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
January 18 - January 22, 2026 | Sunday - Thursday | 4 nights
Tranquility and Insight: The Path to Inner Peace
Registration Open. In this retreat, we’ll explore how the forces of grasping and aversion bind our minds, shaping our views and experiences more profoundly than we realize. The Buddha invites a radical shift: as the body relaxes and the clenched fist of clinging is released, a new experience of ourselves and the world becomes available. As the mind unbinds from habitual tendencies, clarity and stillness emerge, and from this stillness, wisdom converges with love as we come to honor and cherish life.
Retreat | On-Land
June 7 - June 16, 2026 | Sunday - Tuesday | 9 nights
Exploring Awareness: A Retreat for Experienced Practitioners
Registration Open. This retreat invites a direct exploration of awareness—not just as the faculty that knows experience, but as experience itself. Together, we’ll explore the felt sense of awareness as it reveals itself in body, heart, and mind. Our aspiration is to become more intimate with this innate capacity—not as concept, but as direct, embodied knowing that supports freedom in the midst of life.
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.
