Laura O’Loughlin

Laura O’Loughlin is a Dharma teacher, co-founder of Brooklyn Zen Center, and currently serves as Director of Ancestral Heart, a Soto Zen training temple in upstate New York. She is also a clinical social worker in private practice since 2007. Before co-founding Brooklyn Zen Center, Laura trained and lived in various Buddhist communities since 1997, including Tassajara Zen Mountain Monastery, San Francisco Zen Center, and Austin Zen Center where she served as Director. Laura received lay dharma entrustment from Teah Strozer in 2017. Laura is interested in how, alongside Zen training, other embodied wisdom modalities can support our collective healing and transformation from histories of racial, patriarchal, and ecological violence. Laura co-created and co-facilitates the undoing whiteness program at BZC and leads retreats exploring patriarchal trauma and affirming the sacred feminine.