Atlanta Mindfulness Institute

Dr. Vantine began meditation practice in 1971 and has spent more than 35 years studying and training in Eastern and Western approaches to personal growth.  For the past decade she has studied Buddhist Psychology at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and has practiced Mindfulness Meditation at the Insight Meditation Center in Barre, Mass.  For the past five years she has undergone training as a teacher of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction at the Center for Mindfulness in Worchester, Mass.  She has participated in professional training with Jon Kabat-Zinn and the Center staff.  She was also trained by Zindel Segal in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy.  She has worked as a professor at Georgia State University teaching graduate students in School Psychology about mindfulness in education.

Kaye Hames Coker, LCSW is a psychotherapist who has been practicing meditation for nearly 20 years. Trained in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction at the Center for Mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn and the Center staff, she has pioneered Mindfulness practice in Atlanta. She is one of the original developers of the Interpersonal Mindfulness Program, now taught at the Center for Mindfulness. Ms. Coker has been teaching Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction for the past decade and using Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for the last 5 years. She interweaves the practices of psychotherapy and Mindfulness in her private practice in Decatur and Snellville, and is currently involved in teaching Mindfulness practice to combat veterans with PTSD as part of a research protocol with Emory University's Department of Psychiatry and The Veterans' Administration. She is a co-founder of the weekly meditation group Insight Atlanta and the Atlanta Mindfulness Institute.

Ms. Coker believes that by mindfully attending to our mind/body/heart processes, we can begin recognizing and reconfiguring old patterns of relating to ourselves and others. In learning to acknowledge and accept what we find, we can achieve and maintain happiness, wisdom, and ease in our lives. We learn to respond rather than react. As our relationship to stressful events, relationships and situations begins to change, we begin to see the world through new eyes. And this makes all the difference.