(Ai assist:) Enter Laura Geller and Willie Kunert—a married couple who met at Oberlin College almost 20 years ago, began meditating together as undergrads, lived in Southeast Asian monasteries, and now combine deep Buddhist practice with psychotherapy.
Laura (an assistant teacher under Beth Upton in the Pa-Auk tradition) and Willie (hospice chaplain, grief therapist) share their unlikely entries into the Dharma, their travels and practice in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand, the profound (and sometimes challenging) practice of ānāpānasati, pairing loving-kindness with the breath, Pa-Auk’s systematic depth, complete approach, the seduction (and pitfalls) of “leveling up,” and how Internal Family Systems (parts work) beautifully complements insight practice.
Also: long-term practice as partners and parents, working with mortality and grief, and their joint therapy practice MetaMind.
Suggested for anyone interested in householder practice, blending Dharma + therapy, making the breath genuinely joyful, or going deep in the Pa-Auk lineage.
→ Find Laura & Willie’s practice at https://www.mettamindtherapy.com
00:00 – Intro & Welcome
00:54 – Who are Laura Geller & Willie Kunert?
02:07 – How both stumbled into meditation in college
05:50 – Jacques Rutzky – the teacher who looked genuinely happy
06:54 – Mortality, parental loss, and the spark of Dharma
08:07 – Josh’s entry via Beat Generation literature
10:22 – Traveling & practicing in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand)
14:08 – First Goenka course + finding a quiet forest monastery near Chiang Mai
15:08 – Shout-out to Jacques Rutzky episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyoK_VroQKM
17:14 – The full spectrum of Goenka experiences
18:00 – Laura as Beth Upton assistant teacher – the real Pa-Auk system
20:04 – It’s not just “hard jhanas” – why the training feels so complete
23:23 – Tunnel vision & the danger of “leveling up”
25:06 – Willie’s current practice with Jacques + lasting appreciation for Pa-Auk
28:31 – The (in)famous Pa-Auk stupa diagram story
31:30 – Ānāpānasati deep dive – how we actually practice
32:00 – Bhante Guṇaratana + Ajahn Brahm influence: metta + beautiful breath
33:06 – “The breath was hard for me too”
34:40 – “So delicate” & breath like wind blowing
39:20 – MetaMind Therapy – IFS/parts work meets Dharma (Laura Geller & Willie Kunert)
41:13 – Willie’s specialty: grief, mortality & spiritual companionship
42:46 – Final messages: Enjoy the breath + it’s okay to change teachers
43:35 – Goodbye & thanks
Audio: Ānāpānasati with Heart, Parts Work & Grief | Ānāpānasati Series With Laura Geller & Willie Kunert
Here’s an ai assisted, cleaned up transcript:
Josh: Wholeness. Welcome. This is Josh of Integrating Presence and today I have Willie and Laura with me — Laura Geller and Willie Kunert. Hey guys!
Laura & Willie: Hey! Hello!
Josh: I’m happy to talk to you guys because we’ve practiced together in meditation groups. This is part of the Ānāpāna series, but I have a habit of covering all kinds of different topics, so it won’t be the only thing. For those who don’t know, who are you guys and what kind of work do you do?
Laura: We met in various meditation communities, a couple of different ones, mostly in the Pa-Auk lineage with teachers we’ve been working with the past few years. That takes up a good chunk of my time — many hours a week in meditation of various kinds. Professionally I work as a counselor/therapist, licensed independent social worker, and I specialize in Internal Family Systems and parts work. We also have an eight-year-old daughter named Felicity.
Willie: Laura and I met at Oberlin College almost twenty years ago. We started meditating together as sophomores/juniors in college, got especially interested in Buddhism a few years after that, and had the privilege of spending several months in Southeast Asia — Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand — seeing Buddhism where it came from and spending time in monasteries. I lived in Zen practice centers for a while in the U.S., then practiced in the Pa-Auk tradition with Beth Upton and Brother Win. Professionally I worked for many years as a hospice chaplain and now we have a private practice together, MetaMind Therapy, where I focus more on grief counseling and individual clients.
