Mindfulness has two interdependent qualities: recognizing what's happening and openness to whatever is being experienced. Our animal bodies are relational—we like things to be a certain way. But when we tie our “ok-ness” up with things being this way, or if we’re only orienting towards intense pleasures and displeasures, we miss the richness of embodied life. Taking our seat and allowing something to reveal itself is where insight arises. This is where the mind and heart connect dots in new ways and see freedom and possibility in each moment.
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
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.