Transcript

What do publisher Arianna Huffington NBA coach of the Lakers and bulls Phil Jackson, and writer Deepak Chopra have in common. They all dislike my research on meditation. So in this talk, I'm going to tell you the story of how that came to be. And in the process, I'm also going to explain how even though many people think you need to meditate for 45 minutes every day to get benefits. I'm going to explain to you how small amounts like eight minutes of meditation in specific situations can change your life. Often for the better, but occasionally for the worse, you just need to know when is it helpful, and one isn't it. Mindfulness Meditation is a practice to cultivate non judgmental awareness of the present moment, often by focusing attention on the physical sensations of breathing, walking, or eating. Mindfulness is big business right now, in the Western world. Most large companies in the United States have some form of mindfulness program for their employees. The comm app has been valued at $2 billion. And the headspace app is downloaded about 12 million times per year.

There's even a company called the potential project, which has their main service as corporate mindfulness trainings, and they have a presence in 28 different countries. So one could argue that at this point, mindfulness meditation is the main way that companies suggest people should deal with their stress. When I started the Ph D. program at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, in 2010, I was very stressed out myself, my coursework was excruciatingly difficult, and it felt like a distraction from the research I wanted to do. And I need to publish that research in journals by the end of my fourth year in the program, but the review process at these journals could take two years. So I had to have full manuscripts ready by the end of my second year, but I had dual disc coursework that was taking my time away from it. And so I felt like I wanted to publish and not perish, but I had no idea how to do that.