Catherine Kerr Award Ceremony and Lectures: “Education for Peace: Transforming our Schools with Mindfulness and Compassion”

Educators and philosophers have pointed to the importance of quality education for building a peaceful world. This requires the intentional cultivation of wholesome school environments where students feel supported and encouraged to thrive. However, increasing demands on teachers have resulted in high levels of stress and burnout, which can hinder their sustained commitment to teach …

Master Lectures: Mindfulness to Meaning: Healing Hedonic Dysregulation in Addiction, Stress, and Pain with Mindfulness–Oriented Recovery Enhancement

Meaning–making is fundamental to biological survival, insofar as hedonic valuation (i.e., “is this good for me, or bad for me?”) drives behavior to facilitate homeostatic goal attainment. Yet, the dysregulation of hedonic value is at the root of many of the most pressing maladies afflicting modern society, including addiction, stress, and chronic pain. For instance, …

Master Lectures: Seeing Reality: Interdependence, Relationality and the Expansion of Contemplative Practice

What is transformative insight, what methods lead to it, and what results come from it? Beyond short term benefits, lasting transformation from contemplative practice appears to come from shifts in the way practitioners see themselves, their experiences, their world, and others. Has the time come for a broader approach to contemplative practice, one that builds …

Master Lectures: The Neural and Physiological Mechanisms Supporting Mindfulness–induced Pain Relief

Pain is a multidimensional experience that involves interacting sensory, cognitive, and affective factors, rendering the treatment of chronic pain challenging and financially burdensome. The widespread use of opioids to treat chronic pain has led to an opioid epidemic characterized by exponential growth in opioid misuse and addiction. The staggering statistics related to opioid use highlight …

Master Lectures: Integrating First–person Inquiry in the Higher Education Classroom

At the heart of contemplative pedagogy is the cultivation of what psychologist DeWit (1991) and neurobiologist Varela (1996) have called “first–person inquiry,” a method that valorizes critical subjectivity in science and social science endeavors. This lecture briefly surveys diverse theoretical foundations of this method, with emphasis on application to higher education teaching and learning in …

Master Lectures: Mindfulness Training in High Demand, Time-Pressured Real-world Settings: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The science and practice of mindfulness-based interventions have witnessed exponential growth in recent years with applications in diverse settings, including health care, education, the workplace, sports, and the military. Such expansion raises complex and engaging questions. This lecture will discuss efforts to offer short-form mindfulness training programs contextualized for various high demand, time-pressured groups. Three …