In Your Dreams: One Mind & Life Grantee Has Big Hopes for Exploring the Past and Future of Tibetan Dream Yoga

Humans spend at least two hours a night dreaming. That’s more than seven hundred hours a year, and six years spent dreaming in a lifetime. While we all have our own struggles and patterns of successful sleep, dreams are a unifying factor of humanity. Whether you’re riding the subway to work, standing in line for …

Summer Research Institute 2023

A collaborative, interdisciplinary, and immersive opportunity for conversations around trauma, healing, and flourishing—for researchers, contemplatives, changemakers, and anyone interested in this topic.

On the Path to Belonging at the 2022 Summer Research Institute

Against a backdrop of daunting polarization, violent conflicts, rising authoritarianism, and mounting climate chaos, Mind & Life’s 2022 Summer Research Institute (SRI) engaged participants in an audacious inquiry: What is the role of the human mind in creating today’s divisions, and how can our minds transform to create a more connected world?   From June 6-10, …

Building Bridges: A Mind & Life Origin Story with Adam Engle

In an online conversation held in 2022, Mind & Life Co-founder Adam Engle reflects on the origins of the Mind & Life Institute with Science Director Wendy Hasenkamp. We shared this video as part of our 35th anniversary celebration. View the transcript here.

Planting Seeds for a New Research Field: Lessons from the Early Days of Mind & Life

The first Mind & Life Dialogue with the Dalai Lama took place in Dharamsala, India in October 1987 on the theme of Buddhism and the cognitive sciences. Five scientists gathered with His Holiness in what was described as a ‘living room conversation.’ For seven days, they explored topics ranging from cognitive psychology, perception, memory, and …

Biological and psychological mechanisms of mindfulness meditation-based interventions for depression

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is highly burdensome and psychological and biological features are mechanistically implicated in its etiology. Fewer than one-in-three depressed patients achieve remission after treatment. Understanding treatment mechanisms of MDD is clearly an important objective. Mindfulness training emphasizes the development of attention and experiential acceptance, improves depressive symptoms, reduces the likelihood of relapse, …