About
Kirsten DeLeo is a meditation teacher and end-of-life caregiver trained in the Insight meditation tradition. She is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and has worked at Zen Hospice and Maitri. She is known for teaching spiritual care and contemplative practice in hospice and end-of-life contexts. She authored "Present Through The End: A Caring Companion's Guide For Accompanying The Dying," published by Shambhala Publications. She offers online programs and teaches through affiliated centers.
Teaching focus
DeLeo's core teaching draws on mindfulness of breathing, open awareness, noting practice. The frame is the insight tradition transmitted through teachers like Mahasi Sayadaw and U Ba Khin into the West, but the language stays plain. DeLeo doesn't lecture from height. The talks tend to think alongside whatever's actually present in the room. Recurring themes include sati, sampajanna, and the three characteristics. 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. There's a steady invitation in the talks to keep practice human-sized. Sit when you can, return when you've drifted, and trust that small consistent attention does more over the years than dramatic breakthroughs. Format-wise, DeLeo teaches in online, in-person, group, 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
Kirsten DeLeo is a meditation teacher and end-of-life caregiver trained in the Insight meditation tradition. She is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and has worked at Zen Hospice and Maitri. She is known for teaching spiritual care and contemplative practice in hospice and end-of-life contexts. She authored "Present Through The End: A Caring Companion's Guide For Accompanying The Dying," published by Shambhala Publications. She offers online programs and teaches through affiliated centers. Kirsten DeLeo is a meditation teacher, end-of-life caregiver, and spiritual care trainer. Based on her experience supporting dying people, she wrote the award-winning book “Present Through The End. A Caring Companion’s Guide For Accompanying The Dying” (Shambhala Publications). Born and raised in Germany, Kirsten lived for many years in San Francisco and served at the Zen hospice and Maitri. DeLeo teaches across several communities, including Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. That work sits within the insight tradition transmitted through teachers like Mahasi Sayadaw and U Ba Khin into the West, and the recurring concerns of DeLeo'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 DeLeo'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
DeLeo teaches within the insight tradition transmitted through teachers like Mahasi Sayadaw and U Ba Khin into the West. Current affiliations include Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. The lineage shows up less in titles than in the way DeLeo 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 DeLeo, 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. Group settings have a community feel without becoming social. People sit, listen, and check in. The teaching voice is steady. DeLeo 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.
