Dancing with Life
The Twelve Insight Practices of the Four Noble Truths
with Phillip Moffitt & Dana DePalma
The Four Noble Truths are the Buddha’s first teaching, said to contain a summary of all of his teachings. Based on one of the oldest Theravāda texts, there is a rarely taught practice of utilizing the Four Noble Truths to attain twelve insights that bring freedom and well-being. These insights prescribe a radically different way to engage with life just as it is and to find joy even in the midst of suffering.
Reflections from Past Participants
What You’ll Practice
- Understand the Four Noble Truths as a living practice for inner freedom and well-being.
- Explore the Twelve Insight Practices that transform suffering into wisdom and compassion.
- Cultivate the capacity to meet life’s challenges with presence, resilience, and kindness.
- Develop a grounded meditation practice that includes sitting and walking techniques.
- Integrate the teachings into your relationships, work, and daily activities with clarity and care.
This Course is for You if:
- Mindfulness and meditation practitioners looking to deepen their practice.
- Anyone interested in Buddhist wisdom and its practical applications
- For those looking to cultivate mindfulness, compassion, and wisdom in their daily lives.
- You’re ready to bring more kindness, wisdom, and clarity into your relationships
- Practitioners wanting to refresh or strengthen their path.
What You Receive
16 hrs of Video Teachings
9 hrs Guided Meditations
Readings, Self Inquiry, and Integration Practices
Live online mentoring/Q&R sessions
Live Community Question & Response sessions
Lifetime Access to Course
Course Syllabus
- The First Insight: Reflecting on the First Noble Truth
- Practice: Arriving and Being Available to Our Values
- Walking Meditation Instructions: Orientation to Walking Meditation with Alternative Movement
- The Arriving Sequence
- Taking the Refuges and Precepts
- The Second Insight: Directly Experiencing How Suffering Is Interwoven in Life
- Practice: Feeling the Flexibility of Mind
- Walking Meditations: Stepping into Life with Dignity and Integrity
- Practice: Including Whatever Is Present with Spaciousness
- The Second Insight: Deepening Your Experience of How Dukkha Is Interwoven in Life
- Question & Response: How to Work Skillfully with Pain?
- The Third Insight: The Call to Know That You Know Suffering Is Interwoven in Life
- The Fourth Insight: Reflecting on the Second Noble Truth
- Practice: Observing and Participating Simultaneously
- Talk & Practice: Renouncing the Judging, Comparing, and Fixing Mind
- The Fifth Insight: Directly Experiencing the Cause of Suffering
- Practice: Knowing Clinging Through Its Presence and Its Absence
- Question & Response: How to Work with Childhood Trauma?
- The Fifth Insight: Deepening Your Experience of the Cause of Suffering
- Practice: The Smile of Recognition
- Practice: Clinging Is Not Woven In
- Question & Response: How to Respond Skillfully to Clinging in Practice?
- Question & Response: Can You Cling to Concentration?
- Question & Response: How to Release Clinging?
- Question & Response: How Does Judging, Comparing, and Fixing Relate to the Four?
- Question & Response: How to Know if a Decision Is Made from Wisdom or Reactivity?
- Question & Response: Is There a Difference Between Ego and Having Agency?
- Question & Response: How to Work with Intense Physical or Emotional Pain?
- The Sixth Insight: The Call to Know That You Know the Cause of Suffering
- The Seventh Insight: Reflecting on the Third Noble Truth
- Practice: The One Who Knows Is Not Caught
- Walking Practice: Walking with Availability
- Practice: Well-Being with Room for Non-Well-Being
- Question & Response: What Is the Difference Between Non-Objecting and Acceptance?
- Question & Response: What Is the Felt Sense of Ennobling?
- The Eighth Insight: The Empowerment of Following the Dharma
- Practice: Spacious Presence
- Practice: Luminous Knowing
- Question & Response: How to Work with the Hindrances?
- Question & Response: How to Work with Judgment?
- The Ninth Insight: The Call to Know That You Know You Can End Your Suffering
- The Tenth Insight: Reflecting on the Fourth Noble Truth
- Practice: The Path Is So Alive
- Practice: Empowered to Meet This Moment
- The Eleventh Insight: Directly Experiencing the Path to End Your Suffering
- The Eleventh Insight: Now You’re Available for a New Relationship with Life
- Question & Response: How to Put Down the Glass (Release Clinging)?
- Question & Response: Is It Normal to Make Mistakes in Daily Life Even If I Follow the Dharma?
- Practice: So Little Effort, So Much Reward
- Practice: So Satisfying to Choose the Path of Peace
- Question & Response: Did the Buddha Feel Sadness When His Beloved Friends Died?
- Question & Response: How to Work with Aversion to the Quiet Mind in Meditation?
- Question & Response: How to Work with Energy That Arises from a Concentrated Mind?
- Question & Response: How to Reconcile Good Intentions That Do Not Lead to Good Outcomes?
- The Twelfth Insight: The Call to Know That You Know the Path to End Your Suffering
- Question & Response: How to Care and Not Demand?
- Practice: Release from Non-Judging, Non-Comparing, Non-Fixing Vows
- The Short Form of the Four Noble Truths
- Practice: Radiating Mettā to All Beings
Meet The Teachers
Phillip Moffitt
Dancing with Life: The Twelve Insight Practices of the Four Noble Truths
Phillip Moffitt is a Buddhist meditation teacher and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He served as Co-Guiding Teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center from 2010-2018. Phillip is an honorary co-founder and the creator of the practice method that is the focus of the nonprofit organization Dharma Ground, which offers online Insight retreats and classes integrating Nine Bodies Insight teachings and the dharma. Phillip is also the founder and president of Life Balance Institute, a nonprofit organization devoted to training leaders and professionals in how to skillfully make major transitions in their lives. He is the author of three books: Awakening through the Nine Bodies, Emotional Chaos to Clarity, and Dancing with Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering.
Dana DePalma, MFT
Dancing with Life: The Twelve Insight Practices of the Four Noble Truths
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.
Select Your Rate
Payment Plan
- Guided meditation sessions with master teachers
- Hear inspiring stories from decades of teaching
- Apply mindfulness to daily challenges
- Insights from Buddhism's influential teachers
- Live Q&A with teachers
- Lifetime access to recordings
11 weekly payments of
$99
Full Payment
- Guided meditation sessions with master teachers
- Hear inspiring stories from decades of teaching
- Apply mindfulness to daily challenges
- Insights from Buddhism's influential teachers
- Live Q&A with teachers
- Lifetime access to recordings
.
$999
- Scholarships are very limited and reserved for those who are truly experiencing financial hardship. Click here to apply.
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