Andrew Tootell

Andrew was born in 1956 near Manchester, England. Much to his delight, his parents migrated to a place called Wollongong, near Sydney, Australia in 1969. The six week voyage was a significant event in his young life, enabling him to reinvent himself when he arrived in Australia.
Andrew started zazen practice in 1988, inspired by reading Phillip Kapleau’s the Three Pillars of Zen, Joko Beck’s Everyday Zen and by the birth of his son, Joshua, from his first marriage. Andrew began sitting with the Sydney Zen Centre (Diamond Sangha) and later also practised in the Burmese Vipassana tradition at the Blue Mountains Insight Centre. It wasn’t until he started corresponding with Barry Magid in 2002 that he settled down into a teacher-student relationship. Since that time, Barry has always been Andrew’s primary teacher but he has also studied Koan practice with the late Sexton Bourke Roshi and Ellen Davison, both teachers in the Diamond Sangha lineage.
Andrew holds a doctorate from the Human Development and Counselling Department at Waikato University, New Zealand. He currently works as a mental health social worker and psychotherapist in private practice with adolescents and adults. He has a long term interest in integrating his practice as a social worker, psychotherapist and Zen Buddhist around the themes of self-acceptance and social inclusion.
Andrew lives with his wife Annie in a small rural village called Bellingen, on the east coast of New South Wales, not far from Byron Bay. Known for its alternative life style, Bellingen attracts artists, musicians and meditators to its easy going, laid back lifestyle.