Ralph Steele is the founder and guiding teacher of Life Transition Meditation Center in Santa Fe, where he teaches somatic meditation and other practices geared toward supporting people through major life changes. Steele grew up on Pawleys Island, where he was raised by his grandparents after his father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan. As a teenager he moved with his mother to Japan, where his exposure to martial arts sparked a lifelong fascination with practices of embodiment. Eventually, after serving in the Vietnam War, Steele ended up practicing meditation as a way of coping with trauma and addiction.

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Steele to talk about his remarkable life story, including the dharma lessons he learned from his grandmother, Sister Mary, how meditation helped him learn to sit in the fire of pain, and how he adapts Buddhist teachings in the retreats he has been leading for veterans.

Read more about Ralph Steele in his 1999 Tricycle article, “In the Lineage of Sister Mary.”