Jennifer Cho

Jennifer Cho has been a student of meditation for over 20 years.  She sat her first silent meditation retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh, where she felt her heart break open in the presence of embodied practice and teaching, and she has been walking the path ever since.   She has practiced Zen in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh with the Mindfulness Practice Center of Fairfax, Insight (Vipassana) with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC (IMCW), non-dual with teachers from Open Gate Sangha, and Theravada with the Dassanaya Buddhist Community.  She has been a longtime member of the IMCW sangha and has studied closely with Jonathan Foust, one of IMCW’s guiding teachers.  She completed the Year of Living Mindfully with Jonathan in 2015 and was encouraged to teach.  She has completed other intensive meditation study programs associated with IMCW and the Dassanaya Buddhist Community.  Jennifer is a board member of the Dassanaya Buddhist Community, where she also guest teaches.

Jennifer Cho, LCSW, is also a licensed clinical social worker and mindfulness teacher at the US Department of Veterans Affairs.  She has been teaching Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) courses since 2013 and completed her MBSR training with the Center for Mindfulness, University of Massachusetts Medical School.  She is on the faculty of VA CALM, the national mindfulness facilitator training program for clinicians at the US Department of Veterans Affairs and has taught multidisciplinary trainees and staff in mindfulness facilitation.  She has worked at the VA in the PTSD program and the Whole Health program for almost 20 years, is specialized in integrative trauma therapy, and is a yoga teacher in addition to being trained in a variety of other complementary and integrative health modalities.  She has had the privilege of walking alongside thousands of individuals on their unique journeys of health and healing.

Jennifer is a divorced single working mom to a tween and a dog.  She is a first-generation immigrant who grew up in rural Pennsylvania and now lives in a zip code with people from more than 130 countries speaking at least a hundred different languages.  She has meditated in remote huts with sunsets in the background and she more often practices the dharma while trying to get her tween to wake up in the morning, with a sink full of dishes, and looming work deadlines.  Her friendly, accessible, and practical teaching style welcomes people from all walks of life, in the fullness of their lives.  She invites people to discover the peace, joy and freedom possible in the dharma, even while they are doing the laundry.