Each of the four insights has three levels. The first is reflecting, the second is deepening, and the third is knowing. At the first level, we’re trying on the idea from the Buddha: that suffering is entwined with life. Then we drop into the direct experience, touching right in—this is the heart of our practice, saying that we’re ready to feel this. As we become available for the felt sense in the present moment, this naturally deepens into knowing it for ourselves, and the insight becomes part of how we relate to life, how we dance with life.
Dana DePalma, MFT
Residential Retreat Teacher
Dana DePalma teaches Insight Meditation retreats at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Northern California and online through Dharma Ground, an organization she co-founded. She specializes in teaching Nine Bodies Insight, a method of practice which utilizes specific teachings on the structure of consciousness to balance, refine, and empower one’s Insight Meditation practice.
Dana began her Vipassana practice in 1993, when she was a psychology student at UC Berkeley. She graduated from Spirit Rock’s first Community Dharma Leaders (CDL) Program in 2000 and completed Spirit Rock’s four-year retreat Teacher Training Program in 2010. Dana was a Spirit Rock Board Member (2013 - 2023), Co-Chair of the Guiding Teachers Committee (2018 - 2022), and currently serves as a Stewarding Teacher. Dana holds a Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology from California Institute of Integral Studies, and a Marriage and Family Therapist license, and is most influenced by Relational psychology, Depth psychology, and Jungian perspectives. She is a Bay Area native, married, mom to an awesome teen, and grateful to call the ancestral Coast Miwok Land also known as Marin County, with Mount Tamalpais and its rugged coast, home.
Dana DePalma's Upcoming Programs
Retreat | On-Land | Hybrid
Sunday, March 30 | 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Stepping out of Comparison: Developing Psychological Flexibility Around Self-View
5 CE Credits. We are conditioned to measure ourselves against others and often define ourselves through comparison. The Buddha said this entire realm of comparison arises from suffering and compounds that suffering. During our day of practice, we’ll explore the costs of measurement and the alternatives to it. In awareness, we become completely at ease with imperfection, and we infuse the places of measurement with relaxation and love. This retreat will offer guided and silent meditation practice, Dharma reflections, and time for dialogue.
Retreat | Online | Hybrid
Sunday, March 30 | 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Stepping out of Comparison: Developing Psychological Flexibility Around Self-View
5 CE Credits. We are conditioned to measure ourselves against others and often define ourselves through comparison. The Buddha said this entire realm of comparison arises from suffering and compounds that suffering. During our day of practice, we’ll explore the costs of measurement and the alternatives to it. In awareness, we become completely at ease with imperfection, and we infuse the places of measurement with relaxation and love. This retreat will offer guided and silent meditation practice, Dharma reflections, and time for dialogue.
Retreat | On-Land
May 1 - May 9, 2025 | Thursday - Friday | 8 nights
Naturally Arising Ease, Awareness, and Insight
Registration Open. This retreat offers a potent new approach to Insight Meditation in which we open to enhanced capacities of knowing. After engaging in detailed preliminary practices to help us shift out of reactive tendencies of mind and establish genuine availability and embodiment, we’ll then utilize components of the “Nine Bodies of Consciousness” map to access multiple distinct knowing capacities, including intuitive awareness. This practice method fosters the natural arising of ease, awareness, and insight.
Dharma Library
Can't join us live online or on the land? Study and practice at your convenience with Dana DePalma through our new library of recordings, articles, and self-paced online courses.