Mind & Life 1440 Grants 
(2013-2017)

From 2013–2017, through a partnership with the 1440 Foundation, the Mind & Life Institute offered the Mind & Life 1440 Grants. These grants broadly supported research that sought to evaluate whether and how contemplative practice can promote inner well-being and healthy relationships, as well as the development of new methods to assess these outcomes in everyday life. One of the main goals was to move contemplative science out of the lab and into real-world application of contemplative techniques and practices in social and relational settings.

Measures Development Research 
(2015-2016)

Measurement development and validation of measures of kindness, compassion, empathy, and care—particularly for school-aged children—is lacking in the field of contemplative teaching and learning. In 2015, the Mind & Life Institute sponsored a one-time Measurement Development Initiative in response to the need for innovative, mixed-methods, pragmatic tools to measure these key human qualities in educational settings.

Research Workshops 
(2013-2015)

As Mind & Life expanded into the Visiting Scholars House (located at Amherst College), we began offering the Research Workshops program as one way to leverage this new space. Organized and convened entirely by external community members, Research Workshops were 2- to 3-day events intended to bring together a small group of scholars across disciplines to collaboratively explore an idea relevant to contemplative studies.

Mind & Life Contemplative Studies Fellowship 
(2012-2013)

In 2012 and 2013 the Mind & Life Institute, with funding from the John Templeton Foundation, invited Mind & Life Contemplative Studies Fellowship (MLCSF) grant applications that emphasized the role of the humanities or social sciences in deepening our understanding of contemplative practices in all their aspects. The term “contemplative practice” was meant in a broad sense, including a wide range of diverse phenomena such as prayer, meditation, fasting, prostration, yoga, and tai chi. All successful proposals engaged contemplative neuroscience and contemplative clinical science in some meaningful way.