Session Highlights 

"Most people are shocked to discover they are addicted to contempt."

At our 2025 Mindful Leader Summit, Tim Shriver, CEO of the Special Olympics and co-creator of the Dignity Index, said that to a room full of mindfulness practitioners, researchers, and leaders who had gathered precisely because they cared about how we treat each other. He was joined by Marc Brackett, founder of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, whose decades of research on emotional intelligence made the point land e…

The 2026 Meditation Practice Report presents findings from 272 practitioners surveyed in Spring 2026. Our findings help mindfulness professionals design more effective programs that align with actual practice patterns.

Key Findings:

• Most practitioners (61.6%) meditate daily, with 10–20 minutes the most common session length (36.2%)
• Morning practice dominates (64.6%), suggesting optimal timing for group sessions and reminders
• "Too many distractions" (32.7%) has overtaken "not enough time" (29…

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

In the age of AI, what role does mindfulness play, and why do we still need to practice?

Every day it becomes easier to outsource attention, avoid discomfort, simulate connection without relationship, and live inside systems designed to anticipate and monetize our impulses before we have fully formed our intentions. What happens to our attention, our presence, our liberty, our compassion?

1. Attention Exploitation 

Every app, feed, …

By The Mindful Leader Team

In the 1950s, legendary golfer Walter Hagen offered sage advice in his book The Walter Hagen Story, reminding us, "You’re only here for a short visit. Don’t hurry, don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way." This counsel has evolved into the well-known exhortation to "stop and smell the roses," a metaphor for taking time out of our busy lives to appreciate the small joys and natural beauty around us. This concept aligns perfectly with the practice of…

By The Mindful Leader Team

Is AI unburdening knowledge work — or doing the opposite? In our Spring 2026 Research Roundup, we look at three new studies: a large workplace survey, an eight-month embedded ethnography, and a small but widely discussed neuroimaging preprint. Together, they suggest AI tools are reshaping the cognitive demands of knowledge work in ways worth paying attention to.

What happens to sustained attention when the workday becomes, in large part, the supervision of AI?  Do …

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

Apolitical is a principle. Amoral is a failure.

The mindfulness field teaches people not to look away. Then a war comes. And the field looks away.

On February 28th, a missile hit a girls' school in southern Iran. 170 people were killed. Many of them were children. That was day one of the war.

That was five weeks ago.

Since then, we've had missiles hitting civilian targets in half a dozen countries. The Strait of Hormuz shut down. G…

Session Summary

A thoughtful session at the 2025 Mindful Leader Summit led by Marvin Riley, CEO of MES Life Safety and long‑time Reflection Point board member, focused on how leaders can cultivate human‑centered workplaces while meeting business demands. The conversation explored integrating communication practices, supporting employee well‑being, and embracing technological change. Key principles highlighted include embedding empathetic practices into daily work, rethinking traditional well‑be…

A practical reflection framework for responding to conflict and crisis with clarity, courage, and responsibility

By The Mindful Leader Team

Alfred Adler, the early twentieth-century psychologist whose work on individual responsibility helped shape modern therapy, once suggested that the most important question we can ask in difficult situations is not:

"What is wrong with the world?"

But rather:

"What is my task in this situation?"

It is a deceptively simple question. And most of…

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…