November 6, 2026
View or download a transcript of this episode
“Let’s put the welcome mat out for what’s here, instead of distancing it and then turning it into a problem.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
Recorded in person in Washington, D.C., where Mind & Life had gathered to celebrate the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday, this conversation finds Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, insisting that it was never about MBSR. It was about the “M.” Jon and David talk about Jon’s stress reduction clinic in 1979 and the challenge Jon gave every patient: to turn toward pain instead of away from it. They talk about the psoriasis study that put mindfulness training in a light box, how MBCT was born when three cognitive therapists came to borrow the tapes from Jon, loneliness, attention in an age built to capture it, 26,000 people on the first day of a Zoom retreat, and what Jon calls the koan for humanity: can we wake up enough? David ends the show with a short 2-minute guided meditation practice, focusing on a way of ‘putting out the welcome mat’ to our experience.
In this episode:
- The stress reduction clinic at UMass, 1979: catching people falling through the cracks of the health care system
- The pain is bare sensation; the suffering’s extra
- Nothing is to be clung to as I, me, or mine: the Buddha’s teaching in one sentence
- Sitting here, not sitting there
- For MBSR: “My marketing strategy is no marketing,” and the birth of MBCT
- The psoriasis study: meditation in a light therapy box
- Attention in the age of perpetual distraction
- Our analog genius: 13.8 billion years of evolution
- Many doors, one room: send your awareness a change-of-address card
- The koan for humanity, and “United and Present” at the UN
- Loneliness vs. aloneness, and MBSR as sangha
- The two-second peek: reclaiming your body
- Permission to be awkward: an improv study
- Repetition over novelty: why the guided meditations never change
- “You’re at home and I’m at home”: 26,000 people on the ‘mitigation’ retreat
- Glaciers as a mindfulness practice: no planet B
- David’s takeaway, a 2-minute guided meditation practic
About the guest
Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, is a scientist, writer, and meditation teacher who founded the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in 1979 and developed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), the program through which mindfulness entered mainstream medicine, science, and public life. Trained as a molecular biologist at MIT, he is Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and a Founding Steward of the Mind & Life Institute. His books include Full Catastrophe Living, Wherever You Go, There You Are, Coming to Our Senses, and Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief. He teaches live through the JKZ Meditations app.
About the host
David Creswell, PhD, is the William S. Dietrich II Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Carnegie Mellon University, where he directs the Health and Human Performance Lab, and host of the Mind & Life Podcast.
Resources
Studies, books, and materials mentioned in the episode, plus the papers David promised on the science of consciousness.
Earlier Mind & Life Podcast episodes referenced in this episode
- Jon Kabat-Zinn – The Heart of Mindfulness (2021), Jon’s earlier conversation with Wendy Hasenkamp
- David Creswell – New Season, New Voice (2026), the season opener that first aired October 23, 2026, where David first promised to ask Jon about the psoriasis study
Research discussed in this episode
- Kabat-Zinn, J., Wheeler, E., Light, T., Skillings, A., Scharf, M. J., Cropley, T. G., Hosmer, D., & Bernhard, J. D. (1998). Influence of a mindfulness meditation-based stress reduction intervention on rates of skin clearing in patients with moderate to severe psoriasis undergoing phototherapy (UVB) and photochemotherapy (PUVA). Psychosomatic Medicine, 60(5), 625–632. The light-box study.
- Kabat-Zinn, J. (2011). Some reflections on the origins of MBSR, skillful means, and the trouble with maps. Contemporary Buddhism, 12(1), 281–306. Jon’s own account of why it was never about MBSR.
- Segal, Z. V., Williams, J. M. G., & Teasdale, J. D. (2013). Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression (2nd ed.). Guilford Press. The program born from the visit to UMass that Jon describes; the authors’ first-person account of learning to practice is in the book.
