Author, Zen teacher, and Jungian psychotherapist Koshin Paley Ellison is recognized as one of today’s most thoughtful and trusted leaders in the contemplative medicine movement. With his husband, Chodo Campbell he co-founded the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, an educational non-profit dedicated to integrating contemplative approaches to care with contemporary medicine. Through Koshin’s leadership and vision, NYZC has developed transformational, collaborative training experiences: the Foundations in Contemplative Care and the Contemplative Medicine Fellowship. Today, New York Zen Center’s teachings and practices are internationally recognized — and have touched the lives of tens of thousands of individuals. 

As a renowned thought leader in contemplative care, Koshin’s work has been featured in the New York Times, PBS, CBS Sunday Morning and other media outlets. Koshin and Chodo were featured in Into the Night: Portraits of Life and Death, a documentary about facing our mortality and are also the focus of a forthcoming documentary about Buddhism in America for Dutch television. 

Koshin is the author of Untangled: Walking the Eightfold Path to Clarity, Courage, and Compassion (Balance/Hachette, 2022); Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up (Wisdom Publications, 2019), and the co-editor of Awake at Bedside: Contemplative Teachings on Palliative and End of Life Care (Wisdom Publications, 2016). 

Koshin began his formal Zen training in 1987, and he is a recognized Soto Zen Teacher by the American Zen Teachers Association, White Plum Asanga, and Soto Zen Buddhist Association. He serves on the Board of Directors at the Soto Zen Buddhist Association, New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care and Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. 

He has completed six years of training at the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association as well as clinical contemplative training at both Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center and New York Presbyterian Medical Center. Koshin has served as the co-director of Contemplative Care Services of the Department of Integrative Medicine and as the chaplaincy supervisor for the Pain and Palliative Care Department at Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center, where he also served on the Medical Ethics Committee for eighteen years. 

Koshin is currently on the faculty of the University of Arizona Medical School’s Center for Integrative Medicine’s Integrative Medicine Fellowship, on Faculty of the Integrative Medicine Fellowship of the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine, and he is the visiting professor at the McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics, of the University of Texas Health Science Center of Houston Medical School. Koshin is part of the core faculty for the Buddhist Track in the Masters in Pastoral Care and Counseling with NYZC’s educational partner, University of the West.