Following an extended career as a software engineer and technical writer,  Andrea Fella began practicing Insight Meditation while on tour in the Peace Corps, in 1996.  After return from the Peace Corp, she was quickly drawn to intensive retreat practice, attending numerous retreats of several months in length, both in the U.S. and Burma.  She has practiced both as a lay person and as a nun. Her Burmese teachers include Sayadaw U Pandita, Sayadaw U Janaka, and Sayadaw U Tejaniya. Her main American teachers include Joseph Goldstein, Gil Fronsdal, and Carol Wilson.

Andrea has been teaching since 2002, and teaching residential retreats since 2006. She was trained to teach by Gil Fronsdal. She also graduated from the Spirit Rock/Insight Meditation Sociey teacher training in 2010, led by Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein.  

Andrea is especially drawn to the wisdom teachings of the Buddha.  Her teachings emphasize clarity and practicality; she loves to teach both residential retreat and a deep immersion of practice into our daily lives. Sayadaw U Tejaniya’s teaching style has been very influential in the way she integrates retreat teaching and daily life teachings.  

She teaches residential retreats for Insight Retreat Center, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Insight Meditation Society, and Cloud Mountain Retreat Center, and most years teaches the month-long retreat at Spirit Rock, and the three month course at Insight Meditation Society.  She regularly teaches classes and programs at the Insight Meditation Center (IMC) in Redwood City, California, and works closely with Gil Fronsdal to create IMC’s programs.