Aishah Shahidah Simmons

Aishah Shahidah Simmons (she/her) is a Black feminist lesbian survivor-healer, Theravādin Buddhist, trauma-informed, certified mindfulness meditation teacher, and a qualified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction teacher through Brown University’s School of Professional Studies. She’s been practicing vipassanā meditation since 2002 and has more than one year of cumulative silent retreat practice in the U.S. and India. She is in the 2025-2028 Spirit Rock/IMS Teacher Training Program.

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 award-winning filmmaker-author and lecturer whose work—including the groundbreaking, Ford Foundation-funded acclaimed feature film, NO! The Rape Documentary (2006) and the 2000 Lambda Literary-award winning anthology, love WITH accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse (AK Press)—breaks silences, offers healing paths for trauma, and provides visions for humanely disrupting the inhumane epidemic of sexual violence.

Author, educator, and meditation teacher Ruth King says of NO! The Rape Documentary, “[The film] serves to heal generational wounds within the Black community as well as uphold the dignity of all human beings. When we know better, we do better. Thanks, Aishah! A gift to us all.”

Author and feminist activist Gloria Steinem says of love WITH accountability, “With this brave and healing anthology of truth-telling about sexual abuse within Black families, Aishah Shahidah Simmons sets an example for all families.”

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 North America 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 Weekly Dharma Gathering, Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, Elm Community Insight, Morgan State University, Insight Meditation Community of Western Massachusetts, Sounds True, Highlander Research and Education Center, The Collegeville Institute, Spirit Rock, Delaware Valley Insight, and True North Insight.