This past spring, I attended professional training in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) — a program started by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the UMass Medical Center. Basically, MBSR is a way of presenting meditation in a secular context — for health, wellness, and self-awareness. It brings the transformative power of mindfulness out to the mainstream in a way that “Buddhist” things probably never could. I am now moving toward offering MBSR classes of my own in the Boston area, starting this fall.

For those of you who may not be familiar with Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work, here’s a masterful presentation by the man himself. Warning: it’s two hours long, but I found it very inspiring.