Founder/Teacher

I’m a father, partner, university lecturer, beekeeper, and Dharma practitioner who’s traveling the path of awakening in the midst of modern life. I’ve been meditating and studying Dharma for 20 years, inspired by a vision of personal and collective liberation.

From a young age, I’ve been deeply curious about the nature of mind, magic, dreams, and the mystery of consciousness. I began meditation practice at the age of 19 in the forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains, sitting under a Tulip Poplar, opening my senses and melting into the landscape. After experiencing life-threatening injuries in a car accident and entering into a period of difficulty and confusion, I threw myself into Insight meditation (aka vipassana), fell in love with the Dharma, and haven’t looked back. My practice is supported by an eclectic mix of teachings and techniques and, in recent years, I’ve been practicing Vajrayana (tantric) Buddhism with my primary teacher Lama Rod Owens and the Bhumisparsha Sangha.

I’ve been teaching meditation, mindfulness, and Dharma in retreat centers, college classrooms, local sanghas, Zoom rooms, and under the open sky for 10 years. Currently, I’m teaching at Inward Bound Mindfulness, the Burlington Dharma Collective, Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, and University of Vermont.

I live in Winooski, Vermont with my partner, son, and tens of thousands of honeybees.

Space Holder and Organizer (she/her)

I’m a human animal living in Burlington, Vermont, in a second story apartment with two cats. I am learning the teachings of the dharma through living relationships in community, through the dirt, rocks, lake, trees, mountains, rivers, and sky, and through various buddhist practices and teachers. It is my prayer to use the gifts of the teachings to remember my freedom and interconnectedness, and to deepen my relationship with the collective path toward healing and liberation.

When I am not organizing spaces and events for the Burlington Dharma Collective, you can find me writing and playing music, carrying on the lineage of the women in my family by dancing and singing while cooking delicious food in the kitchen, playing soccer, working as a Behavioral Interventionist at the Howard Center, swimming in rivers and lakes, riding my electric moped around town, and smelling all the flowers.

Founder, Former Teacher

My name is Denise Casey, (she/her). I write, teach and facilitate practices around bodies, voices and freedom and how the unseen world loves us in unexpected and delightful ways. I learn a lot about joy, grief, love and healing from my own suffering and the suffering of others. I notice the more I imagine and practice seeing freedom the more I experience it to be real and want this for all beings across time and space. I practice listening to my body and trees, sometimes I confuse the two. One year I let a female humpback whale live inside my body and teach me how to swim and move with ease. I’m teaching my pelvic bowl how to photosynthesize on its own and sometimes I see myself as the Himalayas. I include all of these practices as meditation. How do you practice?

Zac and I started this collective after a residential retreat with our guiding teacher, Lama Rod Owens, because we saw, again and again, that our practices and intentions are enormously multiplied when they come together and right now, we need all the liberatory practices we can foster. We hope to see you soon!