Mind & Life

Recorded in person in Washington, D.C., where Mind & Life had gathered to celebrate the Dalai Lama's 90th birthday, this conversation finds Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, insisting that it was never about MBSR. It was about the “M.” Jon and David talk about Jon’s stress reduction clinic in 1979 and the challenge Jon gave every patient: to turn toward pain instead of away from it. They talk about the psoriasis study that put mindfulness training in a light box, how MBCT was born when three cognitive therapists came to borrow the tapes from Jon, loneliness, attention in an age built to capture it, 26,000 people on the first day of a Zoom retreat, and what Jon calls the koan for humanity: can we wake up enough? David ends the show with a short 2-minute guided meditation practice, focusing on a way of ‘putting out the welcome mat’ to our experience.

In this episode:

The stress reduction clinic at UMass, 1979: catching people falling through the cracks of the health care system

The pain is bare sensation; the suffering's extra

Nothing is to be clung to as I, me, or mine: the Buddha's teaching in one sentence

Sitting here, not sitting there

For MBSR: "My marketing strategy is no marketing," and the birth of MBCT

The psoriasis study: meditation in a light therapy box

Attention in the age of perpetual distraction

Our analog genius: 13.8 billion years of evolution

Many doors, one room: send your awareness a change-of-address card

The koan for humanity, and "United and Present" at the UN

Loneliness vs. aloneness, and MBSR as sangha

The two-second peek: reclaiming your body

Permission to be awkward: an improv study

Repetition over novelty: why the guided meditations never change

"You're at home and I'm at home": 26,000 people on the ‘mitigation’ retreat

Glaciers as a mindfulness practice: no planet B

David's takeaway, a 2-minute guided meditation practice

Full show notes and resources

In this season opener, producer Phil Walker introduces the Mind & Life Podcast’s new host, health psychologist and contemplative scientist David Creswell. They talk about how David’s research has evolved since his 2023 guest appearance on the podcast, why the hardest moments in meditation may be where the real training happens, and what listeners can expect this season. Then David turns the tables and asks Phil what producing the previous 84 episodes of the podcast has taught him.

In this episode:

  thanking former host Wendy Hasenkamp for 84 episodes over five-plus years

  an experimental health psychologist working at the boundaries of disciplines

  mindfulness training for irritable bowel syndrome and the gut microbiome

  the meditation app revolution, and why so few people keep practicing

  learning from an app vs. a teacher and a group

  meditation as “a gym workout, not a massage”

  equanimity reps and leaning into discomfort

  scientists, industry, and new conflicts of interest

  what 84 episodes taught Phil, and his favorite conversation

  the Dalai Lama as listener: the podcast as dialogue

  a preview of this season, and a glimpse of 2027

Full show notes and resources

To conclude this mini-series, guest host Jamie Bristow is joined by Gretchen Steidle, cathy-mae karelse and Rufus Pollock to step back from individual approaches explored so far and consider the wider field they are collectively helping to shape. As interest in contemplative approaches to social and ecological transformation continues to grow, how do we make sense of a rapidly expanding landscape of people, projects, organisations and ideas? Together, they discuss the importance of mapping emerging fields: not simply to catalogue what exists, but to help practitioners find one another, foster collaboration, identify gaps, and make the field more visible to researchers, funders and institutions. The conversation also explores what it takes for an emerging movement to develop coherence, legitimacy and shared purpose. Bringing the series to a close, it offers a hopeful bird's-eye view of a field that is beginning to recognise itself, and asks what might be needed for its next stage of maturity.

cathy-mae karelse, PhD, a changemaker and scholar practitioner who leads Climate Youth Resilience, a global south-facing program that approaches climate resilience and systems change from the inside out. 

Rufus Pollock, who is co-founder of Life Itself and the Second Renaissance Initiatives and is focused on inner-led social change to renew our civilization's foundations. 

Gretchen Steidle, Director of Spirituality and Social Change at the Garrison Institute and Chief Weaver for the Conscious Change Collective, a network of practitioners

Full show notes and resources

In this episode of the mini-series on systems change, guest host Jamie Bristow turns the lens around. Rather than beginning with a particular inner approach and asking what it might offer, the conversation starts with the system itself: the patterns, power dynamics and meaning-making structures that shape the crises we face. Joined by Rachel Lilley, Thomas Legrand, and Wakanyi Macharia-Hoffman, Jamie explores why contemplative and embodied approaches may be vital not only for shifting deep leverage points such as worldview and values, but also for helping systems practitioners navigate complexity, bias, and uncertainty. From food systems and public policy to AI, Ubuntu, and embodied systems leadership, the discussion ranges widely while staying grounded in a central question: what does it take to work with systems in ways that are more relational, reflective, and transformative? The result is a rich conversation about inner-led change, viewed through a broader systems lens.

Thomas Legrand is Lead Advisor for the UNDP-convened Conscious Food Systems Alliance, and the author of Politics of Being: wisdom and science for a new development paradigm.

Rachel Lilley is an Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham, where she is programme director of the MSc in Systems Thinking and Leadership and pioneers the integration of embodied practice and inner inquiry into systems practice.

Wakanyi Macharia-Hoffman is an Ubuntu philosophy thinker, the founder of African Folktales Project and the director of African AI Design Research at Inclusive AI Lab, Utrecht University. , where she bridges indigenous African knowledge for inner human development with AI design ethics.

 

Full show notes and resources

Jon Kabat-Zinn didn't invent MBSR as a stress reduction programme. He created it as a way of meeting suffering—individual, collective, planetary—with greater clarity and care. Somewhere in the journey to the mainstream, that wider vision narrowed in the public conception. This episode is, in part, a return to the source.

Guest host Jamie Bristow is joined by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Paula Ramírez Díazgranados and Liane Stephan to explore what mindfulness becomes when it is brought back into relationship with the world: with trauma and conflict, with institutions and food systems, with the tragedy of ecological crisis. Their conversation moves through medicine, humanitarian response and sustainability work, but the deeper thread running through all of it is relational: the question of what contemplative practice can offer when the patient is not only the individual, but the communities and systems we are part of.

 

The result is a wide-ranging and genuinely hopeful conversation about resilience, interdependence and the fuller promise of mindfulness in a time that needs more than personal wellbeing.

Jon Kabat-Zinn is internationally known for his work as a scientist, writer, and meditation teacher engaged in bringing mindfulness into the mainstream of medicine and society including MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction). He is professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and author of numerous books, including Full Catastrophe Living, Arriving at Your Own Door, Coming to Our Senses, and Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief


Paula Ramírez Díazgranados is a Colombian anthropologist, peacebuilder, therapist, and somatic facilitator whose work integrates trauma-sensitive mindfulness, Somatic Experiencing, ancestral practice, and cultural and ecological wisdom. Since 2009, she has worked across more than 20 countries with individuals, communities, and humanitarian teams navigating trauma, systemic violence, displacement, and recovery. She is co-director of RESPIRA in Colombia and Breathe/Emerge International, organizations that combine peacebuilding and mental health through the restoration of human resilience.


Liane Stephan is the co-founder and CEO of Awaris GmbH and co-founder of the Inner Green Deal. With more than three decades of experience in leadership development, mindfulness, systemic organizational development, and culture change, she supports leaders, teams, and organizations in cultivating resilience, awareness, and sustainable transformation. She is also co-author of The Resilient Culture: How Collective Resilience Leads to Business Success.

Full show notes and resources