Our influences
Jhourney teaches jhana meditation on retreat. We've developed our own way of doing things, but have been inspired by many teachers and traditions. Listing a teacher here doesn't mean they endorse Jhourney. Listing what influenced us at the time does not mean it's currently used on retreat.
How we started
Our CEO, Stephen Zerfas, practiced jhanas one to three hours a day for about two years, before knowing what they were. He experimented on his own and participated in a few non-jhana meditation communities, before learning about the jhanas from Leigh Brasington's Right Concentration. Shortly thereafter, he quit his job to see if modern tools could make the jhanas more accessible. In 2022 and 2023, Jhourney collected EEG data from experienced meditators, including at a TWIM symposium, and published the dataset openly in 2026. In September 2023 we began teaching retreats without neurotech, the first one co-led as an experiment with a TWIM teacher. The next retreat received feedback from six different teachers from multiple traditions, and a few months later we wrote our own curriculum. The retreats became the company.
Our three main influences
Ayya Khema and Leigh Brasington, described in Leigh Brasington's Right Concentration: sutta-style jhana factors and phenomenology, transitioning jhanas by focusing on factors, the use of access concentration, and the map we teach from.
Tranquil Wisdom Insight Meditation (TWIM), founded by Bhante Vimalaramsi and taught by a community of teachers including Delson Armstrong, David Johnson, and Doug Kraft. From TWIM we were exposed to physical relaxation upon each distraction, radiating metta in the formless jhanas, forgiveness practice as a tool for emotional "blocks," and a few probes in practice interviews. See Path to Nibbana by David Johnson.
Rob Burbea and Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Rob Burbea's Practicing the Jhanas talks and Seeing That Frees, and Thanissaro Bhikkhu's With Each and Every Breath. Working with the energy body, ways of looking, and "jhana jumping."
Some others we've learned from
Adyashanti, Kelly Boys, Tara Brach, Willoughby Britton, Dan Brown, Shamil Chandaria, Culadasa, Jim Dethmer & CLG, Kati Devaney, Angelo DiLullo, Sam Harris, Joe Hudson & Tara Howley, Daniel Ingram, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Loch Kelly, Jack Kornfield, Nisargadatta, Sharon Salzberg, Richard Shankman, Henry Shukman, Michael Taft, David Treleaven, Robert Wright, and Shinzen Young. And more.
Where to go next
We teach jhana without the full Buddhist path. We think these states are human, not Buddhist, and want our secular approach to increase accessibility to wisdom traditions of all kinds. If you want jhana practice inside a tradition, with its ethics and its full path, we recommend teachers inside traditions, and we refer students to them.