Transcript

Jessica, Hello everyone, and welcome to this talk on the science of mindfulness, a research based path to well being, by Dr Ron Siegel. My name is Jessica DeSimone. I am one of the co chairs of the HKS green team, and I have been running weekly meditation sessions at HKS for about five years now, and we have occasionally use recorded meditations, and we've been using Ron Siegel's meditations for the full five years. I am a huge fan. I highly recommend them, and we're just very, very excited to have him here with us today in this virtual reality, talking about mindfulness and the path to well being through it.

So a little bit about Dr Siegel if you're not familiar with him. In his work, he is assistant professor of psychology part time at the Harvard Medical School. He's been teaching there for over 35 years. He is a longtime student of mindfulness meditation, and he serves on the board of directors and as faculty at the Institute for meditation and psychotherapy. He is also affiliated with the Center for Mindfulness and Compassion at Cambridge Health Alliance, which is a Harvard teaching hospital, and if you're not familiar with them, we highly recommend you check them out. He is the co-director of the annual Harvard Medical School conference on meditation and psychotherapy, and he teaches internationally about the application of mindfulness practice in psychotherapy and in other fields. He is also author, co author and CO editor of many books. He is author of the mindfulness solution, everyday practices for everyday problems. He is CO editor of mindfulness and psychotherapy, which is in its second edition, and of wisdom and compassion in psychotherapy. He is also co author of sitting together essential skills for mindfulness based psychotherapy, and of back sense, a revolutionary approach to halting the cycle of chronic back pain. So welcome. Dr, Siegel, we're super excited, and I'll turn it over to you.