Who we are

Joyful Path

Our mission is to facilitate individual and community transformation through meditation instruction, complementary healing and Dharma service work.

Much of the work we do at Joyful Path is aimed at healing the mind and the body. We feel many healing techniques are missing a piece of the mind-body equation. What sets us apart from other healing communities is our additional focus on the spiritual. Modern medical science often speaks of health in a mind-body continuum. Recently, spiritual care is also being acknowledged. For example, studies show that people who receive spiritual care in the hospital heal more quickly.

We invite you to view health in the context of a mind-body-spirit matrix that our physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual practices strongly affect. Joyful Path offers a path of healing, change, and transformation for individuals. We view this as the basis for creating stable, healthy, and meaningful relationships in communities. When we ask our students, clients, and community members to tell us about the experience they get from coming to Joyful Path, they speak of transformation. They tell us how they’ve changed and how it’s changed their interactions with family and touched the wider community.

Joyful Path began in 2008 when a group of ordained Buddhists came together to create a place for healing and transformation. The path of change is rich and multi-faceted, but it’s not necessary to understand it all at once. Let us help you choose the next step in your healing journey.

Facilities

Joyful Path was founded in 2008 in Blue Mounds by a small group of meditators ordained in the Buddhist tradition. In our original facility, the upstairs serves as housing for the ordained and volunteers, and the main floor serves as a sacred healing space for all people. The meditation hall is home to the residents’ daily meditations and prayers, as well as a host of secular mind-body and interfaith classes, workshops and trainings throughout the year. We lived in Blue Mounds for 10 years, and moved to Madison in 2018. Our residence houses a 30-person hybrid meditation hall that houses programs in person and online simultaneously. We also share space with several local nonprofits.