The Heartwork Staff

Resident teachers: Don and Martha Rosenthal

Don and Martha began their 31-year journey together in Alaska, where they lived in a remote cabin and explored the quiet life together. Emerging after some years, they moved to the coast of California where they began what has now been more than two decades of counseling couples and individuals. Don received training in psychotherapy and began a career as a counselor. Martha studied mind/body/spirit connection with various teachers and developed a private healing practice. They have a son, now grown, whom they home-schooled.

In 1989 Don and Martha moved to rural northern Vermont, and shortly thereafter began offering weekend workshops for couples. Through word-of-mouth these soon expanded to a wide circle, becoming the core of their work. In addition, Martha leads meditation retreats for women and works with couples and individuals privately; Don maintains a psychotherapy practice, offered fundamentally as a form of spiritual guidance. Don and Martha view their own relationship, with all its trials and wonders, as the testing ground and measure of their teaching. They are co-authors of Intimacy: the Noble Adventure.

More about Martha, more about Don.

Read about Don & Martha's new book, Learning to Love.

Don & Martha Interview on Video
Now available online. Click here...

Facilitators/Administrators: Dan Breslaw and Judith Tharinger

Dan and Judith have been a couple for 26 years and have worked with Don and Martha for over 20 of those years. They have raised four children, first in Massachusetts, later on an Alaskan homestead, and finally in rural Vermont. Dan is a carpenter and housebuilder, and has done occasional writing and editing, while Judith is a teacher, cooperative homeschooler, and founder of a Waldorf School in Chelsea, Vermont. Together they have maintained a commitment to values of community and sustainability, and in 1993 founded the Lost Meadow Land Cooperative, home of The Heartwork Center. Embodying the spirit of open-heartedness in a living and working community has been their lifelong dream.