Marilyn Montgomery R.N., C.N.M. is a British Nurse Midwife with over 40 years of experience working and supporting people through the major life transitions of birth and death. In the 1970s, while working at San Francisco General Hospital, she encountered the practices of meditation, mindfulness, and compassion, and incorporated them into her own life as a support for the stress and challenges of working in a large city hospital. She started to teach these practices as part of general health education, which has always been an integral part of her work as a nurse midwife.
Marilyn has always been interested in learning new skills. She studied French at the University of the Sorbonne in Paris, Psychology from the University of London, and Hindi at Benares Hindu University in India. In the past 20 years, she has become a Voice Dialogue Facilitator/Teacher, Jin Shin Jyutsu practitioner/self help Teacher, Continuum Teacher, and SoulCollage® Facilitator. She considers learning to be an important foundation of well-being and happiness, and intends to continue learning for the rest of her life.
BACKGROUND AND EXPERIENCE
Born in Great Britain, Marilyn relocated to California in 1972 when she found that her skills as a nurse midwife where needed, as nurse midwifery became legalized in that state in 1974. She worked on the nurse midwifery service at San Francisco General Hospital, the first service of its kind in California, and became a strong advocate of midwives and childbirth education, for both hospital and home births.
After marrying an American, she moved to India, and was shocked by the high mortality rate for babies and children under five years of age who were dying of water-borne diseases. She became part of a group of westerners and Indians who started an environmental organization to clean up the River Ganges. She remained in India and Nepal for seven years, raising her son and working part-time as a nurse and health educator for the University of Wisconsin College year in Nepal program, as well as doing environmental work. While there, she met some of the great Tibetan meditation masters, and started to deepen her study of meditation after the heartbreak of her mother’s sudden death in 1985. Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche became her main teacher, authorizing her to teach meditation in 1995.
After returning to northern California in 1990, she worked as a nurse midwife in Trinity County, a rural area known for its beauty, but also for its high poverty rate. She worked as a women’s health care practitioner with the Trinity Indian Health Service, and for a busy family practice: delivering babies in the birthing room at the local hospital, as well as offering women’s health care, pre and postnatal education, counseling, and teaching meditation. Under the direction of Chagdud Rinpoche, she also started an import business, Tibetan Treasures, which helped to support artisans in Nepal, and to support the staff at a retreat center he was building near the community of Weaverville.
She moved to Arcata, California, four years ago, where she has been teaching classes at Humboldt State University for the Osher Long Life Learning Institute: Brain Health and the practice of Mindfulness, Foundations of Well-Being and Happiness,, and SoulCollage®. She also teaches Continuum, Mindfulness Meditation, and Voice Dialogue, in addition to maintaining a private practice in all of the various healing modalities she offers.
THE CALL OF THE MYSTERIES
For as long as I can remember, I have always been exploring the deeper mysteries underlying this human life. In my early years, I was deeply influenced by the story of Jesus: his courage, bravery, and the depths of his compassion for all beings. Being an avid reader as a young woman, books became a source of information and knowledge that led me to meet many inspiring teachers, artists, poets and musicians, as well as traveling to other countries in Europe as often as I could. Always the mysteries beckoned ~~ At first, my seeking focused on the external world;, and then, when meditation entered my life, my journey turned deeply inward.
On my Soul’s journey, I have had the extraordinary good fortune to meet a number of wise teachers from different spiritual traditions, who have supported my search: H.H. Dalai Lama, Chagdud Rinpoche, Brother David Steindl Rast, Thich Nhat Hanh, Mary Burmeister, Hal and Sidra Stone, Emilie Conrad, and Seena Frost—just to name a few.
Although answers have eluded me—everywhere, the mysteries offer their grace. As Mary Oliver says:
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company, always, with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.
In my work with people—whether it be meditating, teaching, healing, counseling, or art work—I am passionate about sharing the gifts that I have received from my teachers; from Mother Nature; from Beauty; from the Stillness and Silence, timelessly present;, and from the deep wellsprings of love, compassion, joy and equanimity that are a part of who we all are as human Beings (not Doings!).
My Teachers…
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