about

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 he knew they were well-known states catalogued by different wisdom traditions under different names. When he learned the early Buddhist term "jhana" from Leigh Brasington's Right Concentration, he quit his job to see if modern tools could make these states easier to learn, and eventually sat a retreat with Leigh in early 2022.

Research first (2022–2023). Jhourney began as a neurotech research project. We recorded EEG data from experienced meditators:

  • March 2023, at a retreat we hosted at Mount Madonna, led by an experienced jhana teacher.
  • April–May 2023, at a jhana retreat taught by another experienced jhana teacher.
  • May 2023, at the TWIM Dependent Origination Symposium, shortly after Stephen sat a TWIM retreat with Delson Armstrong and Rachael O'Brien. Seventeen TWIM practitioners took part, including several TWIM teachers.

In July 2026 we published the full dataset openly.

From research to retreats (late 2023). To build tools for beginners, we needed data from beginners, so we started teaching.

  • September 2023: Doug Kraft co-taught our first weeklong retreat, at Mount Madonna.
  • October 2023: Six teachers from several traditions gave feedback on an online retreat. That retreat blended TWIM, Rob Burbea, and Ayya Khema/Leigh Brasington approaches.

After that, we wrote our own curriculum. The retreats became the company, and we set the neurotech aside.

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. Our partner practice, Jhourneying, grew from Doug Kraft's Deepening practice, with influences from Eugene Gendlin's Focusing. 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 decoupled from any one religion's metaphysics or ethics. 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.