About
Claralynn Nunamaker has practiced Buddhism since 1999 and studied Pāli since 2014. She trained under Leigh Brasington beginning in 2015 and identifies as a student of early Buddhist teachings. Nunamaker participates in advanced Pāli and Sanskrit reading groups with various teachers. She serves as Director for Friends of Early Buddhist Teachings, a Scottish charity, and maintains a personal website.
Teaching focus
Nunamaker's core teaching draws on mindfulness of breathing, noting practice, body sweeping. The frame is early Buddhist teachings rooted in the Pali canon, but the language stays plain. Nunamaker doesn't lecture from height. The talks tend to think alongside whatever's actually present in the room. Recurring themes include sila, samadhi, and the four foundations of mindfulness. None of those get presented as abstract ideas. They're worked into the body, into ethics, into how a practitioner shows up in family life or at work, so that the dharma stops feeling like a separate compartment. Nunamaker works comfortably with longer-term practitioners. Talks assume some familiarity with sitting, and the questions tend to circle around how to keep practice alive once the early enthusiasm has thinned out. Format-wise, Nunamaker teaches in online, and the tone moves easily between guided sittings, dharma talks, and Q&A. Questions tend to get answered the way they were asked, without being reframed into something cleaner. That alone tells you a lot about how the room feels.
Background
Claralynn Nunamaker has practiced Buddhism since 1999 and studied Pāli since 2014. She trained under Leigh Brasington beginning in 2015 and identifies as a student of early Buddhist teachings. Nunamaker participates in advanced Pāli and Sanskrit reading groups with various teachers. She serves as Director for Friends of Early Buddhist Teachings, a Scottish charity, and maintains a personal website. Claralynn Nunamaker has been a practicing Buddhist since 1999, has studied Pāli since 2014, and has practiced under her main teacher, Leigh Brasington, since 2015. She currently attends an advanced Pāli reading group with John Kelly and classes with Aleix Ruiz-Falqués (Pāli), Antonia Ruppel, and Samskrita Bharati UK (Sanskrit). She identifies as a student of early Buddhist teachings and serves as Director for the Scottish charity Friends of Early Buddhist Teachings. Her website is www.crnunamaker.com. Nunamaker teaches across several communities, including Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. That work sits within early Buddhist teachings rooted in the Pali canon, and the recurring concerns of Nunamaker's teaching, ethical foundation, steady attention, and the slow softening of habitual reactivity, echo the older texts without sounding distant from a 21st-century practitioner's life. What stands out across Nunamaker's talks isn't a single technique but a steadying tone. Practice is treated as something built slowly, in ordinary life, with care. There's room for the difficulties practitioners actually bring into the room, grief, restlessness, the body's complaints, family obligations, and the encouragement is consistent without being pushy.
Lineage
Nunamaker teaches within early Buddhist teachings rooted in the Pali canon. Source notes mention training with Leigh Brasington, John Kelly. Current affiliations include Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. The lineage shows up less in titles than in the way Nunamaker talks about practice, with steady reference to the older Buddhist vocabulary while keeping the door open for people who've never read a sutra. Whether that framing lands as monastic or lay depends on the specific talk, but the consistent thread is care for the form without letting the form become the point.
What to expect
Sitting with Nunamaker, you can expect grounded instruction in mindfulness of breathing, with space to ask questions and bring whatever's actually showing up in your practice. Online sessions tend to keep the same shape, shorter sits, a talk, and time for Q&A, in a format that's accessible from home. The teaching voice is steady. Nunamaker won't push you past your edge, and there's a clear preference for slow, sustainable practice over breakthrough chasing. Bring a notebook if you like, or don't. Either way, you'll be met where you are.
