Ayya Medhanandi is the founder and guiding teacher of Sati Saraniya Hermitage.  Her meditation experience spans 53 years, 35 of them as an alms-mendicant following the Buddha’s 2600-year-old monastic system of training.

In March, 1988, she was ordained as a samaneri (novice nun) by Sayadaw U Pandita in Myanmar. Nearly 20 years later, in October, 2007, she fulfilled her long-held wish for full ordination as a bhikkhuni in Taiwan, thus joining a wave of pioneer women restoring the Theravada Bhikkhuni Sangha in our modern era after a lapse of 1000 years. In 2008, she returned to her native Canada to establish Sati Saraniya Hermitage, the first Theravada monastery for a Canadian Forest Bhikkhuni Sangha.