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Session Summary

A conversation at the 2025 Mindful Leader Summit led by Tim Shriver, PhD—Chairman of Special Olympics; Co-founder of UNITE, and Marc Brackett, director of Yale Center of Emotional Intelligence, explored the growing crisis of contempt in American culture and introduced the Dignity Index as a practical framework for restoring dignity in leadership, politics, workplaces, and everyday relationships. The session argued that inner work—mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and self-reg…

By Mo Edjlali, Founder of Mindful Leader; Author, Open MBSR

It's 2026, and I believe when we look back, this will be the year it became undeniable: we are living in the dawn of the Age of AI.

Many have already come to understand this. And as vogue as it is to AI-bash, let's be honest. Most of us now use AI daily. For many like me, it's integrated into how we work, live, and serve.

I believe we are entering a mental health crisis unlike anything we've seen, alongside the most extraordinary adv…

By Mo Edjlali, Founder of Mindful Leader; Author, Open MBSR

"What do you think is my son's favorite color?"

I wasn't sure why I asked. We were somewhere on Route 66, heading toward the Shenandoah Valley, my Tesla driving itself through the grey winter afternoon. My kids and I had been playing trivia with ChatGPT for the past twenty minutes, animal facts, math problems, the kind of thing that keeps elementary schoolers engaged on a long drive without handing them a tablet.

"Red," the AI respon…

By The Mindful Leader Team

We're coming up on the end of 2025, and we wanted to pull together the stuff you all engaged with most this year. We've sorted everything into three piles: articles that'll help you think differently, practices you can use, and the best of the best summit talks.

Top 3 Articles

7 Trends Shaping Mindfulness in 2025

Digs into seven big shifts we predicted coming for mindfulness in 2025—think AI meditation, those Mindfulness+ mashups, and people actually wanting to be …

By Mo Edjlali, Founder of Mindful Leader; Author, Open MBSR

When you have spent 15 years in the mindfulness field, people start imagining you glide through life, calm, steady, perfectly regulated at all times. Maybe you meditate on mountaintops before breakfast. Maybe you never get annoyed in traffic. I wish.

2025 reminded me, loud and clear, I'm still a work in progress.

This was one of the most demanding years of my life. A book launch, an app launch, and the daily circus of trying to be a …

By The Mindful Leader Team

The 2025 research landscape reveals a fork in the road for our field. One path races toward transactional efficiency: AI facilitators and 5-minute micro-doses designed to "fix" individual stress as quickly as possible. The other path points toward relational depth: a growing body of evidence suggesting that the true power of mindfulness lies not in optimizing the self, but in connecting with the community.

The question this year is no longer just "does it work?" It i…

Session Summary

According to the WHO, more than a billion people worldwide are living with mental health conditions. What if community holds the answer? In this powerful session at the 2025 Mindful Leader Summit, Mo Edjlali, founder of Mindful Leader and author of Open MBSR, explored the transformative potential of community-centered approaches amidst the fast-paced evolution of technology and society. As we enter what he calls a "new age," where autonomous vehicles, ChatGPT, and unprecedented …

By The Mindful Leader Team

Can mindfulness training truly ease the epidemic of loneliness among older adults? Does caring for others enhance our own well-being as much as self-compassion does? Could an AI voice guide meditation as effectively as a human teacher? This month’s studies invite us to explore how awareness, compassion, and technology intertwine to shape the future of mental health and human flourishing.

Mindfulness Training (MBSR) Proves Effective Against Loneliness Crisis in Older …