Mother Sayamagyi (Sayamagyi Daw Mya Thwin)

Mother Sayamagyi, Sayamagyi Daw Mya Thwin, was the student the International Meditation Centre (IMC) calls Sayagyi U Ba Khin's "foremost disciple". She practised and taught beside him in Rangoon for eighteen years. From 1978, with her husband Sayagyi U Chit Tin, she carried his teaching to the West, where it continues at the International Meditation Centres. "Sayama" is a Burmese title for a woman teacher.

With U Ba Khin in Rangoon

She was born in 1925 (IMC). From 1953 until U Ba Khin's death in 1971 she practised and taught with him at the International Meditation Centre in Rangoon (now Yangon), which he had opened the year before (IMC). Her husband, U Chit Tin, was also his student and later taught alongside her.

Teaching after U Ba Khin's death

She went on teaching at IMC Rangoon until 1978 (IMC). The Vipassana Research Institute (VRI) records that "Sayama Daw Mya Thwin" attended the opening of the pagoda at S. N. Goenka's centre, Dhamma Giri at Igatpuri, in early 1979.

Leaving Burma for the West

In 1978 she and U Chit Tin left Burma, in IMC's words, "to fulfil Sayagyi's aspiration to teach meditation to the people of the west". U Ba Khin himself had never been able to teach abroad. For about thirty years she travelled and taught (IMC).

The first centre in the West was IMC UK, at Splatts House in Heddington, Wiltshire. The property was bought in late 1979 and the centre opened in early 1980 (IMC). IMC says she founded centres around the world, five of them with a pagoda for meditation. IMC's contacts page lists, besides the original centre in Yangon, centres in New South Wales and Western Australia, Austria and Maryland in the USA.

How IMC courses are taught

IMC's courses keep the ten-day form U Ba Khin designed. At IMC UK a ten-day residential course is usually held once a month, running from a Friday evening to early on a Monday morning. A teacher leads it in person and meets students for interviews each day (IMC).

IMC's public description of the practice follows the three trainings of morality, concentration and wisdom. For the first five days students practise concentration on the breath at a spot at the base of the nose (ānāpāna). For the rest of the course they practise insight (vipassanā), observing the changing, unsatisfactory and non-self nature of body and mind. IMC's pages do not set out the method step by step: it is taught on the course.

Some IMC arrangements are its own. First-time students may come for the first weekend only, normally for at least three days. IMC UK asks for a suggested donation of £300 for a ten-day course, towards food and accommodation (as of 2026), while saying there has never been a charge for the teaching (IMC). IMC describes what it teaches as Buddhist Vipassana meditation. The IMC tradition page compares the two organisations.

Death and successors

She died at IMC UK on 28 January 2017 (IMC). The centre's home page says she "taught meditation for more than fifty years". Her "leading disciple", Roger Bischoff, teaches at IMC UK (IMC). He also translated the talks of Webu Sayadaw, the forest monk who had urged U Ba Khin to teach.