Relational Vipassanā & Phenomenological Dialogue | Andrea Galvan

One of the people I have particularly enjoyed watching develop as a practitioner and teacher over the years is Dr. Andrea Galvan, psychologist, meditation teacher and founder of Fenomenologia Dialogica.

Andrea first started working with me while I was living and practising in Thailand and he was completing his Master’s studies in psychology. Like Stefano from Progetto Zenit, he was one of my early long-term one-to-one meditation students.

From the beginning, Andrea struck me as an unusually personable, friendly and relatable person. At the same time, he loved complexity. He could happily juggle different frameworks from Buddhist meditation, psychology, phenomenology, neuroscience and cognitive science, trying to understand how they might speak to one another.

Most importantly, underneath all those concepts was a serious interest in practice.

We worked together with Vipassanā meditation, particularly approaches coming from the Mahāsi noting tradition, while Andrea was simultaneously developing his own understanding of psychology and contemplative science.

Over the years, that combination has grown into something that is very much his own.

Fenomenologia Dialogica

Andrea now teaches through Fenomenologia Dialogica, an Italian project bringing together Vipassanā meditation, phenomenology, psychology, contemplative science and relational mindfulness.

A particularly interesting part of his work is what he calls phenomenological dialogue.

Traditional Vipassanā practice is often very individual. We sit silently and investigate our own experience: sensations, feelings, thoughts, intentions, perceptions and the changing processes we normally take to be ourselves.

Andrea brings this same investigative attitude into relationship.

In some of his one-to-one work, students practise noting their experience aloud. Rather than only silently recognising what is arising, they verbalise aspects of their moment-to-moment experience while Andrea listens, responds and helps them refine their attention.

I find this a powerful way of developing Sati — phenomenological clarity.

It makes visible some of the places where we unconsciously move away from direct experience and into interpretation, story or abstraction. Having another person there can support us in continually returning to what is actually happening now.

It also raises an interesting question: does insight always have to happen alone?

Much of Buddhist meditation developed within community, yet the actual investigation of experience is often treated as fundamentally private. Andrea’s work explores what happens when awareness itself becomes relational—when investigation takes place not only inside me, but in the living space between two people.

These days I sometimes joke that Andrea has become a better teacher than me. He has certainly developed areas of practice that I now learn from myself. And I think that is exactly how it should be.

A good teacher-student relationship shouldn’t end with the student becoming a copy of the teacher. Ideally, someone takes what was useful, combines it with their own experience, intelligence and interests, and eventually develops something we could not have developed ourselves.

I can heartfully recommend Andrea’s work, particularly for Italian-speaking practitioners interested in the meeting point between Vipassanā meditation, psychology, phenomenology and relational mindfulness.

You can explore his work at Fenomenologia Dialogica.

Bringing Our Research Together

This September, Andrea and I will also teach our first in-person retreat together in Northern Italy.

Living Insight is a four-day experimental Vipassanā retreat exploring insight through stillness, relationship and movement.

Andrea and I share a common ground in Vipassanā meditation, but over the years our work has moved in somewhat different directions.

Andrea has increasingly explored the relational and intersubjective dimension of insight: what happens when mindfulness enters dialogue, communication and relationship.

My own work has increasingly moved towards the somatic and embodied dimension of insight: investigating sensation, movement, intention, body image, agency and the ways our experience of Self and World is expressed through the body.

At the retreat, we want to bring some of this research together.

There will still be sitting meditation and periods of silence. But we will also explore phenomenological dialogue, relational mindfulness, somatic awareness and movement as laboratories for Vipassanā practice.

Rather than treating these as separate practices, we’re interested in what they might reveal about the same fundamental process.

What happens when the investigative quality of Vipassanā moves from stillness into relationship?

What happens when it moves from stillness into movement?

And what happens when the boundaries between mind, body, self and other themselves become part of what we investigate?

For me, this is increasingly where the question of integrating meditation into life becomes interesting. Insight cannot remain something that only happens with our eyes closed on a cushion. We eventually have to discover what happens to that clarity while speaking, listening, moving, touching, relating and living.

Our shared foundation remains Vipassanā: investigating present-moment experience carefully enough that its constructed nature begins to reveal itself.

We are simply exploring some additional places where that investigation can happen.

If you would like to practise with Andrea and me in person, you can read more about the Living Insight Retreat, taking place 17–20 September 2026 in Northern Italy.

And for Italian-language work exploring Vipassanā, phenomenology and relational mindfulness, visit Fenomenologia Dialogica.