Josh: I’m always interested — when I meet people in the Dharma — how did you first get exposed to it?
Laura: The first spark for me was working at a summer program for high school youth in Missouri. A colleague led guided meditations and it sparked this interest in something deeper, in the spiritual realm. I hadn’t been interested in spirituality at all before that. I got into Sufi poetry, yoga nidra, and then back at college we ended up meeting Jacques Rudski, who became our meditation teacher. Slowly over time I felt more and more drawn to the path of letting go. He was the first person over fifty I had met who seemed genuinely happy, and I thought, “I want to go in that direction.”
Willie: My parents got interested in Buddhism after both of their parents died close to each other. As a middle-schooler my mom got me to meditate with her a few times — I found it mostly torturous, but one sit something happened. In college I was really struggling with depression and anxiety. Meditation became something I turned to — not exactly as a coping strategy, more wanting to escape — but it produced spiritual experiences that changed the direction of my life. After college we went to Southeast Asia, lived in monasteries, and that’s when I really wanted to dig into the Buddhist thing in particular.
Josh: (shares his own story via the Beat poets and immediate relief in 2012)
Josh: Tell us about your time in Asia.
Willie & Laura: We spent several months in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand about eleven years ago, and another month this past fall in Thailand. One funny thing — when we first arrived in Vietnam and saw people bowing and praying for wealth and business success I thought, “This is what I hate about religion!” Now I’m more accepting — that’s just humans.
We ended up at a monastery in the mountains outside Hanoi, waking at 3 a.m., practicing with the community — our first real retreat. From there we did a Goenka course in Cambodia, then several months at a quiet forest monastery outside Chiang Mai recommended by Jack Arpen. We had lots of access to the abbot and that’s where we really sank our teeth into practice.
Josh: You’re not casual spiritual tourists. Laura is one of Beth Upton’s assistant teachers in the Pa-Auk lineage. Can you give us the nutshell on why this training feels so deep and complete?
Laura: Most people on Reddit think Pa-Auk = hard jhanas. Yes, there’s a lot of time building purity of mind, but it’s all in service of vipassanā and the specific discernments. It’s wild how detailed and systematic it is. For someone like me who is not naturally systematic, I was daunted for a long time, but when I finally dove in I kept being blown away. The teachings on dependent origination, the five aggregates — everything the Buddha talked about comes alive. At the same time, it’s easy to get tunnel vision: “If I just get the next jhana, the next object…” We have to remember that’s not the point.
Willie: I practiced several years in Pa-Auk with Beth and Brother Win and it opened things nothing else had — especially the Brahma-vihāras. Now I mostly practice with Jacques again, but I still have huge appreciation for the system. It feels complete, yet you don’t have to do every single piece to awaken.
Josh: Let’s talk ānāpānasati.
Laura: It’s been my main practice as long as I can remember. I was very influenced by Bhante Guṇaratana and Ajahn Brahm — pairing metta with the breath, cultivating ease, relaxation, joy, loving-kindness first, then bringing that happy mind to the breath so the breath itself becomes beautiful.
Willie: The breath has actually been one of the harder objects for me. This summer Brother Win told me, “The breath was hard for me too.” That was incredibly validating! Two things that helped: one teacher saying “so delicate… let the breath be so delicate,” and realizing I can experience breath like wind blowing — no need to control it.
Josh: We close with their therapy practice.
Laura & Willie: Our practice is called MetaMind Therapy — metamindtherapy.com. We both use Internal Family Systems / parts work, which lines up beautifully with working with the hindrances. Willie specializes in grief, death & dying, and spiritual companionship. Laura does individual and group psychotherapy and deeper coaching for meditators. Many clients have no Buddhist background, but the work is the same: offering care, attention, and loving-kindness to the parts of ourselves we usually reject.
Laura (closing): If there’s one thing I’d encourage listeners: experiment with ways to genuinely enjoy the breath.
Willie (closing): It’s okay to have different teachers at different times in our practice. Keep cultivating the beautiful mind states however they arise.
Josh: Thank you both so much. Bye bye everybody!
Integrating Presence 