- Lindsay, E. K., Creswell, J. D., Stern, H. J., Greco, C. M., Walko, T. D., Dutcher, J. M., Wright, A. G. C., Brown, K. W., & Marsland, A. L. (2022). Mindfulness-based stress reduction increases stimulated IL-6 production among lonely older adults: A randomized controlled trial. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 104, 6–15. The MBSR-and-immune-function finding in lonely older adults that David mentions at the top.
- Creswell, J.D., Irwin, M.R., Burklund, L.J., Lieberman, M.D., Arevalo, J., Ma, J., Breen, E., & Cole, S. (2012). Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction training reduces loneliness and pro-inflammatory gene expression in older adults: a small randomized controlled trial. Brain, Behavior, & Immunity, 26, 1095-1101. Jon references David’s early work on MBSR and loneliness, it was this paper.
- Lindsay, E. K., Young, S., Brown, K. W., Smyth, J. M., & Creswell, J. D. (2019). Mindfulness training reduces loneliness and increases social contact in a randomized controlled trial. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(9), 3488–3493. David mentions this app based mindfulness intervention study: this 14-day smartphone study showed that acceptance training cut daily loneliness by 22% and added about two social interactions a day.
- Woolley, K., & Fishbach, A. (2022). Motivating personal growth by seeking discomfort. Psychological Science, 33(4), 510–523. The improv study: students told that the goal was to feel awkward took more risks and reported more achievement. David wrote a popular science article for Scientific American about embracing discomfort and referenced this study: Learning to accept discomfort could help you thrive.
- Beckman, H. B., & Frankel, R. M. (1984). The effect of physician behavior on the collection of data. Annals of Internal Medicine, 101, 692–696; and Marvel, M. K., Epstein, R. M., Flowers, K., & Beckman, H. B. (1999). Soliciting the patient’s agenda: Have we improved? JAMA, 281(3), 283–287. The interruption studies behind Jon’s “17 seconds” (18 seconds in 1984, 23 in 1999).
The science of consciousness (papers David promised)
- Koch, C., & Tsuchiya, N. (2007). Attention and consciousness: Two distinct brain processes. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(1), 16–22. How vision scientists pull attention apart from awareness.
- Mashour, G. A., & Hudetz, A. G. (2018). Neural correlates of unconsciousness in large-scale brain networks. Trends in Neurosciences, 41(3), 150–160. What neuroscience and anesthesia reveals about the moment the lights of consciousness go on and off.
- Pollan, M. (2026). A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness. Penguin Press. The book Jon mentions (he calls it “The World Appears”); its last chapter is on zen teacher Joan Halifax.
Jon’s books, teachings, and app
- Jon’s books
- The JKZ Meditations app, with Jon’s guided meditations and the live sessions he describes
- The Mitigation Retreat (March–June 2020), every weekday session archived on YouTube
- Haidt, J. (2024). The Anxious Generation. Penguin Press. The work on screens and developing brains that Jon references.
Mind & Life
- Wisdom for Our Time: A Celebration of His Holiness the Dalai Lama (Washington, D.C., March 28, 2026), where this conversation was recorded
- A Bold New Chapter for the Mind & Life Institute (June 2025), the strategy David refers to in the intro: AI and technology, interconnectedness and climate, polarization, systems change
- United and Present: Global Solutions from Within (UN Geneva, December 10, 2025), the UN session Jon mentions, held in the lead-up to World Meditation Day
More from David
- Health and Human Performance Lab, David’s lab website at Carnegie Mellon University
- Learning to accept discomfort could help you thrive (Scientific American), on the equanimity science behind the two-second peek
- Equa Health, the science-first mindfulness app David co-founded. (See disclosure below.)
Contact
- Write to us at podcast@mindandlife.org.
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Disclaimer: The views expressed by the host and guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Mind & Life Institute. Discussion of commercial products, services, or organizations does not constitute an endorsement by Mind & Life. Discussion of Equa Health in this episode does not constitute an endorsement by the Mind & Life Institute.
Disclosure: David Creswell is co-founder and Chief of Science of Equa Health, a meditation app company, and has a financial interest in it. He discusses this role in the episode.
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