on South Asian art history, culture studies, consciousness studies and yoga psychology have appeared in various magazines, journals and anthologies.

Chris Chapple is Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology at Loyola Marymount University. He served as Assistant Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies of World Religions and taught Sanskrit, Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism for five years at the State University of New York at Stony Brook before joining the faculty at LMU. He has published more than a dozen books, including Karma and Creativity (1986) and several translations and editions of Indian texts, including the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, the Bhagavad Gita, the Yogadrstisamuccaya of Haribadra, and the Prthivi Sukta section of the Atharva Veda. In 2013, Chris founded and currently directs the Master of Arts in Yoga Studies at LMU.

Philip Goldberg has been studying India’s spiritual traditions for more than 45 years, as a practitioner, teacher and writer. An Interfaith Minister, meditation teacher and spiritual counselor, he is a skilled speaker who has lectured and taught workshops throughout the country and in India.

He is the author of numerous books, most recently American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation, How Indian Spirituality Changed the West, which was named one of the top ten religion books of 2010 by Huffington Post and the American Library Association. He blogs regularly on the Huffington Post.
www.PhilipGoldberg.com
www.AmericanVeda.com

Dr. Long is Professor of Religion and Asian Studies at Elizabethtown College, in Pennsylvania, USA. He is associated with the Vedanta Society, DĀNAM (the Dharma Academy of North America). A major theme of his work is religious pluralism.

Dr. Long has authored three books, A Vision for Hinduism: Beyond Hindu Nationalism, Jainism: An Introduction, and The Historical Dictionary of Hinduism. He has published and presented a number of articles and papers in various forums including the Association for Asian Studies, the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, and the American Academy of Religion.

Dr. Stuart Sovatsky (AB, Ethics/Psychology, Princeton University; PhD, CIIS) co-directed Ram Dass's "prison ashram", and in 1977 he was selected for Princeton University's Outstanding Alumni Careers Panel for his groundbreaking work of bringing meditation to the homeless in the US. Stuart is Co-president of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology since 1999 - the premiere professional organization for spiritually-oriented psychologists in the US, is a board trustee for the California Institute of Integral Studies for 20 years and a recipient of its Most Outstanding Alumni Award 1978-2008.

In 2006-08, he was initiating co-convener of the forty country World Congress on Psychology and Spirituality in Delhi, India. Author of critically acclaimed books like Eros Consciousness and Kundalini, Words From the Soul, and numerous articles on love, ideal marriages and families, spirituality of infancy and Buddhist dissolution of suicidal thoughts.

A serious scholar-practitioner of tantra yoga with numerous academic publications and university presentations throughout the US, India and Europe, he now leads couples retreats and trains therapists in the US and in Russia, is a faculty member at Moscow Psychoanalytic Institute and is the director of two psychotherapy clinics in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Richard C. Miller, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, author, researcher, yogic scholar and spiritual teacher who, for the past 45 years, has devoted his life and work to integrating the ancient nondual wisdom teachings of Yoga, Tantra, Advaita, Taoism, and Buddhism with modern Western psychology. Richard is the founding president of the Integrative Restoration Institute, co-founder of the International Association of Yoga Therapists, founding editor of the peer-reviewed International Journal of Yoga Therapy, and a founding member and past president of the Institute for Spirituality and Psychology.

Richard serves as a research consultant for the iRest Meditation protocol that he developed (Integrative Restoration ~ iRest), a modern adaptation of the ancient nondual practice of Yoga Nidra, documenting its efficacy on health, healing, and well-being with diverse populations that include active-duty soldiers, veterans, children, youth, college students, seniors, the homeless, the incarcerated, and people experiencing issues such as sleep disorders, PTSD, traumatic brain injury, chronic pain, chemical dependency, and anxiety.

In 1983, after decades of searching, Richard met his spiritual mentor, Jean Klein, who introduced him to the non-path, non-method, and non-goal realization of nonduality. Richard now shares the paradox of nondual instruction through international training sessions, meditation retreats on awakening, and the integration of enlightened living into daily life. For information on Richard’s teachings visit www.irest.us.