Session Highlights 

By The Mindful Leader Team

Wellness Trends Impacting Mindfulness, Meditation & Workplace Mental Health

Four major reports, from Wellable, the Global Wellness Summit, Gartner, and Lyra Health, were analyzed for our Spring Pulse Report. Taken together, they tell a coherent story: the mental health crisis in the workplace has crossed a threshold. It is no longer primarily a stress and burnout story. It is a severity story. Complex psychiatric conditions, disability leaves, and AI-driven anxiety…

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

I'm Iranian American. Born in Iran, came to the US when I was less than two years old. I've lived my whole life the child of these two countries, and this weekend they went to war with each other. A friend asked me how I was feeling in all this. I shared it’s like living with two divorced parents who fought my entire life and are now trying to kill each other. 

I have family in Tehran. My uncle, my aunt, my cousin, and his three-year-…

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

Epstein, Deepak, and Authority Illusions

You've seen it happen. A revered teacher's private correspondence surfaces. Social media erupts. The disturbance isn't mere disagreement. It's disorientation. This doesn't match the person I thought I knew. 

I’ve been feeling a great deal of that lately. We all have. 

It's hard to deny that Jeffrey Epstein is on everyone’s minds. I searched the files on Jmail, checked for people I knew, searc…

By The Mindful Leader Team

Neurofluid Circulation Changes During Focused-Attention Meditation
PNAS · December 2025 · Vanderbilt University (Keating, Vago et al.) 

People often treat meditation formats as interchangeable. Apps, guided sessions, silent sits, breathwork, as though all paths deliver the same benefits. But neuroimaging research is beginning to show that specific physiological systems may only respond under particular conditions. A new study examined whether sustained, silent aw…

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

It's 2026. Has the world gone mad? 

Political chaos, economic volatility, and information warfare are now normalized. We're all carrying an extra weight, an ongoing load of anxiety and uncertainty that never quite lightens up. The pace of change is faster than we can adapt to. And it's getting harder to tell what’s real anymore. 

I’m feeling it. I bet you are too. 

People are not showing up to mindfulness practice calm and ready. Th…

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…