Harold D. Roth is Professor of Religious Studies and the Director of the Contemplative Studies Initiative at Brown University.

Roth is a specialist in Classical Chinese Religious Thought, Classical Daoism, the comparative study of contemplative practices and experiences and a pioneer of the academic field of Contemplative Studies. Roth is the founder and director of Brown’s unique “Contemplative Studies Initiative” and was the co-founder and co-director of the Warren Alpert Medical School’s Scholarly Concentration in Contemplative Studies; he is the person who coined the term “Contemplative Studies”.

Roth’s publications include six books and more than 50 articles and book chapters on the history and religious thought of the Daoist tradition, on the textual history and textual criticism of classical Chinese works, and on the pedagogy and the academic discipline of Contemplative Studies.

Roth has been the recipient of grants and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, The National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation For International Scholarly Exchange. He also was awarded a Wriston Fellowship for Teaching Excellence from Brown University. He has been a member of the initial Steering Committees for two groups within the American Academy of Religion, the Daoist Studies Section and the Contemplative Studies Group. He has served on the program planning committees for several Mind & Life Institute events.

As an innovator in the field of Contemplative Studies, Roth has developed courses that combine traditional third-person study with critical first-person approaches. He is currently working on a book manuscript detailing the theory and practice of “Integrative Contemplative Pedagogy.”

Amishi Jha is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Miami, and Director of Contemplative Neuroscience for the Mindfulness Research and Practice Initiative, prior to which she was an Assistant Professor at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her PhD from the University of California–Davis, and received her postdoctoral training at the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center at Duke University in functional neuroimaging. She studies the neural bases of attention and the effects of mindfulness-based training programs on cognition, emotion, and resilience. With grants from the Department of Defense and several private foundations, she has been systematically investigating the applications of mindfulness training in education, corporate, elite sports, first responder, and military contexts. In addition to her own published body of research, her work has been featured in many outlets including TED.com, NPR, and Mindful Magazine. In addition, she has been invited to present her work to NATO, the UK Parliament, the Pentagon, and the World Economic Forum. In her national bestseller, Peak Mind (Harper Collins), she shares her discoveries on how attention can be trained for optimal performance and well-being. Visit amishi.com to learn more about Amishi’s work.

Amishi was featured in the Mind & Life podcast episode Attention, mind wandering, and stress.

Oliver W. Hill, Jr., Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at Virginia State University. Dr. Hill is an experimental psychologist specializing in studying cognition. He received his undergraduate training at Howard University in Washington, DC, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Hill has been working in the area of barriers for minority students to careers in the STEM disciplines for over twenty years, and has been the PI or Co-PI on numerous research projects in this area, and has received over six million dollars in funding from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the National Institutes of Health. His current research looks at the efficacy of cognitive training to improve working memory functioning and reduce cardiovascular reactivity to stress in African American college students. Hill is also studying ways to improve mathematics performance in elementary and secondary school students. He is particularly interested in fostering the concept of quality education as a civil right for all students.

Hill is a former Fellow and current board member of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, and he has developed several courses infusing contemplative pedagogy into the psychology curriculum at VSU. Hill has been practicing meditation since 1970, and teaching meditation since 1972.

Laura I. Rendón, PhD,

 is a renowned advocate, scholar, and educator. As a speaker with SpeakOut-The Institute for Democratic Education and Culture, she has addressed audiences worldwide on education and social justice. Raised in a low-income, single-parent home on the U.S.-Mexico Border, Rendón is a dedicated champion for low-income, first-generation students. She authored Sentipensante Pedagogy and numerous publications focusing on underserved student success. Rendón has held positions at various universities, including the University of Texas-San Antonio, and her archives are at the University of Texas-Austin. Her impact is honored through the Laura Rendón Scholarship at Arizona State University, supporting Chicano/Latino students. She is a fellow of the Mind & Life Institute and former fellow of the Fetzer Institute.

Find out more about her work here. 

Zvi Ish-Shalom, Ph.D., is an associate professor of wisdom traditions at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and is the guiding teacher and founder of the Kedumah Institute. An ordained rabbi from a long lineage of Hasidic scholars, Zvi also holds a B.A. in classics from McGill University and a Ph.D. in Jewish mysticism from Brandeis University. His new book, The Kedumah Experience: The Primordial Torah, presents Jewish mystical teachings as a contemporary and universal path of contemplative practice.

