The mindfulness summit has been over for almost a month now. I listened to the speakers most days but haven’t had another chance to write until now. I want to mention some of the speakers I particularly enjoyed and the work they’re doing so you can check any or all of them out.
Susan Albers is a Clinical Psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic and leading expert on mindful eating. She has six books on the topic and lots of helpful tips.
Rick Hanson is a Neuropsychologist and has written many books including “The Buddha Brain” and “Hardwiring Happiness.” RickHanson.net is an amazing resource of free information on how mindfulness changes our brains.
Shamash Aldina is one of the UK’s most well-known mindfulness teachers. He wrote “Mindfulness for Dummies” and has been teaching since 1998. I found him delightful to watch and listen. His advice for beginning meditators was to try to make it enjoyable. Be comfortable, lie down if you want, and have a friendly attitude towards it.
Sam Harris (not to be confused with Dan Harris who I wrote about on day 3) was fascinating. He gave an hour-long talk and then there was an hour of Q & A. His talk was about his 2014 book “Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion” which discusses secular spirituality, the illusion of the self, meditation, and more…
Jack Kornfield is a Buddhist teacher and author of many books. He has been teaching meditation since 1974. He talked on integrating “spiritual” life with everyday life. He said that mindfulness and spirituality are not separate. In sanskrit “mind” and “heart” are the same word. He thinks we’ve had a lot of outer developments like technology, but technology has not lessened war, environmental issues, racism, tribalism, etc. He thinks that now it’s time for our inner development to match the progress of the outer. Problems can be solved if we come from a place of love and compassion, not from fear and separateness.
Paul Gilbert, British Clinical Psychologist. I missed his talk but have a client who thought he was wonderful and wants to get his book so I want to include him on my list of resources.
Dan Siegel and Caroline Welch spoke on technology, mindful business, and leadership. I thought they were wonderful. They have been married for many years and spoke well together but they have an impressive array of work individually, too. Dan Siegel has done a lot of research and has written many books. To learn more go to drdansiegel.com or mindsightinstitute.com
Lori Deschene is the founder of the website tinybuddha.com which contains quotes, tips and stories to help us on our mindfulness journies.
The mindfulness summit taught me many things–among them, that there are a lot of really smart people doing research and writing on mindfulness. A very worthwhile practice.
We are all in this together 