Meet Denise Ackert
I practice and teach meditation because I’ve experienced firsthand its transformative power, leading to more clarity, kindness, and freedom in my life.
I began practicing Insight Meditation in 1986, looking for ways to understand and ease confusion, stress, struggle, and addictive patterns. What began as a search for greater ease, gradually became a path of deep inquiry, connection, freedom and the opportunity to share these profound and liberating teaching with others.
Elemental Dharma
What I love most about teaching is creating space for people to slow down, listen deeply, and discover their own capacity for awareness and compassion.
I’m drawn to the places where practice becomes real and embodied—not just something we think about, but something we can feel in our bodies, in our relationships, and in our connection with the living world. I especially love practicing outdoors, where the natural world becomes a teacher and companion.
I found the dharma while in college, and it steadied my life at a time of profound unsteadiness. Over the ensuing years, I attended Insight Meditation retreats and engaged in formal trainings with my teachers.
In 2010, I began offering meditation classes in my home community of Salida, Colorado. Since then, I’ve had the privilege of teaching in many different settings, including schools, jails, nonprofits, businesses, retreat centers, and on the trail. I serve on the Board of the Salida Insight Meditation Community and lead its Mindfulness in the Jail Program. I also lead residential and non-residential retreats, as well as Nature Dharma retreats held in natural environments throughout the US and beyond .
My teaching is shaped by a lifelong relationship with both silent practice and the natural world.
My background as a yoga teacher, bodyworker, and environmental scientist brings an embodied and ecological perspective to my teaching. I am a graduate of a two-year Nature Dharma teacher training lead by Susie Harrington, Mark Coleman and Gil Fronsdal, which focused on Buddhist practice within the natural world. After completing a four-year Insight Meditation teacher training, I was recognized as a fully authorized teacher in the contemporary Insight Meditation tradition, rooted in the Theravāda lineage.
I’ve been fortunate to study and practice with teachers and communities in the U.S., India, and Nepal. I feel boundlessly grateful to the many dharma teachers who have guided me on this path, including but not limited to Susie Harrington, Brian Lesage, Guy Armstrong, Tsoknyi Rinpoche and John Travis.