A leading scholar-practitioner of Daoism (Taoism) with over twenty-five years of experience with holistic and integrated Daoist training, Louis Komjathy is an ordained Daoist priest of the Huashan 華山 (Mount Hua) lineage (26th generation) of Quanzhen 全真 (Complete Perfection) Daoism as well as founding Co-director and senior teacher of the Daoist Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering authentic Daoist study and practice and to preserving and transmitting traditional Daoist culture. He earned his Ph.D. in Religious Studies (Boston University; 2005) with an emphasis on Daoism and the academic study of religion. He currently works as Associate Professor of Chinese Religions and Comparative Religious Studies at the University of San Diego. He has particular interests in contemplative practice, embodiment, and mystical experience. He received ordination in the Huashan lineage in 2006, after which he lived as a visiting Daoist monk in the monasteries of Laoshan and Huashan. As a Daoist priest, he endeavors to help individuals develop a root in self-cultivation and a personal connection with the Dao and to facilitate a tradition-based Daoist sense of community. His recent books include The Daoist Tradition: An Introduction (2013), the edited volume Contemplative Literature: A Comparative Sourcebook on Meditation and Contemplative Prayer (2015), Taming the Wild Horse: An Annotated Translation and Study of the Daoist Horse Taming Pictures (2017), and Introducing Contemplative Studies (2017). His life and work has been featured in Dream Trippers: Global Daoism and the Predicament of Modern Spirituality (2017).

Pir Zia Inayat Khan, PH.D., is a scholar of religion and teacher of Sufism in the universalist Sufi lineage of his grandfather, Hazrat Inayat Khan. Pir Zia is president of the Inayatiyya and founder of Sulūk Academy, a school of Sufi contemplative study and practice. He is author of Immortality: A Traveler’s Guide, Mingled Waters: Sufism and the Mystical Unity of Religions, Saracen Chivalry: Counsels on Valor, Generosity and the Mystical Quest, and Tears from the Mother of the Sun, forthcoming in 2025. Pir Zia divides his time between Richmond, Virginia and Suresnes, France. inayatiyya.org

Richard Freeman began studying yoga in 1968. After nine years in Asia studying yoga asana, Sufism, Sanskrit language, and Indian philosophy he began to work with B.K.S. Iyengar, K. Pattabhi Jois and numerous Buddhist teachers to draw insights into the interfacing of Buddhism and yoga as a reflection of life. Richard’s metaphorical, humorous, teaching style appeals to students of many backgrounds and nationalities.

Mary Taylor began studying yoga in 1971 while earning a degree in psychology. It was not until the early 1980s, when she moved to Boulder, Colorado and started studying yoga with Richard Freeman, that yoga became a central thread in her life. Before that, yoga had provided a means of relieving stress, and honing a sense of focus and well-being. In 1988, she traveled to India to study with K. Pattabhi Jois, and began to see the overlay of yoga with her interests in food, cooking, movement, anatomy, and art.

Taylor has authored three cookbooks, along with What Are You Hungry For? Women, Food and Spirituality, a book that explores yoga, meditation, and finding one’s personal dharma as a means of finding lasting meaning and happiness. As the Yoga Workshop’s director, she has attended all of Richard Freeman’s teacher trainings. She brings to her teaching a deep respect for the healing and calming effects of yoga. Her classes are engaging and fun, focusing on the flow of breath, steady movement, and the feeling of completeness that can be cultivated through a lasting practice.

Zindel Segal, PhD is Distinguished Professor of Psychology in Mood Disorders at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He pioneered the use of mindfulness meditation for promoting wellness in the area of mood disorders. He is the recipient of several awards, including the Douglas Utting Research Prize and the Mood Disorder Association of Ontario’s Hope Award and has been continuously funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for the past 15 years. Segal’s program of research has helped to characterize psychological markers of relapse vulnerability in affective disorder, especially the link between affective and self-devaluation components of dysphoria. This work has, in turn, provided an empirical rationale for offering training in mindfulness meditation to recurrently depressed patients in recovery.

An author of ten books and more than 200 scientific publications, including The Mindful Way Through Depression—a patient guide for achieving mood balance in everyday life—he continues to advocate for the relevance of mindfulness-based clinical care in psychiatry and mental health. His recent book, Better in Every Sense, describes the surprising role of sensation in mental health.