Delaware Valley Insight Meditation

Delaware Valley Insight is a Vipassana, or Insight meditation community active in the greater Philadelphia area throughout Southeastern Pennsylvania, Southern New Jersey and Northern Delaware. We are a peer-led community that practices mindfulness meditation as taught within the tradition of Theravada Buddhism.

The Delaware Valley Insight Community

Delaware Valley Insight is a Vipassana, or Insight meditation community active in the greater Philadelphia area throughout Southeastern Pennsylvania, Southern New Jersey and Northern Delaware. We are a peer-led community that practices mindfulness meditation as taught within the tradition of Theravada Buddhism.

Our Vision: DVI is a spiritual community that relies upon the Triple Jewel of the Buddha, the Dharma (his teachings) and the Sangha (the community of practitioners) for liberation and freedom.  We train not only in meditation practices (samadhi), we also cultivate awakening through dedication to ethics (sīla) and wisdom (paññā).

Our Mission: We are dedicated to the notion that the awareness cultivated through meditation is incomplete without a corresponding devotion to cultivating love and compassion in our own lives and in this world. As such, we endeavor to create a diverse and welcoming community for people of all cultural and religious backgrounds, race, socio-economic class, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, education, and physical ability.

Our Steering Committee:

• Dove Nasir: Dove has been sitting with DVI since it began in 2018. He also leads the Northwest Philly Sitting Group in Mt. Airy every Tuesday at 5:00 p.m.

• Fred Allemann (he/him): Fred joined the DVI Steering Committee in 2023 and works as a consultant, helping organizations, mostly non-profits, improve. He and his husband moved to Philly in 2020 and he immediately found a home with the DVI online weekly group on Mondays.

• Jamie Roberts (she/her): Jamie Roberts is an Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher at the Myrna Brind Center for Mindfulness at Thomas Jefferson University and a Mindful Schools certified instructor. She has been a member of DVI since the group’s first gathering in Fall 2018.

• Jesse Frechette (he/him): Jesse joined the DVI Steering Committee in 2021. As a psychotherapist and diversity and mindfulness coach he chose this community of like-hearted people because they also value and are accomplices in social justice and inclusion.

• John Howell: John spent many years studying with various sangas in the greater Philadelphia and Delaware area.  Pre-COVID he attended a DVI meditation meeting in Philadelphia lead by Pamela Freeman and Sara Lomax Reese, and finally found his home. John graduated from the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program taught by Tara Branch and Jack Kornfield.

• Pamela Freeman: Pamela is a co-founder of Delaware Valley Insight. She is a graduate of the Community Dharma Leaders program and Dedicated Practitioners Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Also, a former board member of Insight Meditation Society in Barre Mass  where she continues to  serve on IMS's diversity committee. As a board member of DVI , she is committed to  focusing  on community building, and bringing excellent meditation teachers to the Delaware Valley area so more local individuals can have access to Buddhist teachings

• Samuel Johns: Samuel, also a co-founder of Delaware Valley Insight, initially started practicing in 2013 to support his participation in endurance sporting events. Since then his practice has evolved from sitting daylong retreats to longform retreats, including a six-week retreat at Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in 2018. . He has also worked for the meditation app Ten Percent Happier since 2016.